Bristol Blitz 2022

The 3^rd Bristol Blitz Championship took place on the 2^nd April, and despite many students going home for the Easter break, or saving their preparation for the GM simul the next day, three brave souls from the university entered. Bence Horanyi and Jonas Zurba joined me and even with reduced numbers, Jonas was still keen to cause beef with Warwick University, although they are far too nice to engage with any of his nonsense.

Naturally the games are all lost to the ether of time, although there were kindly supplied scoresheets if anyone fancied making a single move before deciding to stop notating with under five minutes on their clock. Since Blitz rating were being used it meant some very strong players had relatively low rating, which lead to some tough pairings from round 1, myself especially being fortunate to draw against Aron Saunders at the start, although perhaps this Swiss gambit gave a couple of easier rounds to warm me up.

Bence started what was ultimately going to be a very swingy tournament. He lost the first round, won the second, and oscillated back and forth between the two results to finish on 4.0/9. If only he had started the day with a win instead. I had a strong start and only drew against Downend players all day. A win on top board against IM James Sherwin even put me into joint first with three rounds to go. I couldn’t maintain the form and scored a couple of losses to finish in joint 11^th on 5.5/8, although I’m sure that young junior will remember the day they beat someone who beat someone who beat Bobby Fischer. The chess fleece curse has been lifted.

However, the star of the day was Jonas who finished well above his rating, which was much more representative than some of the extremes we saw elsewhere, finishing equal 15^th on 5.0/8 with some very good company. A draw against the talented junior Indy Southcott-Moyers may be well remembered in the years to come. This won him the rating prize with three other players and netted him a cool £3 profit for the day. He’s naturally in very good spirits and I’m sure he’ll buy everyone a drink tonight at the usual chess social.