11-year-old Thomas Moran snatched victory in the final round of the annual Blitz Tournament last night (1 May) to finish with a perfect score of 5/5 after a dramatic night of chess.
But not all went smoothly. This was the first time the club has trialled the Swiss Manager software, used in the running of so many tournaments worldwide. Saul Marks took on the task of making it all work and, after prior testing, all seemed to be on track. But the first problems came when Saul’s laptop refused to connect to the Internet, despite various methods being tried. This problem resolved itself before the tournament got underway but there were further complications which prevented the first round pairings from being shown on screen. Thankfully, Tournament Secretary Graham Heath stepped in to pair the first round manually and things got underway, with 40 players sitting down to play, with anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes on their clocks.
As well as long-standing club members, we were delighted to welcome several new faces. One of these was Szymon Palucha (2162), a strong player who happened to be visiting his dad Sebastian, who has recently joined the club. Sadly, Szymon was only guesting and is not available to play for our first team next season! Also making his debut in a club tournament was Steve Pickles (formerly 2140), who was returning to competitive chess after many years away. Jamie Baker also visited the club for the first time, having never played over-the-board chess in his life!
As the pairings for Round 1 were being finished, the technological problems miraculously resolved themselves and Saul was able to input everything into the software in time for Round 2 and beyond. The only remaining hitch was the projector, which wasn’t quite high enough resolution or large enough size to be of great use. These are issues which we’ll be working on before the Crewe match in July and the Lightning Tournament in December.
The Round 1 results went much as expected, although the highlight was Lee Whitford-Stark’s defeat of Ed Taylor. In Round 2, Adam Miller nearly came unstuck against Stuart Rowe but managed to win just in time, while Seth Marks caused Jeff Povall to think for long enough to lose on time, in one of the upsets of the night.
After two rounds, the cream was rising to the top, with ten players on two points, including Szymon, Steve and the club’s three most exciting juniors, Thomas, Joe Ledgerton and Terrence Jiang. John Quirk and Graham Heath joined the fray at this point, making 42 players in total.
In Round 3, Joe beat Steve, while Terrence defeated newly crowned club champion Mike Coffey in a most impressive performance. Thomas scraped past Dave Clark with a great deal of fortune, Ed beat Phil in the battle of the two (unrelated) Taylors, while Alan Jackson hung his queen and lost to another promising and increasingly experienced junior, Tony Leong. Kirsten Rowe beat her son George Rainford and Jamie picked up his first ever over-the-board win, on time against John Quirk. Jeff finally got off the mark with a win against Daniel Speight.
Round 4 saw the tension increase at the top end of the competition. Joe felt he had a winning position against Szymon, only to be undone by a tactic at the very end. Thomas missed a chance to take Paul Evans’ queen but still came out victorious, repeating his feat in the Lightning Tournament in December, while Terrence took down Steve in another rude awakening to the realities of blitz chess against juniors! In another impressive upset, Jamie beat Felix Lefeuvre in what he felt was his first ever “true” over-the-board win.
Going into the final round, just Szymon, Terrence and Thomas remained on 4/4, with nine players on 3/4. George Rainford finally picked up his first win against Menai Whitby on bottom board to end the night with a smile, while Dave Price beat Alan Kelly in the battle of the clock-setters and Joe handed defending champion Paul his second defeat of the night. Thomas Moran did the same to Mike Coffey on Board 2 to finish with a perfect 5/5 and, seconds later, Terrence and Szymon agreed a draw on Board 1, finishing with 4½/5 and leaving Thomas the outright winner, with no need for playoffs. The fact he was one of the only top players not to have had to play Szymon may have been a contributory factor, but this doesn’t take anything away from another remarkable performance from this brilliant young man. Having missed out on the summer junior trophy by a single point last year and shared the Lightning Tournament three ways in December, this outright tournament win is sure to be the first of many.
Final standings:
5/5 Thomas Moran
4½/5 Szymon Palucha, Terrence Jiang
4/5 Dave Clark, Phil Owen, Joe Ledgerton, Tom Whitby
Many thanks to Graham for rescuing the tournament at the very start, to Craig for taking the payments and to Dave Price and Alan Kelly for setting the clocks every round to ensure everything was correct.
Photos from the evening are here: https://wallaseychessclub.uk/album/blitz-tournament-2025 .