20/20 Chess Championships Eton College, Nov 2025
Camberley Chess Club were pleased to be able to support the 20/20 Chess Championships at the prestigious Eton College venue. These championships are an unrated team-of-four, 6 round, rapid-play event with no membership requirements with all the net profits going to Oxfam, their chosen charity. The time control was 20 minutes each with no increment.
We entered 3 teams of 4 players and turned up not really knowing how we would perform against a wide variety of teams, 16 in total.
It was a well organised and fun event – thank you to everybody who helped, all the organisers, Eton College staff and boys and Peter Hornsby, the Founder and Tournament Director.
There were many close team matches.
The Camberley C Team of Bob Wooding, Warren Wright, Janaka Jayasinghe and Tristan Nowell won 2 rounds and drew one achieving 2.5 points.
Warren had the standout game for the C team. With the rest of the team already lost and a piece down in an endgame with a 1600+ rated opponent, Warren found a devastating pin that eventually allowed him to promote. Other standout games were Tristan’s slightly bitter sweet 9 move checkmate against a 9 year old junior and Janaka’s grinding endgame win with the whole room packed up and ready to go home. Captain Bob had a characteristically consistent tournament, win loose or draw, pushing his opponents into deep waters. Overall, a great day and a respectable finish of 2.5 out of 6 in a strong field.
The B team of Siddarth Ramaraju, James Roberts, Nisandu Liyanawaduge and Jan Demjan had a tough start, losing 0-4 to one of the pre-tournament favourites. However a bounce back 4-0 win set them up for the rest of the day, having some close battles in the remaining matches scoring 2 points.
Sid’s Rook endgame technique with low time to win match 5 was brilliant to watch, and overall strong play from board 1. James hanging mate in 1 followed by winning all his remaining games. Nisandu, despite struggling on the clock, had winning positions in almost every game – playing some excellent chess. Jan was very consistent throughout the day, however in one match was a Queen up, lost it to a tactical oversight, then proceeded to win the tricky rook endgame. Certainly a roller-coaster to watch!
The Camberley A Team of Jon Ady, Martin Wallman, Aditya Sengupta and Steve Harley achieved 5.5 points out of 6 and narrowly won the event.
Jon typically won his games quicker than the rest finished theirs! Martin’s first game went terribly wrong and was completely losing when he “threw” his knight and a pawn at his opponent’s king, which opened up the position to a possible perpetual check. His draw offer was refused and then his opponent walked into a Queen and pawn mate! The key matches were in round 3 against Orpington and round 4 against Reading University A. In round 3 Jon and Martin won quickly, but Aditya and Steve were both outplayed, for a 2-2 draw. Round 4 seemed to be going the same way; we were 2-1 up with just Steve’s Q&P endgame to finish. It was a topsy turvy affair, which finally resolved when Steve’s opponent mistakenly allowed the queens to be traded off with just a few seconds left, and Steve raced his king over to gobble up the last pawn. Despite Steve’s flag falling it was a draw because his opponent only had a bare king left. The half point meant we won 2.5-1.5. In the next round Orpington and Reading Uni A drew 2-2, which left us in the lead on our own, which we converted with fairly easy wins in the last two rounds. Overall, both Jon and Martin achieved impressive 100% records of 6 wins. We were presented with the very elegant Chess Set and Board Trophy (to keep until the next competition is held).
