Ulster AGM and award ceremony held on June 13th

The president Damien Cunningham welcomed the members. The minutes of last years AGM were passed and we proceeded with the Presidents summary of the year - a summary of this:

Lots of chess was played this year in a lot of different locations - from the Ulster Museum, The Europa Hotel, Ormeau Bowling Club, The Bankers Club, Stormont ... some 25 venues - Brilliant! Sad to see Calum Leitch and Richard Gould stepping down from the Board - thanks for all their work during the year. Also thanks to the efforts of our excellent committee, Adrian, Mark for working hard at the Schools Chess, Robert Lavery and his excellent work with the rating and results service.  The year has seen many good achievements including Steven Rush winning the Ulster Championships and almost everything else and hes headed in the Summer to represent Ulster in the British Championships (we haven’t had a representative for a while), a new comer to the scene and quickly becoming the young man to beat – Daniil Zelenchuk has improved tremendously and is a future  player to watch. With Children Geoff Hindley and Mark have run a tournament every month culminating with the Stormont Prize giving. Whilst Ross Harris has setup a new club at the Strand Cinema every Sunday with some 20-30 childrens – fantastic. Also thanks to people how visit schools and teach youngsters chess, again Ross Harris and also Denis Thorpe. For recording the year in brilliant technicolour thanks go to the photographic skills of Pat McKillen for many photos that are keepsakes and produce a diary of our brilliant year in pictures. Norman McFarland has done us well again this year in getting the venue of the Europa Hotel for the Ulster Championships – a spontanteous round of applause for Norman. A brilliant venue and much appreciated by everyone. Mikhail and Brendan have organised a brilliant trip to Russia with fund raising events to assist with the travel of the youngsters. The ratings system has now been running for 6 or so cycles and is sorting itself out – with less and less complaints – Robert and Adrian have done a brilliant job. I would like to run a large tournament in Belfast – a quality tournament that attracts GMs, IMs from around the World similar to our previous success The Target Recruitment tournament. A long term goal of mine.

The League awards were given out by Damien Cunningham:
Certificates and medals were handed to those present.

a) League Division winners
Div 1: Silver King - Ballynafeigh 1

Div 2: John Strawbridge Cup - Ballynafeigh 3

Div 3: QUB 3

b) League Board Prizes: both parts of the League competition were used to determine prize winners

League 1

Board 1  David Houston 9/11 81.8%

Board 2  Steve Scannell 12.5/15 83.3%

Board 3  Nicholas Pilkiewicz 11/15 73.3%

Board 4  Stephen Wood 6/8  75%

Board 5  No Qualifiers

League 2

Board 1  Steven Eachus  8/11   72.7%

Board 2  Edward Doak  6.5/14  46.4%

Board 3  Daniil Zelenchuk  12/14  85.7%

Board 4  Dmitry Zelenchuk  12/14  85.7%

Board 5 No Qualifiers

League 3

Board 1  Tyrone Winter  8/14  57.1%

Board 2  Matt Smiglarski  6/11  54.6%

Board 3  Nick Todd  5/13  38.5%

Board 4  Paul Anderson  5/14  45.5%

Board 5  No Qualifiers

c) Tom Clarke Grand Prix Trophy:

Overall Winner Robert Lavery

Senior Winner Steven Rush

Junior Winner Ram Rajan

After the awards. The treasurer gave out copies of the accounts and these were discussed. We had a small surplus on the year.

We had 3 proposals that had been registered in advance and these were discussed. The first proposal was to increase the UCU membership fee to 25 pounds for adults and 10 pounds for under 16's. After some discussion it was decided that it would be good to have a larger amount of money in the Bank to be able to fund projects and the meeting voted to increase the fees - the motion was passed with a secret ballot.

The remaining two motions after a short discussion were withdrawn.

The meeting then went to the election of Officers the following people were elected:

Damien thanked everyone and mentioned to look out for this years Simultaneous player - and that Steve Rush would be playing in this years British Championships the UCU wished him well.