Posted on behalf of John Montgomery (Ayrshire CA)

George Harkins of Irvine Chess Club passed away suddenly at home on 6th July 2015, George was aged 45 years and the eldest son of the late Thomas and Janet Harkins and beloved brother of Robert.
George had played for Irvine Chess Club for over thirty years but had cut back in recent years due to ill health.

Posted on behalf of John Montgomery (Ayrshire CA)

Carol Wright (Ayr Chess Club) passed away at the end of May earlier this summer
Carol was the heart of Ayr Chess Club for the best part of 50 years and at the heart of Ayrshire Chess for many of those. His enthusiasm for the game never waned. He truly believed there is a 'perfect game' to be played and would have liked to be there when it happens.

His interests extended well beyond chess and included astronomy and photography being a member of local clubs. He was very creative and a talented craftsman who could deftly produce both artistic wooden sculptures and stunning photographic presentations. He was active in his Church and the service on Friday morning will probably be a sell-out.

He will be sadly missed yet we should really focus on remembering and celebrating his life. We believe that a number of chess players from Ayrshire would like to pay their respects to Carol – and that is the correct phrase – respect – he was respected by many – a voice of reason and conciliation as well as a bit of fun

According to the link on the front page, the junior international director post is vacant and there are no candidates? This means:

a) I have misinterpreted the document
b) We made it through the wormhole and are in a parallel universe

Thoughts?

Paisley player Richard Cochrane will be conducting a chess lecture on Wednesday 2nd of September at 7.30pm. Richard's previous talk on games taken from the classic book Logical Chess was well received and these evenings are helpful to any player serious about improving their chess.

The theme this time will be chess games that were used in famous Hollywood films.

Anderssen- Kieseritsky, which appeared in Blade Runner

Spassky-Bronstein, which appeared in From Russia With Love

Entry to this event is free for all Chess Scotland members. The talk should finish around 9.30pm.

The talk will take place in Paisley Chess Club which is at Ralston Bowling Club, Allanton Avenue, Paisley

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It's approaching the AGM and we have not heard from our two candidates for President and what they intend to do. Both Ian and Jim are frequent posters on here and hopefully they don't mind answering some questions.

This will allow us to decide on the best candidate and hopefully the vote will be based on policies and not on someone turning up with 60 proxies again after trawling through their list of contacts to harvest votes for their mate.

I'm sure others will have their own questions and may wish to add them to the thread.

1. What do you plan to do to promote junior chess further?
2. What are your plans for improving CS communication?
3. What steps would you take to try and heal some of the rifts within chess in Scotland that have occurred over the past few years?
4. What other improvements would you like to make to CS?

I would like to see Chess Scotland making some sort of commitment to chess in schools this year. I have been running a chess club in my own school for over five years now and it is the best attended after school club in the school, believe it or not

My personal experience is that setting up a chess club in a school is very straight forward and does not cost a great deal. Chess Scotland used to provide materials to support people in setting up school chess clubs – these materials were accessed through the CS website. However, this material has not been available for a few years now which is very disappointing. I would like to see this material being available again.

I have been told that that Chess Scotland has developed a training course for running a chess club in schools which was delivered to schools/teachers in the past. This was discussed at a recent Council meeting. It would be great if this could be rolled out again as I am sure there are many schools/teachers out there who would welcome it.

I believe that if more Primary and Secondary schools ran school chess clubs this could result in more young people joining adult chess clubs after leaving school as their interest in chess has been sparked. Many of our own chess club members come from one of our feeder Primary schools which currently runs a chess club.

Quality Chess will probably make an announcement here at some point, but I spotted this yesterday...

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Good luck to Callum Smith at Gibraltar. Hope you have a great time!

One of my opponents in last year's Commonwealth Championship, Aravindh Chithambaram, has had a lot of publicity in the last few years - and rightly so! He is an extremely talented boy, already a GM at 15, who I reckon will become one of the world's top players in due course.

A Chessbase article from yesterday shows his talent very clearly - he defeated a 2349-rated FM after moving his rook on move 2!! (Against me he played 1.Nc3!)

[pgn]1. Nf3 Nf6 2. Rg1[/pgn]

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Quiz question: Which titled Scottish player has also moved his rook on move 2, and what were the moves??

Never played in this, know nothing about it really, but might consider playing my (2) daughters (and possibly myself with them) if that's possible - anyone more knowledgeable/experienced who might be interested please just get in touch directly: 0787-282-2760