Musketeers Juniors Chess Club

01/09/2021

Hello everyone, hope you all had a great summer!

Quick update on Musketeers. Our hope was that we would be able to resume club sessions at the start of the September academic year, but it doesn't seem like this is going to be possible immediately.

Mr Burrows has sadly been rather ill over the last few weeks (not COVID related) and he is therefore unfortunately not able to start back up with Musketeers straight away. I'm sure you will all join us in wishing him a speedy recovery!

We also need to contact Berkhampstead once their term resumes to see if they are happy for us to start using their facilities again each week.

Having 20-30 children and their parents from various schools all gathered together indoors for a couple of hours still feels like quite a risky thing to do when COVID case numbers are so high - we don't want to become a 'superspreader event'! - so we are minded to see how things pan out once schools go back before we make any decisions.

22/02/2021

Hello all!

With the government target to lift all lockdown restrictions by June and the aim to complete the vaccination program by July we think a sensible course of action for Musketeers is to plan to resume in September at the start of the next academic term.

Unless things go wrong again, we therefore hope to see you all again after the summer holidays!

In the meantime, online chess continues in its many forms - our favorite is Lichess - and we'd also draw you attention to the Chess Champions Tour. For the first time the chess world championships are being held entirely online over a series of events over the year; these are being streamed live with commentary from chess grand and international masters. The games are Blitz which means they have short time limits which makes for fast moving and exciting chess! We watched the last event where the American Wesley So defeated the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen in the final

The details for the championships are here https://championschesstour.com/
You just need to provide your email address and you then get sent a link each day on for the Twitch stream to watch the commentary and the games. This is nothing to pay, it's free for this.

The next round starts 13th March

That's all for now. Stay safe everyone!

9 days of world class chess. 16 top players. The Meltwater Champions Chess tour is a series of 10 tournaments throughout 2021 deciding who is the best online chess player in the world.

11/11/2020

We hope you and your families are safe and well in Lockdown2!

Just a quick update from us

Clearly we are not in a position to resume Musketeers anytime soon with the current restrictions in place, but the recent positive vaccine news may mean we can be cautiously optimistic that we can now see a pathway to where chess and other after school clubs can start back up again in 2021

Our triggers for resuming Musketeers will be:

1) Government restrictions that will allow 20-30 children from different schools plus adults to congregate indoors

2) Berkhampstead School being willing for us to use their premises and facilities

3) Mr Burrows being happy to continue (perhaps after receiving a vaccine)

Let's hope that all of these things come to fruition in the first half of next year!

02/09/2020

Hello everyone!

We hope that you all had a good summer and that you are keeping safe and well

Sadly it looks like we will be unable to resume Musketeers anytime soon.

Berkhamstead School - like many local schools - are adopting new practices in to allow them to re-open as safely as possible which includes class/year group bubbles, thorough and frequent cleaning, limiting the number of adults allowed to come onsite and curtailing extra-curricular clubs and activities

The nature of Musketeers makes this a challenge since we typically have 20-30 children of different ages and from different schools - plus their parents/guardians - congregating inside in two small halls for 2 hours or so

We have contacted Berkhampstead to inquire if we are able to continue Musketeers in some form and they have confirmed our expectations that we will be unable to resume before October Half Term at the earliest. Realistically we don't expect much to change before January

Our venerable chess teacher, Mr Burrows, has moreover made the decision to continue shielding for the time being so is also not available

We are thus left without a venue or a teacher which clearly means we cannot continue with Musketeers at present

This is disappointing for all concerned especially for our son Daniel who really misses his chess club!

Daniel has however kept himself occupied on Lichess and the Delancey UK Chess Challenges - playing chess online is certainly a different experience but he has enjoyed it and got a lot out of it so we would recommend it to anyone that is interested (especially as face-to-face chess is proving so difficult at the moment!)

The UKCC have actually launched an online chess club. We are not affiliated with them in any way but you may be interested to look at what they offer - https://www.delanceyukschoolschesschallenge.com/autumn-2020-club/

We will keep you updated on any further developments!

Introducing: Online Autumn Chess Clubs From Autumn 2020 the UK Chess Challenge are launching CLUB – a termly membership where players get access to weekly online competitions and lessons which are banded into five ability levels. There are four membership types so you can choose the features and b...

20/05/2020

Hello Musketeers!

Please see below an exciting opportunity to take part in a summer of online chess tournaments and congresses this year!

"The UK Chess Challenge will be taking part entirely online in 2020 – on lichess.org. We felt this was the best way to give everyone involved certainty on the tournament structure and dates.

We are very excited about this new challenge and hoping to make it as enjoyable and rewarding as possible for the children. Throughout the summer there will be a ‘Festival of Chess’ to choose from. As well as our old favourites (Megafinals, Gigafinals and Terafinal) we are also running a Blitz Championship, “Chess 960” Championship and a few others.

An online environment provides some great opportunities to learn and improve at the game and so we are also running a number of training and coaching events throughout the summer for those keen to improve as well as play. Some of the nation’s finest coaches as well as past champions (including myself!) will be involved in simultaneous displays, “Beat the Coach” challenges and more.

Full details and entry form now available on the website.
https://www.delanceyukschoolschesschallenge.com/online-megafinals-2020/

Kind regards

Sarah Longson
Director – UK Chess Challenge"

06/04/2020

Came across this amazing chess puzzle!

White to play and win! Read the entire story on this event here https://en.chessbase.com/post/solution-to-a-truly-remarkable-study Hope you enjoyed it. You a...

21/03/2020

*** Musketeers is currently suspended until further notice ***

Stay safe everyone

16/03/2020

*** Musketeers Coronavirus update ***

Today the government's official advice is that we should all now try to avoid non-essential social contact to try to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus and we are being told to avoid venues such as clubs, pubs, theatres and cinemas.

We've already heard that the English FA has now suspended all grassroots football and we suspect that over the coming days all out-of-school clubs and events will similarly be cancelled or postponed.

Our plan was to see how the early part of this week panned out before making a decision on whether to go ahead with Musketeers on Friday, but we've been forced to make this early for the practical reason that we have a large Tesco order of 24 Easter eggs, 12 chocolate bunnies, 36 creme eggs and 42 boxes of mini-eggs for the end of term prizegiving and we only have until midnight today to cancel this order if we need to!

So our judgement call at this point is that we are sadly going to suspend Musketeers for the foreseeable future.

We only had two sessions left before Easter. When we are able to resume, we will have a first session back to complete this term's Ladder and Swiss Tournament followed by a belated prize giving and then the second session back will start the new term (whenever that happens to be!)

Look forward to seeing you all when we are able to recommence and in the meantime we wish you all the best

13/03/2020

A decent turnout given current events and it being Race Week!

Next session planned for Fri 20th March which will be the penultimate session of the term

Should this plan change before then we will
communicate that on Facebook, the website and via email as soon as we can

12/03/2020

*** Coronavirus ***

Like everyone, we are following the rapidly developing situation with Coronavirus very closely.

We are assessing what is best for us to do with Musketeers on a Friday on a daily basis following the guidance from the government and the NHS. Our chief concern is the well-being of the children, but we are also mindful of our chess teacher Mr Burrows who is in the most at-risk group

As present, we are still intending to hold Musketeers this Friday 13th March for any who wish to attend as it does not seem warranted to cancel just yet (schools are remaining open, the Cheltenham Festival went ahead and other clubs we are aware of are also still going ahead).

Mr Burrows is also very keen that we carry on!

We would encourage you to remind your children to thoroughly wash their hands after going to the toilet when they are at Musketeers, bring any hand gels or sanitizers that they may have, and please don't suck on the chess pieces or put them in their mouths as we see from time to time! We will aim to reinforce this message on Friday evening ourselves

We had two more sessions planned before the Easter break on Fri 20th March and Fri 27th March. These will still go ahead unless the situation or advice changes between now and then. If the schools do close as they have in Ireland, then we will no longer have access to Berkhamstead and at that point Musketeers would also be suspended

06/03/2020

A very busy Muskeeters - 32 children in attendance!

A very warm welcome to new members Ben, Jonah and Seymour!