We adopted a different format for this year’s club championship. We replaced the traditional classical time control of 1.5 hours for each player with a new time control of 1 hour maximum per player and a 15 second increment for each move.
The new format proved popular and we had a good entry of 16 players.
It was an exciting championship. The current champion John Joyce set the pace with 3 straight wins but was then beaten in the fourth round in a fine game by our new member Zaanaa Chaluunbaatar. Zaanaa in turn lost to Rustem Abdullayev in the fifth round while John recovered from his loss in the previous round by winning with Black against another very promising new member Kyrylo Kholiavko.
So we entered the last round with three players still in contention- John and Rustem with 5 points each and with Zaanaa a half a point behind. All three players won well contested games which left John and Rustem tied on 5 points and Zaanaa on 4.5 points. John, who had beaten Rustem in an earlier round, was declared the winner on tie break.
Congratulations to John who has now won the championship twice in a row on his only two entries. He showed great determination and skill in coming back from his fourth round loss. Rustem once again fell just short (he was tied second last year) but he played very well and his time will surely come. Zaanaa deservedly won the grading prize. He underlined his great potential with a very fine performance, including a win against John.
The next four places were filled by Tony Fox, Eddie Butler, Martin Lohan and Sergey Beryozkin who each scored 3.5 points.
The tournament was a big success and was very well controlled and organised as usual by Tony Fox.
