Happy New Year to all Surbiton Chess Club Members!

Let's hope that 2021 will see the return of over the board chess. While we wait for that to be possible here is a quick reminder of what we have going on online.

We have one team in the second cycle of the Surrey Friendly Online league with fixtures on Wednesday nights. Ideally we would field at least one more team, given the size of club we are. However, in the first cycle, we tried two teams and the second team did not receive sufficient support to make it viable. If you would like to be part of our Surrey Friendly League squad and are committed to playing then please let our secretary, Angus James, know. We can look at entries again for the third cycle.

On Wednesdays when the Surrey Friendly League does not provide us with a fixture Angus has been running informal members blitz or rapidplay tournaments. Watch out for Angus's email reminders.

We have also been running occasional Zoom seminars since over the board chess ceased last March. Topics covered so far have been:

My Unluckiest Game - Paul Shepherd

My Favourite Game - Mark Josse

My Favourite Game - Koby Kalavannan

Lessons from my chess coach / dynamic play - Tim Seymour

The ********* (confidential opening) and opening preparation - Oliver Gill

Next up on Thursday 7th January 2021 is a seminar by Julien Way entitled "The Zany Games of Albin Planinc". We hope to see many of you there. Please note that, as Julien is also a member of Kingston Chess Club, we have opened up the invitation to our friendly neighbours, Kingston, on this occasion.

Finally, we conducted a survey of members just before Xmas on our online offering. We are still working through the feedback but what was clear is that 7:40pm looks like the majority preferred start time for events and the seminars are desired by 90% of respondents. Some of the themes mentioned for future seminars were: going through games (7th January will tick that box!), endgames and openings. If any club member is prepared to produce a short seminar on any of these themes that would be much appreciated. If so please contact, Paul Shepherd.