Steve Peirson has kindly sent the following report on Purbeck’s end of season rapidplay.

Over the past few years it has become a club tradition to devote the last club night of the season to a quickplay tournament. Games last a maximum of 15 minutes with the time allocated to each player being dependent on the difference between their grades with the worst-case scenario (for the stronger player) being 1 ½ – 13 ½ minutes. This year we had seven entrants: Jeremy, Nick, Brian, Carole, Florence, Matthew and me. As usual, most games seemed to lurch one way then the other as the players made bigger and bigger blunders!

We had a half-time break for tea/coffee and (my wife) Lindsey’s chocolate brownies which seemed to go down well. The final round brought together the two leaders – Florence on 5/5 and Matthew on 4/5. Florence started with seven minutes to Matthew’s eight and it was a fitting end to the evening with a tense struggle that lasted nearly the whole 15 minutes. It was fairly level both on the board and the clock until near the end when Matthew spent a few seconds (that’s all it takes!) too long on a couple of moves and in the end he lost on time. So Florence is the new Purbeck Chess Club Rapidplay Champion.

Florence and Matthew battling it out in the final round