This weekend has seen an evacuation from Crewe, with many of our members making the 80 mile trek to the Seaside, to play in the annual Blackpool Conference. There were well over 300 players involved in the five sections.
We had two entries in the Open section, with Bart Fajfer seeded 32 and Dave Lambton at No 36 out of 44. After a brilliant start from Bart with two wins, he failed to add to his tally, but still ended up with a performance rating (PR) of just under 2100, a long way above his current rating, having played two of the top four players in the Congress. Dave didn’t do so well but was brave to enter the Open section.
In the Major section (U2050) our only entry was Simon Layhe seeded 38th out of 60. After a 1st round win, he added one more to end up in 32nd place with a performance rating matching his current level.
In the Intermediate Section (U1850) we had another single player with Lukasz Michalek testing himself in a higher section than his rating permitted, and was therefore seeded 64th out of 70. After sucess in the 1st round, he added two draws to his score to finish in a very creditable 44th position and a PR over 1700 which is in excess of his current 1630.
We had 3 members in the Minor Section (U1700), with Julian Hawthorne seeded 9th, Dave Price at No 14, and Kobus Nienaber playing in this section at No. 88 testing himself against stronger players. Julian was our best scorer here with 3pts to finish 19th, while Dave’s 2.5pts saw him in 35th with 20 players having scored 3. Kobus did very well to pick up two draws from just 3 games to get a PR of 1486, approx 80 above his entry point.
In the Standard section (U1550) we had 3 more playing, with Andrew Crosby seeded 22nd, Chris Marais 57th and George Jellis 58th out of a field of 89 – the largest section. Chris and George stuck together to finish 72nd and 73rd respectively with a score of 1.5 pts. However our highest scoring player of the weekend was Andrew with a super effort to finish on 4pts, and narrowly miss out on prize money in a shared 5th position, with the outright winner scoring the perfect 5 and three others with 4.5 pts.