DandHCC Website

Welcome to the DandHCC Website!

The last match of the season was on 23rd April and I regret to say that we were forced to concede it. Captain Bob writes:

"So there we are, 14 men and a dog all standing around locked out of the Liberal Club, no answer from any phones. We tried to come up with a plan B involving Geoff's office and as many sets as we could muster, but in the end, at around 7.50, we gave up and went to The Carlton for a few jars. We found that this was less taxing on the brain."

Bulletin 7 of the season has just arrived from Simon Dunkley. I have posted it on the Bulletins Page.

The latest bulletin of the season - No. 6 - is now availabe on the Bulletins Page, courtesy of Simon Dunkley.

At long last I have now posted the game Brown - Bracey from our match against Chesterfield in November. You can find it on the Games Page.

On 19th March we took a trip to The Abbey pub, where Ecclesall play their home matches. The details can be found on the Results Page. Captain Bob writes that it was a good draw, Darnall being outgraded on all boards. He adds that Ed Carnie thought his game was boring, but Bob finds this difficult to believe when no pieces were taken for 20 moves!

I can vouch for the facts that it really was an away match and that Mike McGuigan really did play on board 5. I was sitting next to him - and I know.

Geoff Brown emails to correct the result I posted a couple of days ago. It seems the match was away, not home and that our victor on board 5 was Mike Gallagher, not Mike McGuigan. Sorry! I have amended the details on the results page.

Geoff also asks about a couple of his games that are awaiting posting here. I'll try and get around to them soon!

Captain Bob has sent me the results of the latest game, at home (I presume) against Worksop 'B' on 12th March (also presumed by me). I imagine that this must have been the fixture postponed from 20th February. See the full details on the results page. Another very welcome win!

Captain Bob has sent me the results of the latest game, at home against Chesterfield 'B' on 27th February. See the full details on the results page. Our good streak has come to an end, it seems.

The latest bulletin has arrived, courtesy of Simon Dunkley. See it on the Bulletins Page.

Captain Bob has sent me the result of our last match, at home against Woodseats 'B'. Our good streak continues, as we won 3½ - 2½! See the full details on the results page.

It seems our next match, due to be against Worksop next week, has been cancelled as they can't raise a team.

Turn to the Club Info page to see Captain Bob's new email address.

Simon Dunkley has sent the latest bulletin, which can be viewed from the Bulletins Page. D&H members will be surprised to find that our 1½ - 4½ loss against Rotherham Juniors 'B' on Friday 11th January has turned into a 6 - 0 win to us. This is because they played a player who was ineligible, having been previously automatically registered for their team in a higher division. Under league rules this means that his board and all those below him get scored to the other side. The fact that he was on board 1 explains the unexpected whitewash in our favour. The actual results of the games will count for grading.

Captain Bob and I are off to the funeral of Frank Hayes later today.

Later: Geoff Brown and Geoff Facer accompanied us to the funeral earlier today where the life of Frank Hayes was celebrated. It was gratifying for the club to be represented by four founder members. I have written a brief obituary of Frank in the new In Memoriam section of the website.

This sad event inevitably brought us all memories of Dave Hodgett's funeral in 1991 at the same place. Coincidentally, I have recently been given several photographs of Dave by Bill Pettigrew for The Sheffield Chess History Website. I am sure Bill won't mind if some of them find their way onto this website, within which I plan a Dave Hodgett page. As Dave's chess duties extended outside of the club he will also have a place on the history site.

I am very busy just now with preparing the material for the Winton Capital British Chess Solving Championship Final on 16th February, so I just haven't got time for posting analysed games on this site for the time being. Each game takes several hours to prepare and so they will have to wait until after the final. I will have time for posting results during the interim, so please don't stop advising me of them.

Our trip down to the Harlequin Pub last night led to a drawn match against Sheffield Nomads 'C' team. Details can be found on the Results page. I hope to post Geoff Brown's win over Kevin Marshall on board 1 shortly, along with Geoff's draw against Steve Bracey from weeks ago, which I had forgotten.

We seem to have shrugged off our losing streak at last but our smiles last night were tinged with sadness after news brought to us by Captain Bob of the death of long-time club member Frank Hayes. I hope to have more about Frank in a later post.

Some weeks ago Darnall & Handsworth crashed out of the Richardson Cup to Barnsley in Round 1. On 16th January we got a 3 - 3 result against Clay Cross in what was the quarter-final of the Plate, but we lost on board count because all our points were on the bottom four boards. This result will give us more time to concentrate on the league and we duly won the next match 3½ - 2½, at home against Aughton 'B' on 23rd January. Our top boards were victorious and they got good support from lower down the order. Captain Bob reports that we also had the largest crowd yet, comprising 3 people and 1 dog!

Details of both matches can be found on the Results page.

Rotherham Juniors have changed venues as it seems they can no longer use their old school venue on a Friday night. Because of this, last Friday night, Darnall & Handsworth made their way to a pub in Rotherham. I think this was called The Park House but I really wasn’t paying attention and I have probably got the name wrong. The playing room itself was large and comfortable and not too noisy, considering the loud music down below.

As for the match itself, the new year hadn’t brought about a change in our fortunes, and we duly lost 1½ - 4½. Michael Gallagher quickly scored the whole point and I contributed the half point quite a long while later. This was my first non-loss of the season, but shouldn’t be taken as any indication of an improvement in my play. I played as badly as normal, but I was lucky in that my opponent failed to take full advantage of my errors. My one remaining o-t-b chess ambition is to ensure that my grade stays higher than my age, but even that, this season, may not be achievable! As usual, Captain Bob’s game was the last to finish. He struggled on in a very difficult position while the rest of us were chatting to each other, probably at too high a volume. Sorry captain!

During the game it was good to see Paul Blackman coaching the juniors who weren’t playing in the match. He is good at this and clearly enjoys it. It was also clear that the coached juniors were enjoying it too. After the match finished I spoke to Paul for a short while about The Sheffield Chess History Website and I hope that some of Paul’s memories, and games, will find themselves online there in due course. In the last few days I have made several additions to that site, including some pictures of Bill Pettigrew and a report of a simultaneous display by Emanuel Lasker in Sheffield in 1908.

Happy new year, everybody!

I've just abstracted our latest result, a 1-5 loss to Barnsley 'B' on 19th December, from Bulletin No. 3. Next match is against Rotherham Juniors 'B' on Friday 11th January. I'm turning up for that one, so I'll write a match report for the site.