Martin Simons has sent the following report on the 1st  Dorset Online Rapidplay Championships, held on Sunday 14th March.

On behalf of everyone who played in the event, many thanks to Martin for his significant effort in organising it.

Tournament Report

The 1^st Dorset Online Rapidplay Championship proved to be a resounding success with a record 60 players taking part in a local online tournament. It also used a virtual face to face ‘chat room’ for the players which covered many interesting discussions throughout the tournament and it was pleasing to see 25 players attend the Opening Ceremony.

There were many exciting games and the tournament ran to schedule finishing at 1.15pm. In total, 22 players won cash prizes which was well over a third of all entrants.

In the Individual competition, Andrej Furjel (Weymouth) was playing well, beating everyone who stood in front of him in the first six rounds but just when it looked like he had the tournament wrapped up, Peter Anderson (Ringwood) played an outstanding game in the final round to defeat him. Both players were joined by Christian Westrap (Highcliffe) who played well throughout and defeated Paul Hampton (Seaton) in the last round. It is perhaps fitting that these Championships ended in a three way tie, such is the tradition to share prizes.

Other prize winners were as follows:

• The 141 to 165 grading section was won jointly by Richard Smith (Poole) and Georgia Headlong (Wiltshire Juniors) on 5 points. As an individual can only win one prize, Georgia was awarded the Junior Under 18 cash prize.
• The 126 to 140 grading section was won by Tim Jones (New Milton) on 5 points. Tim had an outstanding Lichess rating performance in excess of 2100.
• The 111 to 125 grading section was won by Matthew Deacon (Hampshire Juniors / Fareham) with a score of 4.5 points. Matthew was also the Junior Under 12 winner but can only win one cash prize. The Junior Under 12 cash prize was therefore awarded jointly to its 2^nd place winners Zander (Bournemouth Library Juniors) and Jack Baskett (Dorset Juniors) on 3 points.
• The 100 to 110 grading section was won jointly by Philip Ware (Basingstoke) and Max Teverson (Dorset Juniors) on 3 points. Max was also a joint Junior Under 10 winner but can only win one cash prize. The Junior Under 10 cash prize was therefore awarded to Nicholas Deacon (Hampshire Juniors / Fareham), also with a score of 3 points.
• The Under 100 grading section was won by David Williams (Isle of Wight) who scored a staggering 3.5 points and achieved almost a 1800 Lichess rating performance.
• The Veteran’s prize was won jointly by Alan Dommett (Southbourne) and Michael Pope (Salisbury) who scored 4 points.
• Two Controller’s prizes for the best performances to players who had not won a prize were awarded to James Barnett (Salisbury) who scored 4 points and achieved almost a 2100 Lichess rating performance and Christine Roberts (Poole) who scored 3 points.  Merlin Cork (Ringwood) a had great tournament.
• A review of the individual results suggests that no-one had a disaster tournament, therefore the Player with Most Potential prize has not been awarded!

Well played all individual winners. The full individual results are given in the table below.

In the highly exciting and well supported Team competition, ‘Chess Cheetahs’ (Jamie Doyle, Jack Baskett, Larissa Cuthbert and Florence Spirling) were the early leaders, but were soon overtaken by ‘May the Forks Be With You’ (Robert Halse, Adam Ursell, Richard Ursell and Dan Ursell). Similar to the Individual competition, they looked favourites going into the final round as they had a two point lead but then disaster struck, they could only manage one point and were caught by the ‘Deacons Of Wimborne Minster’ (Ian Clark, Eddie Barker, Matthew Deacon and Nicholas Deacon) with The ‘Odds and Sods’ team (Allan Pleasants, Christian Westrap, Martin Clancy and Andy Baskett) also coming close only half a point behind. It would seem that the bonus / penalty system proved a great leveller as there was only 1 point separating the top 4 teams and only 4 points between all the teams.

The full team results are given in the table below.

I would like to thank Peter Anderson for maintaining an excellent, informative Dorset Rapidplay page on the website and Martin Clancy for helping me with some of the Lichess testing.

Finally, I would like to thank all players for the excellent chess, an enjoyable tournament and for making it very easy to run. We hope to be able to run it again soon.

Martin Simons
Tournament Controller
15^th March 2021

Individual Results

Team Results