Vinuda Gunatilake and Sidanth Pai  brought home big bacon from the British Championships in Liverpool.

Sidanth scored 5/7 ( unbeaten) in the u12 to finish 3= , 1/2 point off the winner. Excellent.

Playing in the Major Open , Vinuda, after a dispiriting 0/2 start racked up 6 points in the last 7  rounds, to finish 10= and gain 76+ rating points. We believe this may qualify Vinuda for the British Championship itself in 2026! Three of his victories came against players ranked over 2000 and 2100.  

Congratulations to both.

I am delighted to announce that the overall winner of this year’s Box Tournament is Graham Ellis with an outstanding overall score of 377.37 points.  Graham started the tournament in league 4 and finished the season second in league 2, so an amazing year of progress and a very well deserved winner.  Congratulations Graham!

Second place went to Jamie Wilson with an excellent score of 357.37 pts and Remel Ramirez was third with 343.37 points. Well done to both of you.

Other notable call outs are to Remel Ramirez and Penny Cullum for coming first and second respectively in the final round of the competition.

Thanks to everyone for their efforts to get games played by the various deadlines.  In total we managed to get 69 games played under competitive match conditions, with only 7 draws. 

REMINDER – the club AGM will be held on August 11 at 7:30.

The League AGM will be held on 18 August at 7:15, also at Fishbourne.

Each year the John Grant Trophy is won by the individual with the highest % score in any PDCL division and a minimum of 5 games. Mike Spence has won this prestigious trophy this year, clinching it in the last match of the season to achieve a 100% score in division 2.

Many congratulations Mike, very well done!

Chichester A defeated Cosham 4 – 1 in the Cole Cup final on 26 May. This is only the second time recently that we have won the Cole Cup, the last time being in 2019 also winning against Cosham!

A very tough draw saw us knock out a very strong Chandlers Ford away before prevailing against favourites Fareham in the semi-final to set up the match against Cosham.

On the night we were just too strong with wins from Vinuda, Jaimie, Bill and Remel seeing us home.

Well done to captain Jaimie Wilson and all 7 players who contributed through the season.

The Portsmouth Individual Championship was played as a rapidplay at Emsworth Chess Club on Sunday 11 May. Several of our members entered, with notable successes for Remel Ramirez taking 2nd prize and Mike Spence the U1700 prize. Well done!

Congratulations to Vinuda Gunatilake on his 100% score clean sweep. An achievement not made within memory and an outstanding performance in a strong tournament field. En route to victory, Vinuda met, in round order,  past champion Ian Richardson, Tom Howeson, Paul White, defending champion Andrew McDougall, fellow rising star Laurence Ellett and 3 times champion Jaimie Wilson. A challenging draw for sure and to win them all was a noteworthy achievement that will live long in the memory. Well done.

Runner up was Andrew McDougall with 5/6 losing only the single game to Vinuda.

Completing the podium, we have a crush for 3^rd place with 4½/6 . Jaimie Wilson drew with Laurence Ellett in round 2 and each lost only a single game to Vinuda. An excellent tournament for these two. Steve Smith also scored 4½/6.

Congratulations to our Board 1 Jaimie Wilson on his second place in a field of 50 at the Fareham Rapidplay on 19 April.

All games need to be played by Monday 30th June at the latest.

A reminder that going forward all results from the box league games should now be forwarded to this email address chichesterchess.box@gmail.com.  Please continue to copy Jamie Wilson in for grading purposes.

Well done to Graham Ellis who won the second round of the competition with an impressive 4 wins out of 4 games and now also leads the overall competition with 269.74 pts.   He is closely followed by Jamie Wilson on 248.39pts and Rahul Leo Thomas on 225.93 pts.