News archive – 2016-2019

2018-19 SEASON

Congatulations to Kate Walker for winning the under 120 section of the recent North Wales Congess and to Nick Holmes who came second in the same competition.

Congratulations also go to John Westhead for winning the Shropshire Minor Tournement with 5.5/7.

Club Championship Winter 2018/19
Congratulations to Nigel Ferrington with a 100% record to win our latest club Championship

Shrewsbury Town Championship 2019
Entries are now being received by Keith Tabner

Congratulations to Graham Shepherd for his performance in the recent Paignton Chess Congress

Graham shared first prize with one other player in the morning competition for players graded under 135, and shared second prize with three others in the afternoon competition for players graded under 150. Perhaps Graham would like to share his favourite game with us. 

Telepost Rapidplay 3 Sep.18

The tournament was organised and run by Steve Wilson. It was held over  5 rounds using the Swiss pairings system. Fourteen members took part and at the end of the nigh , Philip Zabrocki was the winner with 5 wins out of 5. John Westhead and Matthew Clark were joint 2nd both scoring 4 wins out of 5.  
Many thanks to Steve for organising such an enjoyable evening.

Pre season friendly Telepost v Shrewsbury on Monday 20 August 2018

Shrewsbury came to Telepost mustering three players and to make a seven board game Telepost loaned them four players for the night.A close match ensued with Telepost running out 4-3 winners. 

Bd1 Phil Zabrocki 1 v Mark Smith 0 
2 Matthew Clark 0.5 v Ivor Salter 0.5 
3 Steve Kempsell 0.5 v Tony Purser 0.5 
4 John Westhead 0 v Kate Walker 1 
5 Graham Shepherd 1 v Quentin Mills 0 
6 John Casewell 1 v Steve Wilson 0 
7 Shane Sweeney 0 v Dennis Bonner 1

2017-18 SEASON

Club Championship 2017/18

Congratulations to John Westhead winning the club championship 2017/8 with 4.5/5. An admiral performance considering he was outgraded by two of his opponents.

National Club Championships

The National Chess Club championships were held at the Park Hotel in Telford on Saturday/Sunday 7/8th April.  Our club had two 4 person teams. The A team were in the Major Section,the Rules stipulated that the average grade of the 4 people must be no more than 175. We also had a B team in the Minor Section, the average grading could be no more than 125.

Our B team won the Minor Section, so congratulations go to Graham Shepherd, Dennis Bonner, Steve Wilson and Shane Sweeney. This was especially well deserved as all of the other teams well outgraded our B team. Our A team also did well, achieving 2nd Position in the Major.  Congratulations go to Nigel Ferrington, Phil Zabrocki, Matthew Clark and John Bashall. Nigel with 3 out of 4 and Matthew with the same score were the highest scorers on boards 1 and 3 respectively.

It was a very good weekend for Shropshire as Telford won the Intermediate section.  We now have our first silverware of the Season. Matthew agreed to get the Cup and the Plate engraved with our teams and date, they will both be placed on the shelves in the Bar area for all to see.
Dennis Bonner 
11/4/18

Division 3; C versus D

The C team played our D team on Monday 26/2 which was their 3rd fixture against each other this season.  The honours turned out even at 2-2 with Nick Holmes beating John Casewell, Charles Micallef drawing with Kate Walker, Andy Lewis drew with Steve Wilson, and Dennis Bonner lost against Shane Sweeney.  This leaves the C team in 3rd place in the Division 3 followed by the D team in 4th position, with only 2 points separating the teams.

Simultaneous at Newport 

Good news from the recent Simutaneous display by Grandmaster Keith Arkell on 13th February.  There were 18 opponents from the various clubs in Shropshire and there was only 1 winner from all of these clubs……None other than our own Phil Zabroki.  Phil had the better position in the game and finally won the end game against Arkell, who has the reputation of being a fine endgame player. Congratulations to Phil from all of our club.

Telepost A 4 Wellington A 1 07/02/18 

Telepost A were happy to get back to winning ways last Wednesday. Nigel and Phil secured good wins over traditional rivals Toby Neal and Colin Roberts. John Bashall and John Westhead also achieved good wins on boards 4 and 5. Sadly, Matthew was unable to complete the clean sweep on board 3 after achieving a good position from the opening, but congratulations to James Kuczynski for getting the better of the time scramble and achieving checkmate with only 20 seconds on the clock.

Rapidplay debuts end the duck

Debut Rapidplay appearances of the season by Peter Crean and Kate Walker helped Telepost B break their Rapidplay Division 2 duck as Telepost Club hosted round four of the competition on February 5th. The win came in the final match of the evening, against Newport B. Peter, on fine form, had two wins and a draw on the night, and a win and a draw for Steve Wilson and two wins for Shane Sweeney made it easily our best showing of the season, against teams graded much higher. We remain bottom of the division but not quite as bottom as we were! 

C v.TelfordB

Our C team played Telford B at home on Moday 12/2/18. Telford are lying 2nd in the 3rd Division and are battling with Oswestry B for promotion to the 2nd Division.
Unfortunately Telford could not raise a full team and were forced to Default Board 4, which gave an immediate boost for our team. Nick Holmes continued the boost with a win against Steve Szwajkun. The match continued and Charles Micallef lost against his higher graded opponent, at 133,Richard Szwajkun . It was then left to Andy Lewis who was playing Roger Brown. Roger outfoxed Andy in the endgame with a result that the C team had a very creditable draw against Telford B. RESULT: Telepost C 2 Telford B 2

“C” team met Newport “C” at home on Monday 29/1/18. 

It turned out to be a tense battle but Nick Holmes beat his opponent Michael Moore in the first game to complete. Then Andy Lewis had a good draw against Malcolm Price as did Charles Micallef who drew with Paul Broderick. Quickly following those results Dennis Bonner beat Zack Maydew to complete a good win at 3-1 which puts the “C” team in 3rd position in the 3rd Division.

Newport A v Telepost A 18 /01/18

Telepost A lost 4-1 to Newport A last night. Nigel drew with Nick Rutter on board one in a battle of the recent county champions and John Westhead drew with Chris Paul on 4, but none of the rest of us had any success. Steve Kempsell played very well to push Nathaniel Paul hard, but Nat ground him down in the ending. Team was Nigel on 1, Matthew on 2, Steve on 3, John on 4 and Nick making his first team debut on 5. 
Matthew Clark


D v Telford B – Division3

Josh put up a great battle but lost to the very experienced Stefan Tennant. The other 3 games continued very tensely until Shane beat Roger Brown on time . This set the match at 1-1 with everything to play for. The 3rd game was very well won by Kate, who was playing her first game for the D Team . She played Richard Thompson,  who lost a long battle but fell to Kate’s well thought out strategy.  The last game was played out virtually to the Time Control and could have gone either way but the game was finally won by Andy Jones . Steve Wilson had a great battle against his higher graded opponent.  So the match finished at 2-2, an excellent performance for our D team.

Dennis Bonner 17/01/18

2016-17 SEASON

Shropshire Congress- 5th – 7th January 2018 
This year’s Congress was very successful with 145 entrants in all of the Sections.  Congratulations to Phil Zabroki who received the under 2000 Grading prize in the Open Section,with 2.5 points and Nigel Ferrington, also with 2.5 points who was joint top Shropshire player also in the Open. This was again a really tough section with GMs and IMs competing. 

In the Intermediate U 140 section congratulations to both John Westhead who had 2.5 and Kate Walker with 2 points.  In the Minor U 100 congratulations to Nick Holmes with 3.5 points and narrowly missed out on a prize coming in 4th position. Also congratulations to both Martin Ayres who, with 3 points, received the grading prize and Dennis Bonner who had 2 points.  The full amounts of Results can be found on the “ shropshirechesscongress.org.uk”.  Thank you to all of our members who supported this event and we hope in 2019,  at the same venue in Telford, many more of our members can enter. 
Dennis Bonner 10/1/18

Telepost win a trophy thriller
12/07/2017 Shropshire Star 

Telepost A have beaten Newport A in the final of the Shropshire chess Cox Trophy by the closest of margins, disappointing Newport’s hopes of doing a league and cup double.  The final, which was broadcast live on the internet thanks to the use of digital chess boards, ended in a 2-2 draw on the night. But using the board countback tiebreak rule, Telepost were declared winners. A top board win for Trevor Brotherton eventually proved decisive despite  a late win on time for Ian Jamieson, and Athar Ansari salvaging a 91 move draw even though a piece down for most of his game with David Hodge. 

In the Minor knockout final pitting Telford A against Telepost B, which was played simultaneously, Richard Thompson’s win gave Telford the early lead. Draws on boards two and four left the match depending on the top board where, with only four seconds left on his clock, Mark Keady finally resigned to Keith Tabner. 
Amazingly this gave another 2-2 match result, and again Telepost emerged victorious through the board countback rule, in which the result of the bottom board is scrubbed out, repeatedly if necessary, until a decisive result is arrived at.

Shrewsbury-based Telepost had been underdogs in both matches, being outgraded on seven of the eight boards. 

Detailed results were – Cox Trophy, Newport A 2, Telepost A 2: Nathanael Paul 0, Trevor Brotherton 1; Chris Lewis 0.5, John Bashall 0.5; Ian Jamieson 1, Matthew Clark 0; Athar Ansari 0.5, David Hodge 0.5. 

Minor Knockout, Telford A 2, Telepost B 2 – Mark Keady 0, Keith Tabner 1; Richard Szwajkun 0.5, Steve Kempsell 0.5; Richard Thompson 1, Peter Crean 0; Stefan Tennant 0.5, John Westhead 0.5. 

Scroll to Top