The Nottingham heat of the ECF UK Blitz Championship Qualifiers was held at the High School on Sunday with 37 players each playing 15 games at a rate of 3’ + 2”. With at least 25 minutes between rounds, it was a relatively leisurely pace. The national emergency test alarm fell nicely between rounds, with the control team sensibly starting a round 5 minutes early to be on the safe side.

The High School Canteen is a very good venue. The event was run smoothly and efficiently by an excellent team consisting of Eddie Jones, Hambel Willow, Simon Scott, John Bowley and Marcel Taylor. A nice feature was the use of a very large screen to display the draw. Surprisingly, there were no refreshments, not even tea making facilities. A pre event warning would have been helpful.

Only one person qualified for the final in November, which took the edge off the competition as all the top seeds had played each other by about round 7 or 8. Our local hope, Jonah Willow, missed out by half a point after losing to the eventual winner, and fellow IM, Aaravamudhan Balaji, and drawing with top seed (by rating), FM Stanley Badacsonyi.

The event used FIDE Blitz ratings so didn’t always reflect a player’s true strength, for example WFM Elis Denele Dicen was listed as just 1939 but her ECF Standard Play rating is 2229.

Three Gambit members played. Mike B and Drag scored 7.5 points while Marian got 7. They won all of their games against opponents seeded in the bottom half of the draw but while Marian won all his points against them and Drag got 6 of his, Mike B played only 3 of them. His draw, as expected, was much tougher, as he ended up playing, and unfortunately losing to, 7 of the top 9 seeds, including the top 4. Drag lost to 5 of them, including the winner and the top seed, and Marian lost to 3 of them, including the top seed.

There were some local battles. Mike B came second against Jonah, drew with the rapidly improving teenager Ben Humphreys (who has now passed 2000) and beat Somton Ukken, Annabelle Marais and Drag (who gifted Mike a knight). Drag lost to Somton but drew with Anita Somton and beat Willem Marais, Annabelle Marais and Frank Richmond (who fell for Drag’s trap, losing a bishop). Marian lost to Ben Humphreys and Frank Richmond but beat Sean Smithson.

For those of us who had no chance of winning the event it was still a very enjoyable day, and where else would someone get to play an IM? One piece of useful advice: when the IM offers to swap queens, accept the offer rather than stupidly picking up another piece and losing your queen.