The Executive Committee is reviewing the structure of management of our tournaments.    As the membership year has already started, we are deferring further membership renewals or acceptance of new members until this exercise has been completed.

We will be writing to members shortly to explain the proposed approach.   This will include all members in 2022/23 who have not renewed for 2023/24.

Following discussions with the ICCF, we are considering the future operation of our tournaments.  Further information will be provided in due course, but in the meantime and pending approval by the ICCF, we will not be accepting further entries for our events.

Congratulations are due to our President, Stan Grayland, for winning BCCA Candidates Section B, being unbeaten with 9 1/2 points out of 12.

For more details, see the cross table:  BCCA Candidates 2022/23 .

After more than a decade running the BCCA’s finances, Allan Gardner has decided that the time is right to step down as our Treasurer.

We would like to thank Allan for his dedication to ensuring that the BCCA is in robust financial health, despite maintaining our low subscriptions.

We are now looking for a volunteer to step into Allan’s shoes.   If you would be interested in being considered for this position (which also means sitting on our Executive Committee), please contact either Stephen Woodhouse (General Secretary: stephenwoodhousechess@outlook.com ) or Stan Grayland (President: sgrayland@gmail.com) prior to 7^th July.

We are sorry to announce that our stationery officer, Graham Williams, has died.   Graham had been ill some time, but responding to treatment, before contracting an infection.

He had worked tirelessly for the BCCA for many years managing our stationery supplies.   We would like to express our gratitude to Graham and give our condolences to his family.

The future of the BCCA relies on encouraging new members to join.   Once someone becomes a member, we hope that the excellent value for money will become evident and the new joiner will stay and become a long term member.

Accordingly, we do not wish new joiners to be discouraged from joining at any time in the year due to the seasonal timetable resulting in them not obtaining full value for their subscription in the first year.   The Executive Committee has therefore decided that for a new joiner (i.e. someone who has not previously been at any time) joining on or after 1^st March in any year, their initial subscription will pay for membership until 31^st August in the following calendar year, ensuring that the new joiner obtains at least one full year’s value for their initial membership.

All members should either have received or will receive shortly a note relating to postal play.

For many years, webserver play has predominated.   This is for good reason as:

1. Webserver is immensely quicker than postal. There is an inherent delay in domestic postal play of around a week for each complete move.   For a 30 move game, that equates to an additional seven months of play simply to transmit moves.

2. This is exacerbated for international play. Depending on the countries involved, postal play can take years longer than playing through the webserver.

3. Further, using the postal system is significantly more expensive than webserver. There are charges imposed by the ICCF for running webserver events, but these are insignificant when compared with the cost of postage, particularly for international games.

4. These problems are magnified by the uncertainty of postal communication and the impact of delays caused by industrial action and other logistical difficulties.

5. In addition to the problems with playing, postal play is increasingly difficult and time consuming to manage and involves substantially more work than a webserver event, in part due to resolving the problems arising from playing through the post rather than online.

6. In turn, this is reflected in there being a diminishing number of members who are qualified to organise or direct postal events.

For these reasons, the Executive Committee has decided that we will cease to sponsor postal play with effect from the beginning of the next membership year, i.e. 1st September 2023.

Further details are contained in the note to members.

The BCCA is seeking to encourage more team play to give members the opportunity to play more events with a greater variety of opponents.

With that in mind, we are entering three teams in the SCCA League for the first time, being:

BCCA Tigers

BCCA Panthers

BCCA Leopards

With the return of ICCF ratings for our Medal Tournaments starting in March 2023, we are pleased to see an encouraging number of entries.

All the entries as at 29th December are shown on the dedicated tournament page and can be seen by clicking here: Medal Entries 2023 .

We are delighted to announce that entries are now being taken for the BCCA Medal Tournaments.

Entrants can register for either the Postal or Webserver competition, or both!

The registration fee is £3.00 for Webserver and £2.00 for Postal and remains very good value with no price increase.

All members should have received an entry form either by email or letter. This can be returned to Keith Kitson either with a cheque for the fee made payable to BCCA or remittance can be made on the website via PayPal.   Alternatively, for those who prefer, we can supply the sort code and account number for an internet transfer. Please contact Keith Kitson in the first instance.

Keith’s postal address is:

39 Carters Close

Stevenage

Herts SG2 9QA

Entries will be accepted up to the closing date of Saturday the 18th February 2023.

We expect the competition to commence on or shortly after the 1st March 2023.

This competition has been very popular amongst the membership and we expect a good entry from members for the 2023 competition.