BCCA has started two new friendly matches against Social CCA. We have a 15 board webserver match here and a 7 board postal match here  Thank you to all the players who agreed to take part & good luck in your games.

For those players who agreed to play for a BCCA team in the Scottish webserver team tournament, we are hoping this competition will get underway shortly. BCCA will be entering eight teams (32 players).

We apologise to all members for the non-receipt of the Autumn 2018 magazine and the 2018 Yearbook. Our Editor (Russell Sherwood) has resigned but thought he could still produce the magazine & Yearbook. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to do that.
So the General Secretary (Neil Limbert) will therefore now work to produce a Yearbook as quickly as possible. The Yearbook will contain the Medal tournament entry forms which means that those tournaments have been put back a little this year.

I am organising the BCCA teams for the 2019 Scottish WS Team tournament and would like interested members to come forward if they wish to play? There are 4 players in each team and each player can expect to play approximately 6 games. In the 2018 season, we entered 6 BCCA teams (24 players) and the final positions of those teams can be seen here:-
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=72939
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=72944
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=72949

I would like to enter at least six teams again, but that depends on you! All rating strengths can hopefully be accommodated from 2400 all the way down. There is no Entry fee! The fees will be paid by BCCA as part of our continuing commitment to provide good value for money to our members.

If you wish to play, please contact Neil Limbert within the next 10 days. I look forward to hearing from you. Please note that, if the number of players interested is not in a multiple of 4,  I may have to leave some players out. I will see how it goes.

May I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Best wishes,
Neil Limbert
BCCA Match Captain

The BCCA wishes all members a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!!

Very sad news. Long-standing BCCA member Eoin Campbell died on November 27, 2018 at the age of 64. Eoin enjoyed a high game load, played his moves quickly, never defaulted, and was always happy to play for BCCA teams. A sad loss to the Association. Our sympathy goes to his family & friends.

The 2018 webserver Bronze medal tournament has just finished & the final crosstable can be viewed on the server here Congratulations to to Stephen Woodhouse who wins the tournament with a fantastic score of 9/10 – well played Stephen! He wins an engraved Bronze Medal & is awarded 5 BCCA Candidate Master points. Also scoring 9 points, but finishing 2nd on tie-break is Pablo Moujan who is awarded 3 BCCA Candidate Master points.

The 5 points awarded to Stephen take his total of Candidate Master points over the 20 point barrier, so Stephen is also awarded the BCCA Candidate Master Title! Double celebrations.

Just as last season, BCCA will be entering 5 teams into the webserver BCCL (British CC League) and 2 teams into the postal BCCL. There are 8 players per webserver team (40 players in total) & 6 players per postal team (12 players in total). These players have all been taken from the BCCA match squad and the players who ticked the appropriate boxes on their membership renewal forms.

We hope to get the postal league up & running by the end of this month.

There will be a delay in the start of the webserver league due to a current technical problem on the ICCF server. ICCF are working to resolve this in December & we will start the league as soon in early January if we can.

The latest match for our Postal players has just got underway with a match v Germany over 9 Boards. The full crosstable & teams can be seen here

This is part of BCCA’s continuing commitment to provide postal play for those members who still wish to play in this traditional way. Good luck to our team!

The BCCA Championship Final for 2017/8 has now finished & the full crosstable and games can be seen here . Congratulations to Praveen Rallabandi who is the new BCCA Champion! Well played Praveen! He wins £200 & is awarded 12 BCCA Master points taking his total to 15. In 2nd place was Yosua Sitorus who earns £100 & 8 BCCA Master points taking his total to 14. In 3rd place is BCCA Master John Brasier who earns £50.

The Championship, Candidates & Reserves for the new season will be starting shortly.

The 2017/18 BCCA Postal Championship Final has finished in a tie for the 1st place. The joint Champions are BCCA Masters Keith McLaughlin & Les Ellis – well played to both! They share the prize money & take home £30.00 each. The final crosstable & all the games can be viewed here