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 Dear All,

 It is with deepest regret that we have to announce the cancellation of the Essex Chess Congress (formerly Ilford Congress) this year. This is due to a lack of entries which has meant that this year’s congress has become unviable on a commercial basis and we have had to take the unprecedented step of cancelling this event.

 We apologise for the late notice with this but we were anticipating a number of late entries that have not materialised. We will be contacting entrants individually over the next few days to arrange a full refund of any entry fees paid to us.

 We can only thank those people who have entered for their support and if there was anyway we could run this event without losing substantial sums then we would have continued with the Congress.

 The event this year was moved to Hornchurch for financial reasons and we do not know if this is one reason why we have had a substantial reduction in entries. It would seem that a reduction of entries has become a trend for Congresses in general over the last few years. It has also become apparent that people are entering later and later which makes it hard to judge the number of entries you will receive. However no one predicted the lack of entries we have received for this year’s event.

We thank everyone for their understanding and we will have to undertake a thorough review to see if a congress can and should be run next year.

Thank you again

 

David Brock

Congress Secretary