Had our super-strong newcomer Bao Nghia Dong won it, we would have had a nice headline ready.
It would, of course, been: TAKE A BAO!
But it was not to be. Instead, the slightly less headline-friendly, but friendly in other ways, Midhun Unnikrishnan swept all before him at our eight-round Latvian Night blitz tournament.
Our reigning club blitz champion, ensured maximum bonus points by not only beating everyone, but doing it while going “berzerk” in every match.
In doing so, he scooped not only the bottle of Latvian voddy on offer to the winner, but the £150 bonus prize offered to anyone who hit the maximum.
But did Midhun pocket it? No, he immediately donated it back to the club! Well done fella – that’s appreciated! See, I told you he was friendly.
Anyway, back to the blitz.
Midhun laid waste to the field that included Bao, who is 216 ECF, and the mighty Blair Connell, who has recently been turning out for the London Towers in chess.com’s Pro Chess League no less.
Midhun won double points in each match for going berzerk and halving his time, and also picked up a final bonus point for playing all four Latvian-themed openings to finish on 17.
He finished three points ahead of Blair and a further three ahead of Bao.
In truth, only Midhun, Blair and Bao were ever in the running and it was a clear three-horse race from the get-go.
The Swiss, in which players had to choose one of four Latvian-themed openings was held in honour of our guest from the Riga Chess Club, Ivo Gubanovs, who gifted us the bottle of vodka from his home country.
So we would like to thank Ivo for inspiring the night and wish him all the best.
After the top three the placings roughly followed grading order with:
- Alan Palmer and Emil Todorow on 5,
- Derek Harvey on 4,
- Arnold Hunt on 3.5
- Leon Watson and Gregg Hutchence on 3
- Denis Dupuis on 2.5
And our two visitors who completed five rounds:
- Joana Bucea, with 1
- Zbigniew Garbaszewski, on 0.
Your correspondent may have struggled to find a headline for the final entrant.
