Worcestershire Chess Association

22 Aug. Minor Counties national final. Worcestershire won and the outstanding performance was by Kevin Hurney achieving a draw against IM Jack Rudd.

8 Aug. Minor Counties national semi-final. Worcestershire were outgraded and outplayed on the top boards, but with a much longer tail dominated the lower boards to achieve victory and a place in the final.

24 Jun - 1 Aug. Open Division 2B. Worcestershire played in Open Division 2B and had four matches. The team won two and lost two finishing in third place and earning progression to the national semi-final for the Minor Counties championship. As Worcestershire players became more familiar with online play, results improved with the last match yielding a convincing victory over Hampshire.

ECF Counties online competition. The online competition was initiated by the ECF in collaboration with chess.com in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. There was a preliminary match so that players and team captains could check that their online systems would perform satisfactorily. Worcestershire accepted an invitation from the ECF to participate on 1 June 2020 and the preliminary match was played 6 June. The players’ results were submitted for online grading, but the match result was not used for the competition itself being in the nature of a trial so that players and captains could become familiar with playing online using the chess.com platform. Time control was 60 minutes plus 15 seconds increment from move 1.