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STEVENAGE CHESS CLUB
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting Holy Trinity Church Parish Room Monday 7th September 2009, commencing 7.45 p.m.
Present at the meeting: Giampiero Amato, Paul Bainger, Adam Batson, David Belton, Graham Howard, Arthur James, Len Jones, Phil Maguire, Chris Majer (Chairman), Ken Maynard, Derick Price, Mike Price, Neil Rashbrook, Steve Rawlings, Graham Williams.
Apologies for absence: David Cairncross, Kai Jaeger, Chris Lean, Dominic Robinson.
Minutes of the meeting held on 8th September 2008.
Approval: The minutes were agreed and signed. Matters arising Equipment. Ken Maynard had conducted an audit of the clocks during last season, and would be carrying out a further audit prior to the start of this season. Adam Batson offered to produce some guidelines for setting and using the digital clocks. Mike Price reported that five wooden boards were now stored at his house in order to provide more space in the Parish Room cupboard. Advertising. Mike Price reported that he planned to send an article to the Comet to be included in the “Town & Around” section. Analysis of individual games. Adam Batson reported that it had been difficult to find spare evenings in a crowded fixture list. There had been one occasion when an e-mail had been sent round to club members inviting them to bring games for analysis, and there had been a limited response. Internal club competition. There was wide appreciation of the Blitz tournament organised by Kai Jaeger at the end of last season, and it was hoped that this would be repeated. Adam Batson offered to organise a handicap knock-out tournament to run during the season.
Reports on season 2008/09.
1st team. After last season’s disappointment, the 1st Team had a fantastic season, going unbeaten in the league with 10 wins and 2 draws. Despite Bishops Stortford fielding an extremely strong team in some of their matches, we finished 5 match points clear of them and 10pts ahead of 3rd placed team. Hence we easily gained a deserved promotion to the 1st division. The key games were against Bishops Stortford; the away match was drawn, perhaps fortuitously against a weakened opposition but we effectively secured promotion with a closely fought 3-2 win in the return match. A final 5-0 victory against a not particularly weak St. Albans II was an apt way to finish such a great season. As in the previous season, the key to success was in the consistent availability of the 1st team squad – only 3 other players were required (Kai, Frank and Steve) in a total of 5 games; these players did however ensure victory in 2 close fought victories (3-2) against Watford III and Welwyn – in both cases these were the only wins with the rest drawn. Everyone performed well. Chris with 6.5/11 on board 2 Giampiero with a superb 8.5/12 on board 3 Adam with 6.5/9 Dominic with 7.5/12 I managed to go through unbeaten with 7/12, with a key victory against BS. One significant statistic was that we only lost 5 games throughout the season out of 60 games! It should be a tough but enjoyable season in the 1st division.
Russell Trophy:
After a few years of absence, the 1st Team returned to play in the Russell. Unfortunately it |