This weekend (14-16 October) has seen our club make up 22 of the 116 contingent at our 5th weekend congress. The new venue at the Mornflake Stadium has proved to be a resounding success, in the words of FIDE Arbiter Peter Purland, one of the best venues he has come accross in a very extensive Arbiting career !
The outstanding performers from our club were Karl Lockett and Julian Hawthorne. Karl finshed joint first in the Major section scoring 4/5, sharing 1st place with another local player Andrew Raeburn. With Martin Burns finishing on 3.5pts he collects a share of 3rd place in a four way tie.
Julian scored an even more impressive 4.5 pts to earn another joint first position, this time in the Intermediate section. Also on the podium in this section was congress administrator Neville Layhe, finishing in 3rd place on his own with 4 pts.
Jarek Czyz had a superb tournament scoring 2.5 pts in the Open section to win the grading prize, when he would have been eligible to play in the Inter section. His opponents included Seeds No 2, 5 and 6.
In addition to Jarek in the open section, our other 3 players all performed well with Bart scoring 2.5pts, with Simon and Dave Lambton scoring 1.5 pts.
In the Minor section we had 9 players, with best scores coming from Andrew and Julian Bulbeck (3.5pts each), young Oskar 3pts, and Nigel 2.5 pts.