After last season's solitary two draws from six matches last season, it was encouraging to record a win from the first match of our 2015/16 season in the East Anglian Chess Union County Championships.

Agenda, Minutes and officers reports of the last AGM and the last 2 HCA Executive Meetings.

Our second match proved too much for your captain. To avoid being squashed I gave up a knight for 2 central pawns on f4 and e5, and then spent the rest of the game trying to play positional chess. With the score at 7-8 I offered my opponent a draw having won a third pawn and with a protected pawn on the 6th - sorry all. I guess I needed a deputy captain to ask the score one more time.

The first match of the U140 resulted in a successful outcome. 2 weeks before the match I had a list of 8 players and a longer list of players that couldn't make it for one reason or another. With the help of Alan Brewis and Wali I was able to field a full team of 16 - ironically the opposition had a late withdrawal so we started the match 1 up. This became 3-1 as Brian Kirby won on his U140 debut and Alan Gore also added a good victory.

Our 2 EACU teams have a new set of fixtures. The U160s will play Cambs and Suffolk on 6th Dec, Suffolk and Norfolk on Jan 31st 2016 and finish against Norfolk and Cambs on 21st Feb.

The Open team wil play in a 5-team league with 4 fixture dates - Nov29th against Suffolk and Norfolk, Feb 7th against Beds and Suffolk, Feb 28th against Cambs and Beds and finish on 13th March against Norfolk and Cambs

The provisional fixture lists for our U120 and U140 teams were announced today.

Peter Baker's U120 team begin the defence of their dual titles at home to Essex on October 3rd, followed by trips to Middlesex on 14th November and Kent on 19th March 2016. In between the road-trips is a home match with Surrey on January 16th.

At the EACU AGM on 11th July it was agreed that the EACU county matches in which our Open and U160 teams compete, would adopt Fischer time controls incorporating an increment of 15 seconds per move, where digital clocks were available for all boards.

The new Herts Chess Association website has been launched today, Friday 17th July 2015.