Since the postponement of the Bristol chess league, the university chess club have been looking for new ways to get their chess fill. Thanks to Aaron Kelly from the committee, Bristol put out an online challenge to Warwick University chess club, our biggest rivals at the BUCA championships, at least based on the sheer number of teams.
Both sides managed to put out a team of 24 players making this probably the largest team match the university has ever competed in. Games consisted of a best-of-five mini match of 3+2 blitz games on Lichess and each player played two different opponents. A massive 220 blitz games later, Warwick snuck the overall win, winning 26.5-21.5 from the mini matches, although slightly more convincingly in terms of game wins, 129-101. Still, a good fight from Bristol who were outrated on pretty much every board, although maybe this suggests we play too much blitz…
The event was a massive success and it was a lot of fun spectating the Lichess matches as they happened with all the rollercoaster ups and downs of blitz chess. Watching the amazing blunders, saves and time scrambles as a chess community has made the lockdown a little bit easier. Sadly, I don’t have any game highlights to share but they say you shouldn’t analyse a blitz game too deeply anyway.
Congratulations to the top performers for Bristol who all won both their matches; Alex Belsley on Board 1, Dan Varney on 4, Ethan Luc on 5, Aaron Kelly on 14, Daniel Owusu on 15 and Joe Soares on 20. Myself and Daoyi Wang were also undefeated on 1.5/2.
Thanks also to Taran Jina from Warwick University for organising this match on their end. Hopefully, in the coming weeks we can join together and beat our counterparts in the USA.