Tag Archives: Blitz

As part of its bicentenary celebrations Edinburgh Chess Club hosted a Schaakstad Apeldoorn team from the Netherlands over the weekend of July 15 to 17th, 2022. 

The visitors had a very strong 10-man team, led by Team Captain IM Merijn van Delft, which included 2x IMs and 2x FMs!

Edinburgh Team Captain Neil Berry (left) and Event Organiser Henk Bulthuis (right)

We held a Blitz tournament on the Friday evening and then a 10-board match between an Edinburgh Club team and the Apeldoorn Schaakstad Club team on Saturday afternoon followed by dinner.

The Schaakstad Apeldoorn Team
The Edinburgh Chess Club Team

Altogether there were 27 players in Friday’s Blitz (3 minutes plus 2 seconds per move) with most players managing between 8 and 11 games in the evening.

The visitors were on fire with IM Merijn van Delft scoring 10/11 so he was declared the winner followed closely in second place by IM Nico Zwirs with 8/9.  Highest scoring Edinburgh player was Willie Rutherford on 7.5/9.

The match in progress

The 10 board match (1.5 hours each per game plus 30 second increments per move) on Saturday was closely fought with the Edinburgh club eventually narrowly winning by the close margin of 5.5 to 4.5 – final results were:

Match Results

The event was sponsored by Broadex Technologies with Edinburgh Napier University Conference & Events providing a sponsorship discount for the visiting team’s accommodation.

Broadex is a high-tech company with an engineering team and production facility in Livingston Scotland and headquartered in China.

Final comments in the visitors book from IM Merijn and Team Captain Henk!

A most enjoyable weekend for all!

The club’s ran another online blitz tournament this week on Tuesday – again using the lichess site – free and straightforward to use – from 7.45pm to 9.15pm playing as many games as we could be fit in.  Time control was 3 mins + 2 seconds per move increment.

Final results were:

  1. Hugh Brechin
  2. Adam Bremner
  3. Andrew Green

 30 players … again an excellent turnout.  A full analysis of the tournament shows:

For future events and matches please join the Edinburgh Chess Club group.

 

The club’s ran its first ever online blitz tournament last night using the lichess site – free and pretty straightforward to use – from 7.45pm to 9.15pm playing as many games as we could be fit in.  Time control was 3 mins + 2 seconds per move increment.

Final results were:

  1. Clément Sreeves
  2. Andrew Green
  3. Adam Bremner

 32 players…excellent turnout.  A full analysis of the tournament shows:

 Message from our Club President, Neil Berry:

“Thanks to everyone for joining our first online blitz tournament!”

The Scotland heat of the UK Open Blitz was held in spacious surroundings at Broughton School in Edinburgh on September 7.  This was a FIDE rated tournament with each player having 3 minutes on the clock plus 2 seconds per move – very tough!

The event was jointly won by IM Andrew Greet and GM Justin Tan who both scored 13/15.  Willie Rutherford was the top player from the club coming in 25th with an excellent score of 8/15.

Other members playing included Mike & Ben Ridge, Calum Mcgillivray and Ian Whittaker (who was in close contention for the wooden spoon …).

Further details on the Chess Scotland and ECF web sites with full tournament results here.

Club Blitz 2019 Championship

The end of season blitz tournament was ably run by Andre on Tuesday 18th June over 7 rounds. Raj, with supplemental assistance from David, ensured that we all were all well acquainted with the blitz rules (which enabled me to swindle a win against Keith in a totally lost position!).

The competition was contested by 19 players with the trophy (to be presented at the AGM in September) finally being won by Club President Neil who achieved an unbeaten score of 6.5/7.

Neil was closely chased into second place with a score of 5.5/7 by visitor Andy (now based in Washington DC but originally from Chicago). I had quickly lost my way playing the Benko Gambit against him ….. perhaps retribution for walking off with Andy’s home town trophy way back in 1988 (run by Chicago Lawn Chess Association)!?!?

Petros took 3rd place with a score of 5/7.

A great time was had by all – an excellent evening.

Unfortunately 2018 reigning champion Sergio Bermudez was unable to participate this year – but here’s belated recognition of his win last year: