Well, there is clearly demand for blitz at the club, at least for the “slower” G/5+3 time control used last night. Forty-one people turned out for the first installment of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, which is perhaps twenty-one more than we were expecting, and we filled both playing rooms plus had one board in our skittles room. It was great to have so many players join us and the fact that ~90% registered online before the event made things that much easier and smoother–thank you all for taking the few seconds to do that!
Per the wall chart below, Richard, Pranav and Sean tied for first place with perfect scores, while eight others were close behind with 3 points out of 4. Joshua Garrow took the Under-17 first prize ($15) with 3 points and Raajas Dixit took second ($10) with 2.5. Given there were no ties for prizes in the U17 division last night no prize money will roll over to the U17 marathon fund this week (the blue cells in the wall chart show juniors vying for marathon prizes).
The three-way tie for first in our Open division, however, means all $50 of last night’s prizes ($25, $15, $10) will be rolled into the marathon prize fund, as promised/hoped for. At present we have ten people vying for marathon prizes (gold cells in the wall chart), so at $5/person the initial marathon prizes would have been $25, $15 and $10, but with last night’s $50 infusion we now have $35, $25, $20, $15, $5 (somewhat arbitrary, I realize). I expect the same infusion to happen next week, given it’s another 4-round event.
Note that if you thought you entered the marathon and don’t see your name highlighted in gold or blue, below, please let me know. We will also give people one more opportunity to enter the marathon before the start of next week’s first round. Again, thank you all for playing last night and I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did!
— Mark Drury
