8th Mike Closs Memorial Tournament - Report

As mentioned yesterday, today brought the 8th Mike Closs Memorial Tournament.

I replaced the unavailable defending champion Julian Allinson in this year's line-up, thus making my tournament debut after seven years of 'merely' being in the role of organiser.

The players had to pick a comedy-themed envelope to determine the pairings.
The others chose first and left me with Tony Hancock. Stone me, what a life!

Everything is ready and now I await the guest stars 

Play was soon underway. The four players had to play each other four times at 5-minute chess.

Kevin Winter

David Baillie - former champion of this event
and the only person to have played in all eight.

Richard Harris

Me, hard at work

Richard arrived with gifts! He had spent part of the morning baking excellent blueberry muffins. Chess tournaments are civilised here at Marsh Towers.

The scores of the first cycle of games were:

Sean Marsh: 5.5/6
Kevin Winter 3.5/6
David Baillie 3/6
Richard Harris 0/6

I drew against Kevin in the final game of the first cycle when Kevin should really have won.

Enjoying the muffins at half-time

The second cycle saw the pace increase and brought the most closely contested games.

Scores of the second and final cycle of games:

Sean Marsh: 4.5/6
David Baillie 4/6
Kevin Winter 3.5/6
Richard Harris 0/6

I lost the final game of the event when I missed a key move in Kevin's attack. I had a lost position in one of the games against David too but managed to hold a draw.

Final scores:

Sean Marsh: 10/12
David Baillie 7/12
Kevin Winter 7/12
Richard Harris 0/12

All of the games were hard-fought and many sacrifices were played. Mike would have enjoyed the games, that's for sure.

Champion

Lunch after the tough battles

Thank you, everyone. The 9th Mike Closs Memorial Tournament will definitely go ahead in 2018.