In this year’s October rapidplay, at The Old Grammar School, there were 35 player entries across the three sections.Of these, there were 10 junior playing. Five of them were from Downend & Fishponds Chess club, and the others from outside of the Bristol League.
Open Section : Oliver Stubbs and Toby Kan.
Major Section : Fedor Turetskiy and Aron Saunders.
Minor Section : Bilal Ahmed.
It was Bilal’s first Chipping Sodbury event and he scored 2.5/5. Bilal’s best game was an excellent draw with a 112 graded player, nearly double his estimated current grade of 60 ! Well played Bilal.
Fedor and Aron found themselves to be the two lowest seeds in the Major Section, but after their excellent form at The Millfield International, this was no concern to them at all ! As I expected, they performed extremely well. They both scored a very impressive 3/5, and finished 6= out of 15 players.
Aron’s best win was against Adrian Champion (143) ! Fedors’s best win was against Dave Tipper (144) ! They are both improving so fast, literally game by game ! Well played to them both !
In The Open Oliver was 5th seed, and Toby 10th seed. There were only 11 players in this section, but it was very strong at the top, with two titled players; 85 year old legend IM James T Sherwin. Jim was many years ago the American Blitz champion, also Head of The American Chess Federation, and most famous for playing Bobby Fischer several times in the American Championship, including beating him ! The other titled player was FM Lewis Martin. Lewis has played, and won, the Chipping Sodbury Rapidplay on several occasions, and was recently awarded his FM title.
So, Oliver and Toby were surely going to be tested. This was Toby’s first crack in The Open Section, and my goodness he played like he has been there all his life ! Toby scored an extremely impressive 3/5 points ! With two wins and two draws. His only loses to Lewis Martin and James T Sherwin ! They better seriously watch it at the next Chipping Sodbury Rapidplay (in April 2019 by the way), Toby will be six months older then !
Toby also very deservedly won the Junior prize with his 3/5 ! There were other juniors on 3/5, but for Toby to score 3/5 in the very competitive Open.. made it no contest ! Well played Toby.
Oliver scored 2.5/6 including a one point bye. Certainly not what he was after, as he sets himself high standards. However, he was pleased with his fighting draw against James Sherwin ! Well played Oliver !
I also need to mention Gabriel Keech the winner of the Minor Section. Gabriel is a Somerset junior and travelled up from Frome to play. This is the first time Gabriel has played at Chipping Sodbury, and what a fine debut it was. His excellent winning score 4.5/6. Well played Gabriel !
All photos courtesy of Chris Lamming. (Except Bilal and J.Sherwin v T.Kan)
To see Toby on board 1 of the Open, playing Lewis was delightful. He is improving so fast. Lovely report and great photos.
Very nice report and photographs. We have a picture of the photographer taking a picture of IM James T Sherwin if you would like it.
Hi a photo of Photographer taking photograph of Jams T would be interesting to see 🙂
Please send to David,
Thank you !