Report by Gordon Dunlop:

The 2011 Teams Lightning event was held at the Moresby Hall on Sunday 13th December. A total of thirteen teams competed in four divisions. The prizes consisted of cash prizes, Xmas stockings with champagne for the overall winners. Electronic clocks held by the association will be engraved to recognize the division winners and will be used at future tournaments. Xmas stockings were given to the runners up in each division. The event was held in traditional Xmas spirit and all players had a fun time. Prizes for many of the major tournaments of the year were presented after the event together with Grand Prix awards. This was followed by supper and drinks.

The tournament was run as a 9 round Swiss tournament followed by a final between the top two teams in each division. As done in previous years the first three rounds were played as guillotine lightning, the next three as Fisher and the last three as Bronstein. Guillotine was used in the finals for the top divisions and Fischer for the remaining divisions. The White team had two white boards and could choose their boards. The Black team could then choose their opponents.

In the finals, teams had to play in rating order. The leading teams in a division could choose to have the White pieces on boards 1 and 3 needing two points to win the match. Alternatively they could take the Black pieces on those boards needing only 1.5 points to win the match.

There were some novelty prizes given for first win, fastest win in each time control and biggest upsets. Joel Rufin had the first win of the day. Joel also won the prize for fastest win under the guillotine time with a time of 4:45. Tom Donaldson had the most time on the clock for the Fischer time control being 4:05, after starting with 3:02. This was a round where the good players wanted their opponents to keep playing rather than resign. In Bronstein time several players had remaining times above the start time of 5 minutes but the prize was given to Adam Kelly.

The biggest upset prize went to Alby Di Lallo for defeating Robyn Shaw with a rating difference of 933. A prize was also given to Rudy Williams who also defeated Robyn Shaw with a rating difference of 913.

Quizzes were also run on the day with 20 entries each. The chess knowledge quiz was won by David Ellis with a score of 16 from 20 with the runner up being Yita Choong with 15 correct answers. In the word puzzle there were 3 entries with 24 from 26 – Verity Williams, Aayush Bhardwaj and Dhruv Bhardwaj. The quizzes are available with answers if you click here.

The DOP’s prize was given to Linda Carolyn-Unkovich for her work in assisting organization on the day but thanks also go to the other parents and players who assisted on the day.

The list of teams with members follows at the end of this report.

The finals results were:

Open
Zwichenzug comfortably defeated the Chin Team (3.0 - 0.0).

Reserves
The Division defeated the Three Knights (2.0 - 1.0).

Restricted
The Williams team defeated the Laugery team (2.5-0.5).

Novice
The Lightning team defeated the BCPS team (2.0-1.0).

A special prize was given to the Grand Masters consisting of three very small Novices but budding chess grand masters.

Thank you to all the players for joining in the day’s activities. The playing DOP was not called on to arbitrate at all during the day, other than interpretation of the Quiz questions. Thanks also to my wife Christine for helping on the day.

Open

Zwichenzug v2.0.11
Yita Choong			2094
Tom Donaldson			1888
Marc Vlietstra			1930

Chin Team
Gordon Dunlop			1834
Albert Chin			1833
Ihsan Ferozkohi			2149

Reserves

The Division
George Carolin-Unkovich		1603
Aston Taminsyah			1896
Adam Kelly			1542

Capablanca
Robin Shaw			1762
Joel Rufin			1700
Alex DeHeer			1507

Three Knights
Sanjay	Mukhedkar		1596
Varun	Mukhedkar		1099
Neville Shah			1306

Restricted

Williams Team
William Williams		1277
Verity Williams			1450
Rudy Williams			849 

Centre Control
Jack Pan			?/1490
Michael Papasergio		?/1380
Erwin Tee			?/1569

Chesster’s Paradise
Matthew Duke			?/1353
Alby Di Lallo			?/829
Matleo	 Primerano		?/900

Laugery Team
Bernard Laugery			1190
Sean  Xiong			1450
Michael Lee			1163

Novice

Grand Masters
Gabriel Merga
Sam Merga
Aimos Yong

Lightning
Amul Dharmupur
Aayush Bhardwaj
Dhruv Bhardwaj

Last Minute Team
Pravin Shitole			1100
Hemant Suryawanshi		1000
Sylvie Carolin-Unkovich

BCPS
James Kim			1338
Davis Kim			1000
Jadon Chi			988