Lightning

Last week the club held its annual Lightning tournament of 10 second buzzer chess. James Mansson managed to retain his title (a rare feat in this format!) on a night of the usual mayhem...

Our annual tournament of 10-second mayhem was won by James Mansson who beat Mike Forster in a high-quality final...

Twenty players "enjoyed" an evening of 10 second chess with blunders all around! It was great fun and there was some smart chess...and a few substandard moves :)

The two group winners were Dix Roberts and Brian Donnelly. The final was best of two but honours were even after two games so it went to sudden death...with Brian winning in the end.

It was great fun all round and perhaps we should consider some other event evenings along these lines.

Prior to the adult club's lightning competition the juniors got in on the act with their own frenetic brand of 10-second chess - actually I'm being slightly unfair as there were plenty of decent quality games...

Another evening of ten second chess with all the usual upsets and exciting turns! Mike Forster went through to the final after a tiebreaker with Paul Taylor. In the other division three players shared top spot but Anthony Higgs and James Mansson were edged out by Morgan Blake who went through to the final.

It was the usual tense final but Mike took the lead to set the scene for a thrilling final game. Morgan managed to take the lead but there were complications in the centre which Mike optimised. Morgan's King was forced forward to h4 before succumbing.

A very strong turnout of 28 Horsham players contested the annual Lightning tournament last week, following the junior club's own Lightning earlier in the evening...

Thanks to so many people for confirming your attendance on Tuesday - this means we can minimise the admin and get straight on with the chess!

Please see the table which shows the three groups this year - A,B,C. The groups were seeded on grading and it is worth me mentioning how I arrived at your grading. I arrived at a player's grading by firstly looking for the rapid play grading from January, failing that the previous rapid play grading, failing that their current standard grading.

If you can get arrive near to 7.30pm then we can have a prompt start.

Congratulations to Mike Forster who snatched the title in a tense final game having drawn at first with James Mansson. Paul Taylor came third with Chris Heath fourth...more to follow tomorrow...

There were a total of 32 players and we all had some fun. Like others I managed to blunder a rook and end up drawing a position three pawns up!

Thanks for everyone for making a special effort to get their earlier than usual and I hope you all had the opportunity to play some different people.

We have an impressive turnout for Tuesday night with 33 players already confirmed. In view of this I would be grateful if you can make every effort to arrive around 7.30pm so we can start at the earliest opportunity following the draw.

There will be four groups and we will draw from four similarly graded players so that the groups are of equal strength. The winner of each group will play in the final stages with the players seeded according to their performance in the group stage.

The lightning approaches - just ten seconds per move all evening ...headache guaranteed!

Please let me know whether you can or cant attend so that we can start as quickly as possible on the night.

We will try to start at 7.30pm as usual.

My apologies for orginally titling this article with June 23 - the MSL AGM was on mind ! Lightning is definitely May 12