Losing IM Gavin Wall last summer was an enormous blow to Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club in so many ways.

Gavin was our long-standing London League captain and top board in our Thames Valley League team, playing an integral part in the club as both a player and an organiser. and a cheerful, sociable and friendly presence at all our events.

He had also been, for many years, a vital part of Richmond Junior Chess Club. He was one of the club’s very early members back in 1975, and later returned to help at the club during the 1990s and early 2000s, running our morning group for primary school age children with me as well as doing a lot of higher level coaching and playing very many simuls.

Here he is last June, giving a simul at our twinning event with Fontainebleau.

We now have a trophy in his name which, with the blessing of his family, will be competed for in an annual challenge match between Richmond Junior Chess Club and Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club.

The inaugural match will take place at Orleans Park School, Richmond Road, Twickenham (10 minutes walk from our new venue at Cambridge Park Bowls Club) on Saturday 20 June, from 13:00 to 17:30. Two teams of eight players, rated from 1100 to 1700 will play two rounds of FIDE and ECF rated Standard Play, with a time control of 50 minutes per player plus 10 seconds per move. Before the first round the two teams will exchange team lists and the captains will toss for colour. The winning team captain will decide which colour his or her team will play with in the first round. In the second round, the teams will play with reversed colours, and the visiting team (RTCC) will swap players pairwise, so that their board 1 will play on board 2, their board 2 on board 1, all the way down the order. The games will all be broadcast live on lichess.org, chess.com and on chessbase.com. We hope also to broadcast live commentary on the match – more on this later!

Our team will be captained by Karl Stand. He’s already very close to a full team, so if you’re rated between 1100 and 1700 and would like to be considered, do get in touch with him quickly.

You can find more information on the RJCC website here.