Friendly Tournament I - 3 May 2013

Good afternoon everyone.

Our first friendly tournament of the year took place on Friday 3 May 2013.  We had 16 players taking part.  They all played together – beginners and more experienced players against each other in one section.  We had about 4 beginners, the youngest being Allan Nel, representing the grade 2 class!

Round 1

The first round was an interesting one with the youngest player, Allan, playing white on board number 1!  It had the making of a great round, and a good start to the tournament.  We had 5 very interesting match ups: 

Liam Meyer and Keegan Walker, two grade seven boys, on the last board.  

Alex McKenzie and Luke Roos, two grade four boys against each other, and 

Craig Strydom and Chad McKenzie – two grade six boys against each other!  

The other two was the two Rademeyer brothers, playing against the Kritzinger sisters.

Round 2

The second round had three games that had very deserving draws.  And it had one upset – Alex McKenzie, grade 4 winning Wouter Rademeyer – last year’s grade 7 boy.  He is currently in grade 8 in Monument Park High School, in Kraaifontein.

Round 3 and 4

In the meantime, JJ Oosthuizen and Trevor Rademeyer were winning all their games they played, and met each other in the final on board number one.  The final round was won by JJ, giving him a perfect score of 4.0 / 4.0 and winning our first friendly tournament of the year.  His first prize was a gold medal and a brand new Aristea Chess T-Shirt.

CONGRATULATIONS JJ on winning your first tournament!

Results

The top 10 final results are as follows:

Place	Name	Score	Bucholz Tie-break
1	JJ Oosthuizen	4.0	8.0
2	Trevor Rademeyer	3.0	9.0
3	Wouter Rademeyer	3.0	7.5
4	Craig Strydom	3.0	7.0
5	Kian Blows	2.5	7.5
6	Chad McKenzie	2.5	7.0
7	Alex McKenzie	2.0	11.5
8	Liam Meyer	2.0	10.5
9	Mickyla du Preez	2.0	9.0
10	Keegan Walker	1.5	8.0

One thing that I must mention, is the fact that no one had a zero score – even the last placed player had at least 0.5.

Bucholtz Tie-Break system

In this tie-break system, the sums of opponents’ scores are added used.  The idea is that the same score is more valuable if achieved against players with better performances in a given tournament.  Looks like an ideal tie-breaking method and has been used since the Swiss system was invented.

Thank you

Thank you to all the players for the spirit that the games were played in.  I really enjoyed it, and it seemed from your reactions that you enjoyed the afternoon of chess as well.  I hope to see all of you at our next friendly tournament on the 17^th of May!  Tell all your friends who missed out so that they can come and join in the fun.

Photos

I took quite a number of photos during the day.  A preview is available for you to view the images on the new photos tab above the posts.  If you want to save the photos on your computer and print them, you are more than welcome to do so.

If you want to enter our next tournament, you can enter online, by clicking here to go to the link.

I hope you have a fantastic day and great weekend further!

:-)