Rapid #1 Tournament Report

Twelve stalwart members of the club played our first rapid tournament February 16th and, after all the flags fell, the queens were hung and the grandmaster draws agreed to, Pranav sat atop the crosstable with 3.5 points (including a first round half-point bye), per the Results and Crosstable images below.

I thought I might hold Pranav to a draw in our game but his pawn advantage and my chronic time trouble spelled doom in the endgame. Umit and Jose both had excellent showings, tying for second with three points out of four games, while Daniel Vilenchik took sole fourth with 2.5.

The feedback about the event was positive, far as I heard, so we will likely hold another tournament in a couple weeks, either another rapid event or even a blitz tourney (though I think most people favor the slightly longer rapid games at this point). Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions and we hope to see all of you at one of these fun tournaments in the near future!

Note that the ratings used for this event were Lichess Rapid. Perhaps 2/3 of the players had such a rating and we estimated those for the remaining participants, just to give people a very rough idea how they performed (SRtg = starting rating, TPR = tournament performance rating, Rtg = new rating). To be clear, this event did not impact players’ actual Lichess ratings.

Also, we had a little trouble with the tournament software after correcting a third round score so I’m not completely certain all the fourth round data is correct–if you see anything amiss in either table please let me know.

— Mark Drury

Menlo Park Chess Club Rapid Tournament #1 Results, February 16th, 2022
Menlo Park Chess Club Rapid Tournament #1 Crosstable, February 16th, 2022