Dorset Closed Congress – Full Report

2025 Dorset Closed Chess Congress Report

Introduction

The 2025 Dorset Closed Chess Championships held in the Merlot Suite at the Bournemouth West Cliff Hotel in Bournemouth, from Friday 24th to Sunday 26th January, attracted 45 entrants, 15 in each section. This compared favourably to the 41 entrants last year. It was also very pleasing to see so many juniors playing, indeed, there were 11 of them and they all performed well with almost half of them winning prizes!

The playing room was ideal for the tournament with plenty of space in comfortable surroundings. The hotel provided a water station, plus there was food & drink available in the lounge bar area which was of a high quality. The lounge bar area also made a perfect choice where players could relax and analyse their games after.

What was new for this year!

To help with the friendly yet competitive ambience of the tournament we had …

A demonstration board in the playing room which we used last year and, in addition, for this year …

A DGT electronic smart chess board (kindly donated by Nick Stout) which allowed for the live transmission of moves across the internet on the top board game in the Championship in each of the 5 rounds. All of these games can still be found via the following link … https://view.livechesscloud.com/#62434ba0-b571-481d-989a-912ad7bce55c.

Pairings & results being updated live on LMS.

The last two new features allowed people to have a birds eye view of the Congress events as they happened in the comfort of their own home!

Prizewinners

There were 17 prizewinners! This represented over one third of all those who took part!

Championship Section

The Championship section was hard fought throughout including games on the higher boards. Indeed, it was often boards 1 & 2 that were last to finish.

There was a measure of controlled chess by the winner, Allan Pleasants, as he kept himself in the lead throughout. He never seemed be in much trouble and was better in the 2 games he drew. He proved to be a deserved winner scoring 4 points.

There was a mass scramble for 2nd place with 5 players scoring 3½ points.

Prizewinners

1st – Allan Pleasants (Weymouth & Wimborne) – 4 pts

2nd – from left to right – Anuhas Gamage (Southbourne), Zander Booth (Poole), Mike Waddington (Dorchester & Poole), Adam Ursell (Highcliffe) & Finn Schell (Southbourne) – 3½ pts

Rating (1850 to 1950) – Zander Booth (Poole) & Anuhas Gamage (Southbourne) – 3½ pts

Rating (Under 1850) – Martin Clancy (Ringwood) – 2½ pts

Final standings

Major (Under 1850)

The Major section was the only section that had joint winners. Thorsten Meyer was a leader throughout agreeing to a short draw in round 5 which allowed Mark Potter to catch him on 4 points.