Rapid OR Blitz COMBO Recap!

Recap
Standings
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- RAPID
- BLITZ

Recap

We started the morning with 8 players on the list. Just enough to keep me from feeling sorry for myself. HAHA. It was a stressful week wondering if we’d have enough players to fill out TWO simultaneous tournaments. The plan was to cast a wide net. Blitz is becoming very popular so we had a G/5+1 planned. But, plenty of players prefer a little more time to think, so we included a rapid G/25+5. And to makes things even harder, both events were to be unrated hoping to infect some new and/or reluctant players with the tournament bug. We even offered more prizes!

Saturday morning I was relieved to see the Rapid had 2 new names. Phew, that was enough for the planned 3 rounds. The blitz however was stagnant. 4 was not nearly enough for 9 rounds! If it came to it we could have a double round robin I supposed, knowing there was a good chance a player or two would show up last minute.

Well, as luck would have it, waiting at the center for the doors to unlock were 4 players who found the tournament listing and took a ride from Brooklyn to meet us! 3 wanted to play blitz and 1 wanted to join the rapid. We had one more player for the rapid waiting inside, and while I didn’t intend to play (assuming two tournaments might be hard to direct) I joined the blitz to even everything out. Success!

A big concern was going to be noise from the blitz crew between rounds, but we managed not to disturb the rapid players who were all playing some serious chess! (see the games!) The conclusion of the rapid was humorous with regards to the prizes. Allan Bennett won first place and $60, but there was a 3 way tie for 2nd, and a tie for 3rd. So the $45 2nd prize and the $30 3rd prize were split 5 ways and all the remaining players got $15 each!

The blitz was still 2 players short for a 9 round event, but we had enough for a 7 round round-robin. Ian Dudley was the one to beat but the boys from Brooklyn put up some real challenges. Ian took first place with 6.5 points, an imperfect score thanks to Richard Rivera who managed a draw with Ian. Tyrell Cruz took second with 5.5 points, and Danilo Cuellar hung on to third just edging out Rivera by half a point.

Thanks to everyone for coming we hope you had a great time! Check out the standings below and view ALL the games from the main board in each section. We will definitely try this again!