Cambridge Junior Chess & Go Club

Club News

This is our latest news on 30 May 2007.

Our club is still meeting St Augustine's Hall, Richmond Road, Cambridge CB4 3PT.

Our meetings are on Wednesdays during term time from 6pm until 7.30pm. The cost is £1.50 per week. There is car parking on the street.

Our club has now been running continuously for over 10 years. During the past couple of years we have had very good attendances, often with more than 30 juniors playing. We have also had some excellent chess teaching from Nick Jackson of Chess for Kids.

The Chess Shield and Go Shield competitions will continue to be held each autumn and spring. The winner of each will keep the trophy for the next six months. The current champions are Alvin Gardner (Chess) and Matthew Harris (Go). The champions in the junior age bands were Rachel Crook (Chess) and Aoife McCaul (Go). For information about past winners, see the Roll of Champions

Occasionally we also have club championships of Oware and Othello. The latest winners were Hector Dearman (Oware) and David Redman (Othello).

Each year we hold heats of the UK Chess Challenge and the UK Go Challenge. We recently completed our 2007 heat of the Chess Challenge, the overall winner was Ashley Stewart and many other players qualified for the regional Megafinal and the national Gigafinal. Our heat of the Go Challenge has also just finished, with over 30 players, and was won by Owen Walker.

Club Details

The Cambridge Junior Chess & Go Club is a place for children of all ages to come and play chess and go (if you don't know what go is, look here for a quick introduction to the game, or download igowin, an excellent free go-playing program - size 786k - which runs under Windows and includes a go tutorial). Go is somtimes known as igo (the Japanese name for the game), weiqi (the Chinese name), wei ch'i (the Cantonese name) or baduk (Korean).

We are always very pleased to have new members at our club. Our club members over the past few years have mostly been aged between 6 and 14. These have included beginners and also quite strong players. So if you come along, you should be able to find someone who is about the same standard as you are. It doesn't matter whether you come every week or just now and then. And it doesn't matter if you can't stay until the end.

Every week we try to have at least 3 adult helpers to organise things. They usually include chess or go experts from Cambridge City Chess Club and Cambridge Go Club. They'll be happy to give you some hints on chess and go if you want. If you haven't played either game before, there will always be someone who can explain the rules and help you to get started.

Activities

These are some of the things our club does:

• Twice a year we have a Club Chess Competition and a Club Go Competition. The winner of each one has their name engraved on a shield which they keep for six months. Have a look at the list of recent winners.
• We sometimes have entered a team in the Bury Area Junior Chess League. Our best results were in the 1998/9 league when we were third, and in 1997/8 when we were second.
• Each year we run a heat of the UK Chess Challenge. and the UK Go Challenge
• We send out an occasional newsletter. As well as information about the club, it often has details of other chess and go events and some puzzles for you to solve.
• There are chess and go books which you can borrow and some puzzle sheets which you can keep.
• You can get information from us about chess and go tournaments, chess and go coaching, and about other clubs.
• We issue go grading diplomas.
• We have an Annual Congress in the autumn. There are chess and go competitions for children and for adults. Over the past four years we have averaged around 100 entrants per year.
• There are also some other special events which we arrange. These have included several simultaneous displays, one of them by Harriet Hunt, then the Women's Junior World Chess Champion.
• As well as chess and Go, we have some sets at the club to play draughts, Othello and also Oware, a traditional game from Africa. For more on Oware, see the UK Oware Society web pages.
• We have information about Chinese Chess and Japanese Chess.

This page is maintained by Paul & Andrea Smith and was last updated on 30 May 2007. If you would like any more information, please e-mail us.

If you would like more information about chess and go clubs, events and services in the UK, then go to the English Chess Federation and British Go Association web sites.

We welcome any ideas about how to improve this page or our club, or any offers of help!