Walls and Woodfield walk away with top two spots!!
Eamonn Walls wrested top spot from the surprise leader Jonathan Woodfield in the last round of the latest Queen’s Blitz at the Parlour Bar last Sunday. Eamonn won his fourth out of seven blitzes with 4.5/5, a half-point ahead of Jonathan, who pipped Gareth Annesley and Stephen Scannell for second place on tiebreak. Grading prizes went to Damien Lavery, William Ashenhurst and Steve MacCullough. Upstairs in the Parlour Bar was an unusual venue, where the disco atmosphere was rather dark and made it difficult to find your opponent, never mind the board. I expected the music to come on, perhaps Chubby “Checker” and “Let’s twist again”, but in any case there were a few chubby checkers playing chess instead - you know who you are!
Round one had no shocks, but in round two new man Jonathan Woodfield (1463) trounced Mark Newman (1781). He followed up in round three by beating “Hurricane” Andrew Higgins (1674) while Scannell (2105) lost to “George” Lukasz Kwiatek in a star wars confrontation. In round four, Gareth ”Gates” Annesley feared they “would field” Woodfield junior against him – they did and Gareth (1965) duly lost, while Woodfield senior (Ian) opened cheekily with the Vienna against fellow Fisherwick captain, Martin Kelly, and unsurprisingly was lucky to draw against the Vienna expert! Round five reverted to form and Walls won the battle of the W’s to win overall. Amazingly for a bar, there was “coffey”at the end – Caroline Coffey who finished in last place.
Don’t forget the QUB Rapid at the Students Union on Saturday, 20/3/10, with a massive £1000 guaranteed prizefund. Get further details at chrismillar75@hotmail.com.
League round-up
Last night, in division one, RVH Hawks smashed QUB 6.5-0.5 to lead on 65 points, 7 ahead of QUB on 58 with four games to go.
Finally, last time I made a few orange jokes as they “appeal” to me, but the game I was referring to at the time in league division two involving Bernard Jaffa is so exciting that it takes the “biscuit” (or should that be “cake”)?
White: Mallon (Randalstown); Black: Jaffa (Malone)
2 comments:
Well done to Chris Millar for organising it and keep up the good work, but rather dark conditions for a chess event I thought. At one point CJ Murphy blundered a piece en prise against Karina Kruk, claiming he didn't see her bishop attacking his knight because of the light, or lack of. He did eventually win this one though. There were a couple of grading prizes OK, but maybe there could be one for the more "medium range" chess player as they jump from best newcomer and best ungraded to best under 1800 with nothing in between. Maybe some light could be shed on this one as well as a few calls for a six rounder perhaps. Good to see Steve Scannell back in action as well after his short "paternity" layoff.
Thanks once again to David and other contributors for keeping, we who live in the outlying parts of ni, up-to-date with interesting chess articles. Wish I could make it to Belfast chess events more often.
Post a Comment