Mike Closs Memorial Tournament: Results

Mike Closs Memorial Tournament

The Scores

Here's the companion piece to our pictorial report.

I invited players from all of Mike's chess clubs (Redcar, Guisborough, Middlesbrough, Elmwood and The Griffin), plus some of our finest junior stars. The format saw the players divided into four groups, with the top two players from each group advancing to the quarter-finals of a KO event.

Players eliminated at the group stage went on to contest an all-play-all '5-minute' tournament.

The theme of the event was to play the openings Mike loved to use. I placed positions from the Danish Gambit, Sicilian Dragon, Modern Defence, Sicilian Wing Gambit, French Wing Gambit and Milner Barry Gambit into envelopes and Sandra Closs selected one at random at the start of each round. The players then tossed for colours and the games began.

Group Stage

Featuring the Modern Defence, Sicilian Dragon and Sicilian Wing Gambit

Norman Stephenson XX 1-0 1-0 2

Dave Edmunds 0-1 XX 1-0 1

Arjun Tapasvi 0-1 0-1 XX 0

David Wise XX 1-0 1-0 1-0 3

Kevin Winter 0-1 XX 0.5 1-0 1.5

Ian Elcoate 0-1 0.5 XX 1-0 1.5

Aidan Garner 0-1 0-1 0-1 XX 0

Play-off: Ian Elcoate 1, Kevin Winter 0

John Garnett XX 0-1 1-0 1-0 2

Chris Duggan 1-0 XX 1-0 1-0 3

Niall Garner 0-1 0-1 XX 1-0 1

Elliot Closs 0-1 0-1 0-1 XX 0

Julian Allinson XX 0.5 1-0 1-0 2.5

David Baillie 0.5 XX 0-1 1-0 1.5

Mike Creaney 0-1 1-0 XX 0.5 1.5

Dhruv Tapasvi 0-1 0-1 0.5 XX 0.5

Play-off: David Baillie 1, Mike Creaney 0

Quarter-finals

Featuring the Milner Barry Gambit

John Garnett 0-1 Norman Stephenson

Dave Edmunds 0-1 Chris Duggan (after replay)

Julian Allinson 1-0 Ian Elcoate

David Baillie 0-1 David Wise

Semi-finals

Featuring the French Wing Gambit

Julian Allinson 1-0 Norman Stephenson (after replay)

David Wise 1-0 Chris Duggan

Final

Featuring the Danish Gambit

David Wise 0-1 Julian Allinson

5-Minute Tournament

5/5: Mike Creaney

3.5/5: Kevin Winter

2.5/5: Niall Garner & James Garner

1.5/5: Aidan Garner

0/5: Elliot Closs

Still to come...two games from the tournament. One a brilliance, the other an unclear scrap!