Last night saw the club hold its first online Rapid-play Tournament. As this was always going to be a trial event we decided to run it as a “4-round-Swiss” with 15 minutes allowed for each player in each game (with no increments). To make life interesting we used ECF long-play grades for seeding purposes which meant we had to formulate pairings ourselves.
The event attracted 16 keen members and was scheduled to kick-off at 7.30pm. The 1st round pairings were posted in the Lichess chat room and had disappeared out of sight due to the banter exchanged between players before the first pawn was even pushed. With a couple of members new to the Lichess system a couple of games could not start and there was a series of frantic phone calls from players to the control room (where the isolating controller had no idea what was going on !) but matters were resolved thanks to the help of our Lichess experts – Dave Price and Rick Renegade. As the 1st round got underway some games had finished before others had started as the controller tried to keep track of the 8 boards in progress. Eventually the dust settled and all the results flowed in with all of the top 8 seeds winning their opening games.
Round 2 saw smoother progress as the top seeds Jim Grange, Karl Lockett, Rick Reneagde and Simon Layhe all won against seeds 5 to 8, and similar progress was made with seeds 9 (Kobus) ,11 (Lee) and 12 (Nigel) all beating their lower rated opponents with one draw in the remaining game between Andrew and Les. And so … on to Round 3. And time for another hiccup ..
The controller issued the pairings as previously in the chat room, only for them to disappear due to some techno-fobia. This only became apparent when players started asking “has Dave H disappeared” and “can someone ring Dave”. After a couple of minutes delay and much chunnering among the players the pairings were re-issued and Round 3 commenced rather later than planned.
Here we had the top four seeds all paired against each other with their 100% records. There was nothing to separate this bunch as both games ended in draws with some nice sportsmanship shown. A draw was agreed in one game where a win could have resulted on time, but with an exchange deficit a draw was offered. Lukasz Michalek and Kobus Nienaber gained their second wins. Due to one pair of players using wrong colours in this round an incorrect result was recorded and only corrected after the event completed. As round 3 completed, there top four seeded players were in the joint lead on 2.5 pts, with Lukasz and Kobus just behind on 2pts.
The last round saw Jim paired with Karl and Simon paired with Rick on the top boards, with Kobus and Lukasz on board 3. The winner had to come from these 6. Jim managed a quick win in his game while Simon and Rick traded blows before Simon emerged victorious. Kobus managed to overcome young Lukasz to finish in a brilliant 3rd place. Then we had a pile up in 4th place as Karl, Rick, Dave Price, Andrew Crosby and Nigel Gardner all amassed 2.5 pts.
Congratulations to Jim and Simon on their success and thanks to all members who made it such a memorable and enjoyable event.
It is hoped we can run another competition in a few weeks time as all involved expressed their enjoyment as evidenced by the great banter through the night.
Final Cross-Table below
| NO. | R 1 | R 2 | R 3 | R 4 | pts | ||||||
| 1 | Jim Grange 159 | W9 | 1 | B6 | 1 | W4 | 0.5 | B2 | 1 | 3.5 | 1ST = |
| 2 | Karl Lockett 149 | B10 | 1 | W5 | 1 | B3 | 0.5 | W1 | 0 | 2.5 | 4TH = |
| 3 | Rick Renegade 138 | W11 | 1 | B8 | 1 | W2 | 0.5 | B4 | 0 | 2.5 | 4TH = |
| 4 | Simon Layhe 137 | B12 | 1 | W7 | 1 | B1 | 0.5 | W3 | 1 | 3.5 | 1ST = |
| 5 | Harry Gardiner 135 | W13 | 1 | B2 | 0 | W9 | 0 | B11 | 1 | 2 | 9th= |
| 6 | Dave Price 119 | B14 | 1 | W1 | 0 | B12 | 0.5 | W13 | 1 | 2.5 | 4TH = |
| 7 | Lukasz Michalek 113 | W15 | 1 | B4 | 0 | W11 | 1 | B9 | 0 | 2 | 9th = |
| 8 | James Marshall 99 | B16 | 1 | W3 | 0 | B10 | 0 | W12 | 0 | 1 | 12th = |
| 9 | Kobus Nienaber 96 | B1 | 0 | W14 | 1 | B5 | 1 | W7 | 1 | 3 | 3RD |
| 10 | Andrew Crosbie 95 | W2 | 0 | B13 | 0.5 | W8 | 1 | W14 | 1 | 2.5 | 4th= |
| 11 | Lee Tilton 94 | B3 | 0 | W16 | 1 | B7 | 0 | W5 | 0 | 1 | 12th = |
| 12 | Nigel Gardner 88 | W4 | 0 | B15 | 1 | W6 | 0.5 | B8 | 1 | 2.5 | 4TH = |
| 13 | Les Hall 88 | B5 | 0 | W10 | 0.5 | B16 | 1 | B6 | 0 | 1.5 | 11th |
| 14 | Nick Harrison 80 | W6 | 0 | B9 | 0 | W15 | 1 | B10 | 0 | 1 | 12th = |
| 15 | Russell Smithers 60 | B7 | 0 | W12 | 0 | B14 | 0 | W16 | 0 | 0 | 16th |
| 16 | Adrian Howells 50 | W8 | 0 | B11 | 0 | W13 | 0 | B15 | 1 | 1 | 12th= |