21st September saw Ealing’s annual night of fun and chaos in the form of our ever-popular blitz tournament.
A total of twenty players from all ends of the rating spectrum took part, including a number of new faces.
By popular demand, the event’s time control was changed from the traditional 10 minutes per player to 5 minutes plus a 3 second move increment move. There was a frantic reprogramming of clocks to set up the new format. Unfortunately, the reset was not effected accurately leading to some unfortunate flag drops in the first round. Happily, these teething problems were resolved for the remaining rounds.
After a few rounds the chief contenders for the newly commissioned Alan Perkins trophy became clear. Reigning champion, Andrew Harley was winning every game he played. Meanwhile, the rapidly-improving Devina Bedi was taking full advantage of the event format to play as many games as she could fit in eventually playing an astonishing 17 games. After shedding some rust on his return to the board with losses in his first two games, Martin Smith also started to reel off an impressive set of wins, including one against Devina. Martin eventually finished in third place with 11/14.
When time was called, there was a dead-heat between Andrew with 13/13 and Devina with 13/16 but, as they had not played each other, it was decided that there should be a play-off. In a dramatic denouement, Devina pulled off an impressive win against Andrew. Here’s the game.
Final standings:
- Devina Bedi 14/16
- Andrew Harley 13/14
- Martin Smith 11/14
- Duncan Grassie 8/11
- Matthew Georgiou, Adrian Chivers, Alex Lushpa 6/10
- Simon Healeas, Leslie Pringle, Adam Brittain
- Xavier Cowan, Leo Shtutin
- Georgia Symenonidis, Nimish Shah, Martin Loat, Helen Symeonidis
- Neville Rowden, Jack Hodgkinson, Mark Robinson, David Websdale.