The Winning Team, Crusaders Chess Clun
Lancashire Club Champions 2024 - Crusaders Blackburn.

The Lancashire Clubs Championship took place on Sunday 1st September, at the Crusaders Chess Club in Blackburn. The tournament was split into two sections, an OPEN section and an U1650 section (based on team aggregate score).

Format of the tournament was a 4 round rapidplay tournament, with players paired as an individual swiss and scores counting for the team score. To ensure a level of fairness, the organisers set up an avoid list to prevent players from the same team from facing each other.

There was prize money available for teams in each section, donated by the Lancashire Chess Association, and with no entry fee payable, it was a win-win for the players who gave up their Sunday to come along and try to win the coveted Championship Trophy for their club.

We hadn’t run the championship for quite some time, so it was nice to get it up and running again. It was great to see so many clubs turn up for an event that we only put together a month ago. Testament to the history of the championship, the winner of the inaugural championship was Manchester Chess Club in 1977, followed up by Atticus Chess Club in Liverpool, who won in 1978 and 1979.

Fitting, therefore, that the latest championship winners were the host club Crusaders Blackburn, who won with an impressive 13.5 / 16 score, winning the trophy for the first time. Burnley closely followed them in 2nd place, and Lytham in 3rd place. Alas, the winners appear to be a player short. Cliff was not to be found for the photograph! Winning team in the photo, left to right, are Phil Taylor, John Whitfield and Kailash Narendran.

TeamScoreSectionPlace
Crusaders-113.5OPEN1st
Burnley-111.5OPEN2nd
Lytham-110.5OPEN3rd
Lancaster-110OPEN
Clitheroe-19OPEN
OPEN Section

The U1650 section was a close affair, due to the nature of the Swiss system, a lot of these players were going to be paired with players playing for the OPEN section. In the end, Preston came out 1st in the U1650 section with a score of 8 / 16. Burnley rounded off a good day with their 2nd team coming 2nd, and Lancaster-2 came 3rd.

Team ScoreSectionPlace
Preston-18U16501st
Burnley-25.5U16502nd
Lancaster-25U16503rd
Clitheroe-24.5U1650
Crusaders-24.5U1650
All-Comers4U1650
U1650 Section

We hope this event will once again become a regular event at the start of each season, and we eagerly await next year to see who will be crowned champions.

Thanks to Gordon Glover and the staff at the St Pauls Working Mens Club & Institute for an excellent venue and hospitality.