NICS Winter Lackadaisical
For the 3rd Rapidplay at NICS, there was a short but varied field. Another lackadaisical event with a 15+5 time control, now dubbed old man's blitz.
As usual, Round 1 matched the lower half of rated players against the upper half. and not surprisingly there were no surprises.
In round 2 some of the match-ups were much more interesting but the intense time control did not yield any unexpected result; all boards played out by rating. It looked as if everyone was playing more conservative than usual.
Round 3 had top seeds Mike Redman & Nick Pilkiewicz play off with the Ulster Champion winning out. Board 2 was a tense battle where Ian Woodfield bested Calum Leitch. On board 4 Gary Johnston managed to hold a good draw against Peter Wilson and Adrian Donford-Smith took a march on arch-rival Paul Anderson on board 6.
In round 4, most boards were one-sided with the stronger player winning out. On board 3 Mark Newman, rated down in rapidplays, bested Ian Woodfield while Drew Ferguson lost heavily to Peter Wilson on 4.
By round 5 the pairings were getting somewhat extreme due to the short field. The only close battle was between Drew Ferguson and Alan Burns where Drew demolished a speculative exchange from Alan.
By the final round Mike Redman was well clear while his main challenger, Nick Pilkiewicz, brought off the turn-up of the day losing to a sharp Gary Johnston.
As the standings show, the field clearly split by rating though within that, points tallies being relatively even. However, a good showing from Robert Lavery justifying his rise into the ranks of senior players and boosts him into pole position in the Grand Prix
Prizes
- Winner: Mike Redman
- Grading prize: Peter Wilson
