2026 Camberley Keith Richardson Rapid Play Tournament
The 2026 Keith Richardson Memorial Tournament was held on Saturday 26th Sep at Camberley Chess Club. Keith was a valued club member from the 1970s, an International Correspondence Grandmaster and very well known in the English chess community. He played for the club right up to his death in 2017. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease and a significant contribution to Parkinson’s UK will be made from this events proceeds.
This was the 9th Keith Richardson event and the format was unchanged from all previous years, as one single section, 6 rounds of Rapidplay, 20 mins plus 5 sec increment . This gave the opportunity for participants to experience playing against a wide variety of rating strengths.
Prize winners
There were some very impressive performances and in particular from the many juniors who had entered and many close finishes particularly in the last couple of rounds.
- However, there was a clear winner with 6 point out of 6, Peter Large, winning the 1st placed prize of £150. Peter also wins the FREE first year Camberley Club membership for the highest placed non club member.
- In 2nd place was club member Jon Ady with 5 points out 6, winning the £100 2nd place prize.
- There were 5 players all with the same 4.5 points: Aditya Sengupta, Mohammad Mozaffari, Harry Chan, Adrian Wallace and Paul Sloane.
- So, the 3rd placed prize of £50 went to club member and junior Aditya Sengupta on tie-break.
- Harry Chan won the Highest placed junior prize of £50 with a fantastic set of results (and an event performance rating of 1895) and also won the FREE first year Camberley Club membership for the highest placed JUNIOR non club member.
- The Under 1600 rating prize of £50 went to Lewis Mallett who scored 3.5 points.
A new prize was introduced this year, the “David and Goliath Prize” awarded to the player who beats an opponent whose rating has the biggest rating difference from their own rating.
- The David and Goliath Prize was won by junior club member Jake Meiring, rated 986, who beat a 1598 player, and had an event performance rating of 1321.
Congratulations to all the winners:
Thanks
Special thanks to Thomas West for doing an excellent job as the tournament ECF arbiter, Linda and Bob Wooding for providing and serving the widely acclaimed refreshments throughout the event, and Charlotte Butler who ran the Swiss-Manger pairing software on the day and kept the game by game results up to date as they happened via chess-results on the big screen.
Also thanks to Warren Wright and everyone else who helped with the setting up and the clearing away on the day.
Also thanks to Steve Harley and Martin Wallman for organising the whole event.
Thanks to all the participants for supporting this event and making it so friendly and enjoyable.
There were many very positive comments about the event, like these:
- “Hi thank you so much to everyone that helped and organised the tournament yesterday, I really enjoyed it!”
- “Thank you very much for the Camberley Chess club and its leadership for arranging a fantastic event. The whole event ran on a time , well organized and well fed”
- “It was great.. a very well run Tournament by everyone involved.. a big thankyou from me to Martin & Steve for making it the success it was on the day.”
- “Well done, Camberley Chess Club really know how to run a chess tournament!”
The full results can be seen below, and if you click on the image you can get further details by round, performance ratings etc. There are also many photos below too.
Tournament results
Tournament Photos
