We had an excellent turnout last Thursday for another free, unrated, 7-round G/3+2 blitz tournament, with 31 participants and a number of spectators at the club. There was even some urging from the younger players to venture eight rounds in this event, given we may have had time, but cooler heads prevailed and we called it after seven, with NM Dmitri Dzhangirov and first-time visitor Matthew Yang sharing first place at 6.0 points. Another first-time visitor, Askar Nurbekov, tied for third with club stalwart Yoyo He at 5.5 points, while young Austin Chen stood alone in fifth at 5.0 out of 7. The number of strong blitz players (self excluded) having to settle for 4.0 or less is testament to the competitiveness of this tournament — complete results are in the attached image.
We didn’t use our nascent club blitz ratings in last week’s event because I got a late start setting up the tournament in SwissSys but we will continue that practice this week, when we’ll hold another G/3+2 blitz tournament, given that appears to be the favored time control for most — I hope to see many of you then!
In other club news, our March Quadness event wrapped up last week (with a single makeup game) and most of the quads were competitive, even if the scores didn’t appear to indicate as much. I lost all three games in my quad but was able to sac a knight on f7 in two of them, with a clear nod to club lecturer Frisco Del Rosario when doing so, though I failed to convert in either due to poor time management, a surprise to no one. Full results for all quads may be viewed at https://ratings.uschess.org/event/202603260373 and we’ll hold another rated event beginning late April or early May — more details about that will be shared here soon. Regards,
Mark Drury
