The World Youth Chess Championships in Spain recently saw York 10-year-old Gawain Jones competing in the Boys' Under-12 event and he returned a very respectable total of six points from 11 games.

There were successes for England in both the Girls' Under-18 section, won by Ruth Sheldon of Manchester, and the Boys Under-18 section won by Nicholas Pert, of Ipswich.

Locally, the first round of the League Team Knock-out Cup produced wins for Shepherd's I, University A, and Shepherd's II. Lady Anne Middleton had a bye, and R I Bishops and R I Spartans went forward when their second division opponents conceded their matches without playing. Two other matches were postponed and will be played at the beginning of December.

The draw for the second round sees University 'A' play RI Bishops, Shepherds I play Lady Anne Middleton, Shepherd's II play RI Spartans and Minster Inn or RI Whippersnappers play RI Kings or RI Cavaliers A.

The draw for the third round of the RI Club Championship on Tuesday, November 17 is:

Nic Jones v Simon Smith; Paul Hopwood v Nigel Holroyd; Jon Griffith v Mike Rawlings; Peter Blacker v Herbert Lockwood; Peter Cloudsdale v Stuart Robertson; Don Glasgow v Richard Hardy; John Bennett v Dennis Danks; John Morris v Tim Turner; Paul Johnson v Robert Elliott; Owen Robson v Ewen Cameron; Bob Oates v Neville Pearce; Kevin Holliday v John Foo; Laurence Cornhill v John Lafferty; Patrick Gower v Bill Fulton; Steve Croft v Fahad Yousif and Paul Herrman v Paul Brooks. The first named player in each pairing has white.

A recent book from Robinson Publishing, who won the 1997 BCF 'Book of the Year' award, must give them an excellent chance of repeating this success in 1998. 'The Mammoth Book of the World's Best Chess Games' is outstanding for both the quality and quantity of its contents. Written by Grandmasters John Nunn, Graham Burgess and John Emms, it contains 100 great games analysed in detail, with potted biographies of the players, and a summary of the lessons to be learnt from each game.

Weaker players will enjoy the games themselves and stronger players will benefit from the detailed analyses. The book contains 560 pages with lots of diagrams, and costs only £9.99.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.