Update (29th October)

We are receiving many, many remarks on how well the congress went and how much they enjoyed it which is very much appreciated. It's also appreciated how many people have donated towards the congress .... several of the people who could not make it due to illness donated their entry fees and Roger Greatorex is even wanting to donate his winnings! We must also mention John Cawston who kindly donated a box of Quality Street for our arbiters to consume during the event - many thanks.

We are overwhelmed .... yes, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes and yes, the Spa isn't the cheapest of venues but it's all worth the effort when we receive this kind of feedback. And we'll endeavour to make it better ... we tried to include the Junior Rapidplay but it's probably likely we'll now concentrate on the congress and add something into it for juniors. And its highly likely we'll make it a 6 section event next year but we must first wrap up this years and book next years before we can finalise anything so watch this space!

Scarborough 47th Congress - Report

Despite the withdrawals due to illness, we had a good 350+ entry level with many travelling over 300 miles to attend noting our regular attendee, Reinhard Schmerwitz, who travelled over from Germany. So many thanks to everyone. The weather was good and our congress ran very well thanks to our arbiting team from Doncaster and Douglas Vleeshhouwer from Hull looking after our FIDE rating Open & Major sections. James Fisher once again provided the bookstall from Chess & Bridge in London. We found the Spa's Ocean Room having had a refurbishment since last year resulting in their canteen area being removed from the near the entrance resulting in the bar being used for refreshments instead. This area would normally have been for our Open section but the expected higher noise levels in this area meant we had to move the open into the window area at the side. The downside here was the relatively poor lighting in the evening. In the end with Saturday evening also proving awkward we took the decision to make some adjustments and moved the tables to where the lights were best - this made a huge difference but did mean renumbering all the boards but worth the effort and ensured there were no further problems. The Open in this new location also benefited on having a sea view although we suspect they were more focused on their games. This year we welcomed Nigel Davies GM as the only grandmaster present and he was on course of claiming our first prize but blundered and just missed out allowing newcomer Koby Kalavannan FM to claim it for himself with a good 4.5 score after a long battle in round 5 being one of the last to finish. In the other sections we also saw some good first place scores of 4.5 scores from Tony Quaite in the Major, Utku Deniz Demir in the Intermediate and Nathan Madzia and Vladyslav Drabych in the Minor but only one person managed a clean sweep of 5 out of 5 and this was Daniel Wilson in the Foundation. In all we had 48 people winning a prize. Congratulations to all of them but very much hope everyone else still enjoyed their weekend despite missing out. Our full list of winners is shown below.

All results are published on chess-results.com with the following links ....

Open, Major, Inter, Minor, Foundation.

Open

Rating Prizes

Major

Rating Prizes

Intermediate

Rating Prizes

Minor

Rating Prizes

Note that Ted Ronald shared 3rd place but he has been awarded the rating prize instead.

Foundation

Rating Prizes