The 2021/22 season was an interesting one: as the country poked its head out to resume collective life again, chess did too. Ringwood Chess Club had survived the pandemic on a mixture of tournaments organised on lichess, and sensible decisions by the local chess organisations about how and when to restart local leagues. As we restarted league chess we made the move in earnest to Greyfriars, so it was a fresh start in two ways.
As it turned out, the Dorset based associations made full leagues available from August 2021 but with a reduced number of teams involved, and the Southampton league started later in January 2022 with “half leagues” (4 team in each division). Both approaches were successful and hopefully the leagues will all move closer to “normal” in 2022/23.
Before the start of the 2022, Kevin Goater joined the club to play primarily in the Bournemouth league. It was a very welcome addition to the club, especially as we struggled during the first half of the season to get a team let alone a strong team out for matches! After the first 3 matches we were on “null points” having been well beaten in each match. However, hard-fought victories against Poole and New Milton steadied the ship and by mid-season, more senior players had felt able to return and we started to look at the second half of the season with renewed ambition! A couple of convincing losses to Highcliffe and Southbourne soon dampened the ambition! A hard-fought victory against Wimborne (the match is pictured below) calmed our nerves and we were safe from relegation after a draw against Poole in our penultimate match. Two areas of the team deserve special mentions in “despatches”. The first is Kevin Goater who played top board and scored 5.5/8 without loss, returning the highest graded performance in the league with 2169 and the second area is those players who turned out in the early season games when we were struggling to find players.
In the Dorset League, we opted to play in the second division. Looking at the league table at the end of the season, that decision looked ambitious as we finished last. We will dwell on the positives which means I don’t have to re-live my experiences. Niall and Graham returned healthy performances with 2 from 2 and 3 from 4 respectively. And we had some nice trips out – especially to Purbeck when I muffed the re-arranged away fixture and we travelled a week early – at least we found a good pub.
In the Southampton League division one, Fareham put out an exceptionally strong team and won the league at a canter – played 6 won 6 and amassed 21 of a possible 24 points. In our away game against them we were re-enforced with Martin Simons and Russell Pegg, and whilst Martin had good drawing chances and was unlucky to lose, the match was never in any doubt. We had a fortuitous draw away against the University when my opponent converted his winning position to a lost one just as I was getting ready to resign. The return match was defaulted which meant we finished a single point above them in the league.
Normal Monday night sessions at Greyfriars have continued since we started back. A new addition has been a “First Monday of the month” blitz competition organised by Peter Anderson. They have proved popular, and we are hoping to keep them going during the new season.