Essex Championships Festival 2025-26

Supported by Giant Chess

These events were held on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 April 2026

at Wanstead House Community Association, E11 2NT

The Essex Chess Association presented a mini–Easter Festival to hold its individual Championships. In recent years the Essex Championships have been awarded for performances in the Southend Easter Congress, which unfortunately could not be held this year. The Southend Congress was independently run by Giant Chess and supported by the ECA. The ECA appreciates the reciprocal financial support by Giant Chess for our mini-Festival.

These were Essex Closed events for which ECF Bronze membership was sufficient.

Organiser: Mark Murrell.

Rating limits: were the ECF March 2026 Standard Official Original List (blue)

The full details and regulations applying to these events are retained separately on the original version of this page. You can access that page from the Activities menu in the main navigation bar above, or from this link: Festival flyer and return here via the reciprocal link in the other page.

EVENTS

The two sets of links given here: the Vega tournament pages were used for pairings and results and are the ECA’s own record of these events. The ECF LMS is mainly the instrument for reporting results for rating purposes.

• Essex Championship – Vega tournament pages
• Essex Minor Championship (U1900) – Vega tournament pages
• U1600 Competition – Vega tournament pages

And on ECF LMS Essex Championship | Essex Minor Championship | U1600 competition

Each event was a 5 round Swiss paired and ECF standard rated competition played at G90+10 over two days.  A Round 3 bye could be requested before the start of play for Round 2.

Schedule  

Friday      3 April: R1 9:50am; R2 2:00pm; R3 6:10pm
Saturday  4 April: R4 9:50am; R5 2:00pm

Venue

The venue was HQ Wanstead House, Wanstead House Community Association, 21 The Green, Wanstead, London. E11 2NT.

Champions

You can view the list of previous Essex Champions here.

Sections within this page: Prize List | Report | Games | Gallery

Prizes

Report

Radu and Ryan Champions

The two Championship sections each had an extraordinary conclusion which saw the lead switch hands twice in each on the last day, though this was not so damaging in the Minor.

In the Essex Championship section, defending Champion, FM Bob Eames, led after Saturday’s three rounds with 3/3. Russell White was his nearest challenger on 2½/3. They were paired together in Round 4 on Saturday morning and Russell stunned Bob with a brilliant attack, first a passive sacrifice of a rook, then offering a bishop, all to remove defenders for a mating combination. Bob managed to stave off the initial attack, but Russell had the wherewithal to win with a resulting passed pawn and took over the lead on 3½/4. Meanwhile, Radu Bara joined Bob in second spot on 3/4 with a win over John Moore. But the fireworks were not over. In the last round, new leader Russell was taken aback when Radu beat him and, when John Cawdery completed Bob’s misery by inflicting on him his second defeat, Radu had snatched the Championship outright. Radu said he was lucky, but he made his own luck, recovering from a second round loss to Ralys Vincas to win the rest of his games; but he still needed other results to go his way.

Congratulations to Radu Bara on his first success as Essex Champion! John Cawdery, with his game-changing win in the last round, advanced into second place with Russell, both on 3½/5; Bob Eames 3/5. All the Championship games are given in the gameboard below.

Similar juggling of places over the last two rounds occurred in the Essex Minor Championship (U1900), though this was a much tighter contest so the changes had a less drastic effect. After three rounds three players shared the lead on 2½: Ryan Colclough, Venkatesh Subramanian and Joshua Davis. In Round 4, Ryan defeated Joshua to take the sole lead, while Venkatesh shared the point with Peter Laundy. Scores after 4 Rounds: Ryan 3½, Venkatesh 3.

In the last round, Ryan stumbled to defeat against George Scola, so finished on 3½/5. But Venkatesh also lost, to Peter Alldridge, and Joshua was held to a draw by Mary Cawdery. The finishing scores show the top seven players within half a point of each other! There was a triple tie on 3½/5 between Ryan, Peter Alldridge and George Scola, followed by a quadruple tie on 3/5 between Mary, Joshua and Andrew Willoughby. Ryan regains the Minor Championship, which he last held in 2024, on tie-break of Sum of Progressive Scores. Congratulations Ryan!

In the U1600 competition, more hi-jinks as leader after three, Arjun Kumaran (3/3), lost in Round 4, to Thomas Farmer, who, in contrast to the other two sections completed a consistent tournament: having taken a half point bye in R3, he won all of the four games he played, to finish in 1st place with 4½/5. Leading final positions: 1st Thomas Farmer 4½/5; 2nd Arjun Kumaran 4; =3rd Andrew Daniel, Hantin Wang, Alistair Baillie, 3½. Congratulations Tom!

“Three cracking tournaments!” was organiser Mark Murrell’s comment, after a very successful, weekend. Five games in two days is not just a tough schedule for the players. Congratulations to organiser Mark Murrell for his hard work in bringing off three such exciting events and thanks to Arbiter James Robinson. Also, thanks to Ben Harte and Robin Slade who also gave up their time to support the junior contingent.

Games

All 30 games in the Championship are included.

Onscreen-games User Guide

Gallery

Thanks to Mark for supplying pictures for a visual record of this momentous event. Click on right or left arrows to move through the slidewhow.