The Christmas Special evening, expertly organised by Ellen, consisted of 6 rounds of Crazy Chess occasionally interrupted by the odd mince pie or glass of wine. Moves were made to a "buzzer tape", which sounded every 10 seconds and, at Ellen's prompting, certain rules of the game were changed. Ten members attended.
In round 1, at a certain point, bishops and knights swapped roles, with unpleasant consequences for some. Melissa, alert to an opportunity I had failed to spot, removed my queen with a diagonally moving knight. The encounter between the Club's two in-form players, Graham and Dan, went Graham's way, and Mike beat Mark.
There were only three players on 1 point and I played Mike while Graham played Kimberley, who had drawn her first round against Tye. This was "rifle" chess, in which captures are made without moving the capturing piece, but simply by selecting the attacked piece to be captured and removing it from the board. At a critical point, the board were turned round, and Mike, who had previously been on the receiving end, sportingly offered me a draw instead of delivering mate.
Round 3 was a game of "Fischer Random" chess, named after the former World Champion, who has given up normal chess and spends his time as a fugitive from his native USA making xenophobic remarks on Philippine radio. In this variant, before play begins, the pieces are placed on random squares on the back line instead of the usual positions. Graham beat Rhys and I managed to keep within half a point of him with a win against Mark.
Round 4 was a bit of an experiment as, as soon as each player had made his / her move, they moved on to the next board. Tye quickly realised that he could scupper others' chances by leaving their kings under attack (in buzzer chess, kings left in check are captured and this ends the game), and all games in this round were indeed won by White, as the inventor of this fiendish tactic was eventually hoisted by his own petard. Round 5 was suicide chess, and here I should have been able to slow Graham's progress as he was obliged to promote to a bishop and I could have promoted to one on the opposite coloured squares. However, I tried to do something clever with predictably fatal consequences so Graham progressed to 5 points.
At this point, Kimberley and Melissa decided to take Mark home because it was past his bed time and he hadn't scored many points and now Ellen herself joined in the competition as two games of exchange chess were played out. This is a particularly fiendish form of the game in which each player and their partner sit at adjacent boards, one with white and the other with black. As you capture your opponent's pieces, they are passed to your partner who recycles them on his own board wherever he thinks they might go. The only restrictions are that recycled pieces are not allowed to deliver check and pawns must not be placed where they can promote next move. This form of the game is most enjoyed by young, alert minds so it was entirely fitting that John and I (combined age about 120) should partner each other against Tye and Dan (combined age about 6½). John kept on forgetting to recycle his pieces and, when he did, I found myself the grateful recipient of a succession of queens, rooks and bishops so that Dan's king was, to say the least, beleaguered. It all ended very suddenly when a king was removed... In the other match, Graham and Ellen beat Rhys and Mike, so the final scores were as follows:-
Graham's prize was a bottle of red wine which had been generously donated by his father, so that's his Christmas present sorted out then.