The Chess Club has two purposes. The primary purpose is to provide a place for friendly games for players of all ages and abilities. The club meets each Third Break from 1.45 - 2.35 p.m. The secondary purpose is to provide opportunities for players to improve their standard and play competitive games either at school or for one of the school teams. For individual play last season, we entered  the long established U.K. Chess Challenge which provide players with the opportunity to play in regional and national finals, as several of our pupils did in July and August. We also enter team competitions, including two teams in the English Chess Federation’s National Schools Chess Championship, and other quickplay competitions run by the Birmingham and District Schools Chess League. We won the E.C.F. National Schools Chess Championship in July for the third year running and our ‘B’ team reached the national Quarter-Finals; this was a unique achievement .

 

A number of our players have achieved county or national recognition.  Six of our current players, Oliver Exton,  Andrew Garside,  Michael Keetley, Ankush Khandelwal, Kishan Lakhani and Toby Thurgood have played for England junior teams .

 

The club has a good stock of sets and clocks (both digital and analogue), and also has two chess computers, a buzzer for lightning chess, and, for training purposes, a demonstration board. The school library provides copies of Chess, a leading magazine, as well as a good range of chess books.

 

The Chess Colours for 2008 have been awarded to:

 

Jonathan Day, Oliver Exton, Michael Keetley, Ankush Khandelwal, Kishan Lakhani, Daniel Lin

and Ted Pynegar.

 

 

 

Dr John Swain (teacher in charge of chess)