The Western Province Team Blitz Championships took place at the club on Tuesday evening. We managed to put together 2 teams, with 11 teams making up the field. The format was round robin, with a bye making up the even number of teams.
The Claremont teams for the event were...
Claremont A: Charles de Villers, Jacque Tsalicoglou, Stephen Galleid, Reggie Solomon, Andrew Fereday.
Claremont B: Mischek Bwalya, James Gaylard, L..., Errol Bathurst, Daniel Brandt, with me replacing James for the last 4 games. If you know who the "L..." was, please tell me in the comments section for this article.
Overall, the event ran pretty smoothly. It started late, finished very late, and it appeared that a good time was had by all. There were no significant disputes that I was aware of - quite remarkable for 275 games of blitz.
Charles was in fine form, scoring 10/10 on board 1! Also impressive was returning prodigal son, Jacque Tsalicoglou, scoring 9/10 on board 2. Ironically, his only loss was to another of those prodigal family members, Tinto Seotloadi, who will hopefully become a "returning" one too one of these days.
It was an important event for Steinitz, who were going for their 10th consecutive win in this annual event. However, both Stellenboch and Mitchell's Plain were able to finish ahead of them this year, with Stellenbosch taking the title. Claremont A finished a very creditable 4th.
Claremont B struggled, with their highlight possibly being their performance against the bye, which was as good as any team managed all night.
Stellenbosch featured the father and son pair of Sarel and Henry Steel. Jacque very modestly put Henry's loss to him, in the Claremont A vs Stellenbosch match, down to Henry having to focus on exams at the moment. I did spot Henry carrying around a folder of notes, which I presume was something for his exams - or was it his opening repertoire?
I tried to record a few of the games before I was drafted into the B team to replace James, who had to leave, but I found out that it's not easy to keep up with good blitz players banging out the moves machine-gun style. I managed to get Charles' first game, against Benny Levin, though. It's probably one that Benny would rather forget, but since it's the only complete game I have from the event, I'll include it here:
de Villiers,C - Levin,B [A90] WP Team Blitz , 07.11.2006
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 f5 4.g3 Nf6 5.Bg2 c6 6.Nh3 Bd6 7.Bf4 0-0 8.0-0 h6 9.Bxd6 Qxd6 10.Nf4 g5 11.Ng6 Rf7 12.Ne5 Rg7 13.Qc2 Bd7 14.Rad1 Be8 15.cxd5 cxd5 16.Qb3 Bc6 17.Nb5 Qe7 18.Rc1 a6 19.Nc3 Qd6 20.Na4 Nbd7 21.Nxc6 bxc6 22.Qb7
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22...c5 Played after much thought (by blitz standards). 23.Qxa8+ Benny let out a disappointed grumble and shook his head. 23...Kh7 24.Nxc5 Nb6 25.Qxa6 Ne4 26.a4 Qb8 27.Nxe6 Re7 28.Rc6 Nc4 29.Nc5 Qf8 30.Nxe4 fxe4 31.Qc8 Nd2 32.Qxf8 1-0
3 comments:
What a wonderful initiativem Travers. I see this being a tremendous asset for CCC. Lets all use it!! A very entertaining article on the WP team blitz. Thank you.
Nice write up Travers! Definitely a great addition for the club. Lets try our best to keep this up to date.
I agree with the above comments, this is indeed an excellent initiative. I look forward to reading more of these articles that are entertaining and informative. Keep up the good work!
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