Blitz madness!

What a crazy night this week, as we took a break from the long play format of the Winter Cup for something a bit different…. handicap blitz.

All games were 10 minutes – with no time added on. The club’s top players had just 1 minute against the club’s bottom players (anyone 600+ rating points lower), while moderately better players had 3 minutes against their opponent’s 7 minutes (anyone 250+ rating points below). Everyone else had 5 minutes each. Rounds followed continuously until not enough players were left or the pairings was exhausted.

Congratulations to Guy Burns (pictured below against Liam Parkes), who emerged victorious after 8 rounds, with David Paul, Gordon Lyall and Neels Du Plessis second equal on 5 points. See the full results here.

The night was a bit of fun, plus a chance for players to taste victory against people they’ve never beaten, or don’t normally beat, and there certainly were some giant slayings during the evening. Geoffrey topped the juniors with 4.5 from 8 rounds, but considering that most juniors aren’t able to stay the full night, it was great to see many securing good scores for the rounds they played, and the odd prize scalp or two along the way.

 “The truth is, blitz chess is not only insanely fun but extremely good training to develop intuition for slow chess.” [unnamed online source ]   or……

“It’s just not real chess, is it…” [unnamed Club member]