Well, we can safely say we had a fantastic weekend at Millfield. Not only did the tournament exceed our expectation, but my goodness so did our team’s performance !
Saturday Oct 14th
We arrived for 9.30am and first of all there were the two qualifying rounds to play in the morning. From this, the top 6 teams would go through to the main championship for another 5 rounds to decide the Millfield International Champions for 2018. The playing hall was packed with players, team support and several Millfield organisers.
A quick coffee, team talk, and Round One began. By the way, the time control was 35mins with a 10sec increment.
Our first, and really only aim, was to qualify for the main championship. This we did with the 3rd best qualifying score. 7/14 in the first round and 6.5/14 in Round Two. Our total of 13.5/24 was a fair bit behind Gonzaga College Dublin, but we easily qualified. What a start.. and mission accomplished !
Then in the afternoon there were the first two rounds of the main championship and then 3 more on Sunday. Hang on, before all this was lunch, and what a lunch in Millfield’s lovely and spacious restaurant. Well I can’t call it a canteen !
Well fed, we returned to the playing hall for Round One of the main championship. All qualifying teams went back to zero points and off we went. Would you believe it we scored our highest round score yet with 8/12, and then in Round Two another 8/12 ! So with three rounds still to go on Sunday we were on 16/24, and in 2nd place. Yes 2nd place ! Gonzaga College were lying in 1st with 18.5 points, and RGS Guildford 3rd on 14.5 points.
The icing on the cake for a most memorable day, was that we had our very own team coach in the distinguished form of IM Chris Beaumont. Chris spent all day going over our players’games after they had followed his request to notate their games. Other teams also had an accompanying coach and we are very grateful to the Bristol League for financially supporting the team by allowing us to bring Chris as our coach. This was extremely helpful and positive for the team, and all weekend there was a great team spirit, with everyone supporting each other.
Sunday October 15th
A bit of a queue to sign in when we arrived, but all our 12 were in place just in time for Round Four.
Alongside the main championship was another 5 round tournament for those teams that hadn’t qualified for the main event. One team in this event, St Andrew’s College, were short of a player so Bilal and Dwiti played for them. In fact Bilal was their 3rd highest scorer with 3/5 ! Well played Bilal.
After Round Three we still held 2nd place position with our best score of the whole championship, 8.5/12 ! We only suffered two loses in this round, and still kept our 1.5 margin ahead of RGS Guildford. However, the mighty Gonzaga College were running away with it (even at this stage) with a mammoth 29/36 points !
Round Four was the only down point for the weekend, and goodness knows where it came from. We only scored 2.5/12 ! We were a bit stunned, but by now we expected so much. Guildford leap frogged us into 2nd position with a solid 7/12 and now 3.5 points ahead of us, and pushing us down to 3rd. Well I say pushing us down to 3rd, but to imagine us in this position before the tournament started would have delighted us. I should point out here that RGS Guildford had amazing strength in their top four boards, with board 4 having an ECF grade of 186 ! But we certainly matched, or were better than them on the middle/lower boards. Gonzaga College were just strong all the way through ! It is fair to say. They didn’t have a weakness, and just another 10/12 in Round Four.
So, to the final round. Amazingly our players remained extremely optimistic, and still thought they could overcome the deficit of 3.5 points. What spirit, every single game they had played over the weekend was so demanding, apart from the odd one or two from the ruthless play from Aron :). This event was certainly no walk in the park.
We started the final round with a bang, and suddenly point after point came our way, and even I started to dream. However, it was so tough at the top and although we had clawed back 1.5 points from Guildford we just fell two points short in the end with a final score of 35/60 and finished in 3rd place. Guildford were 2nd with 37/60, and the Gonzaga machine scored a whopping 48/60 to retain the title of
‘Millfield International Chess Champions for 2018’, and didn’t they deserve it !
So to sum up our first Millfield International Chess experience, I would say all the players in the squad were amazing, and certainly played like ‘Young Guns’ for sure. Everyone contributed with points and great team spirit (our first time together as such a big team by the way). All our players supported each other which was fantastic to see. Team spirit was always high 🙂
Our workaholic coach Mr C Beaumont looked at over 50 rapid play games at the weekend, with a constant queue at his door, so to speak. We also, as well as 3rd place, had some individual honours, and two prize winners 🙂
Kandara Archarya Best Under 12 player
Kandara Archarya Top Girl performer
Max Walker Board Four, best player score (3.5/5 points).
This was a fantastic effort by our newly formed Bristol League Junior team. This may have been our debut at The Millfield International, but we certainly made our mark !
What is also worth mentioning is that we had a very young team, and all the same players will again be eligible to play next year. All the players know this, are stronger for their experience, and have no doubt, are ready to challenge even harder next year !
We would all like to send a special thanks to Chris Strong for being there all weekend to give great support and encouragement to all our players. All the parents for arranging lifts and being so enthusiastic. Finally, to Geoff Gammon and Dave Tipper for coming down over the weekend to watch and support the team. It is all very much appreciated.
John Stubbs
(Junior Officer – Bristol Chess League))
Great choice and layout of photos Mr Kan 🙂
Just want to say it was a great first experience of a tournament for Bilal, many thanks to John for organising, encouraging us (& taking us there!). Met some lovely parents, great atmosphere & neverending refresreshments! Well done to all the juniors & a very supportive team at Downend. Special thanks to David Kan for his time in creating this dedicated juniors site 👍👍
Excellent report as always. Thanks David!
Looking forward to returning next year. It was a fantastic event!
Thank you Asiyah and Keyur for your nice (and supportive) comments.
It was indeed a special event… Better than any of us could have imagined.
We have such a young team, that our goal is definitely to compete for top spot in the next couple of years.
Go ‘Young Guns’ go !