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Elite GamesTo celebrate Huddersfield Chess Club’s 160th Anniversary, they decided to hold a one-day Rapidplay tournament. Nothing unusual in that! However, the tournament was held at the Grosvenor Casino and only 1st place was going to pick up the winnings – a cool £1,000! Grading bands containing 20 players were also each eligible to pick up a £100 prize.
Huddersfield Rapidplay playing hall
David Welch preparing the draw for the next round
The entry list included 3 GMs and 3 IMs in addition to 4 other players with grades over 200 so it was clear that this was going to be a fiercely fought competition! Rounds 1 and 2 were paired under an Accelerated Swiss system, so the top players weren’t going to have it easy right from the word go! Tomasz Czuja caused the upset of the first round, defeating local IM Richard Palliser, whilst yours truly was a queen up in an ending against GM Nigel Davies but my flag fell. To his credit, my opponent very sportingly agreed to a draw despite the big prize on offer, showing that good sportsmanship is alive and well!
Round 2 saw no major shocks despite the tough pairings the accelerated draw had thrown up. After Round 3, the leaders were shaped up like this:
3/3: GM Mark Hebden, IM Jerzy Slaby, Alex Longson
2½/3: GM Danny Gormally, Alan Walton, Tomasz Czuja, David Egglestone and the ungraded David Boulden
Alan Walton (near left) and Alex Longson (far left) take on Jerzy Slaby and Mark Hebden respectively
The format of this tournament gives players a chance to face opponents that they might normally not be able to face. Here is a clip of the end of the game between Steven Jones and Richard Palliser:
After five rounds, two players were left at the top of the pile; Mark Hebden with 5/5 and Danny Gormally with 4½/5 and these two would face off to battle it out for the title and the sole prize of £1,000. A real winner-takes-all game! Meanwhile other important games were also being played for the grading prizes for U220, U172, U130 in addition to a prize for the best Under-21 player.
Gormally (playing Black) had to try and win this ending having three pawns against a rook.
So Mark Hebden won the Huddersfield Rapidplay with a perfect 6/6 and won the prize of £1,000. The other prizewinners are as follows:
Alan Walton and Kevin Winter
- Best U220 – Alex Longson & Miroslav Gruca
- Best U172 – Dave Keddie, David Firth, Dave Tooley, Tim Hilton & Kevin Winter
- Best U130 – Gary Clarke, Daniel Hubbort, Shane Frith & Vic Orlic
- Best ungraded player – David Boulden
- Best under 20 year old – Mitchell Burke & Steve Jones
I really enjoyed playing in the tournament, and would highly recommend it to anybody who is thinking of entering any future tournaments held here. There are plenty of well priced snack and food options available, cheap tea and coffee and there is plenty of room to play chess in. The venue is on the casino gaming floor so there was some noise from the slot machines, but everybody very quickly got used to the noise and it wasn’t really any more of a distraction than you typically get at many evening league venues! If you are that way inclined, you can also try and win some money by non-chess means!
A few players getting in the casino spirit!
Many thanks to Nigel and his colleagues at Huddersfield Chess Club for organising an exciting new event which will hopefully become a regular fixture on the calendar.
You can see more photos from this event including photographs of all the prize winners, visit on our new Flickr page.
Report by Andy Bak
Tim Hilton
May 01. 2012
This was such an amazing tournament and I can’t believe how well I performed, I beat the guy who beat Pallier and I also beat Mike Surtees both as black, and drew all my games as white against players way higher rated than myself!
kev winter
May 01. 2012
Great pics Andy; thanks for capturing the day ! Great when one wins a grading prize ! I enjoyed my Rook sac against Matthew Parsons (190) but he was quite good as he mixed it up when he could have accepted my draw !
Andy Bak
May 01. 2012
Im really glad to see that you both clearly relished playing the higher rates players and do well against them! I would like to see more of these open tournaments where the higher graded players really have to work hard against keen opposition!
As Ihor likes to say, you’ve gotta meet ‘em to beat ‘em!
David Fisher
May 02. 2012
Tim mate i’m really pleased that you had possibly the best ever chess tournament of your life last sunday and happy that you enjoyed the whole event. Maybe now i wish i’d at least have gone along
.
to the tournament if not to play in it at least to spectate the event. I do actually quite like the idea of the format that the tournament was played under, but i just wished the event could have been held in
any other venue but a casino as i don’t feel why you should have to be forced to join the casino
before you could enter the tournament !!.
I’m glad though that the tournament was a success and again that you Tim played par excellence and enjoyed the whole day.
I just hope that in the near future the same format can be played but at a different venue then i would most definitely have entered it
Andy Bak
May 04. 2012
I hope that joining a casino does not deter you from entering. It only takes a couple of minutes and you get a card and that’s it!
Also, the casino is the reason why the congress was able to attract 3 GMs and 3 IMs due to the prize money on offer!
Alan Walton
May 04. 2012
Andrew, you have got Davies being on 2.5/3 and 3.5/4, it was actually David Eggleston who was on that score
Andy Bak
May 04. 2012
Thanks for this, I have amended the article accordingly.