Last Thursday at the club we held our annual blitz championship. An 8-round showdown with levels from local patzer to FIDE Master. The night was filled with upsets, an early champion, some great chess and in standard blitz fashion, lots of flagging.

Previous joint-champions Daniel Seaton and Colin Purdon were both in attendance, with Daniel resigning himself to giving up the title before the games even began! The field was much stronger than last year, as members FM Jon Ady, Simon Knight and Adrian Wallace were new joiners this year, bringing up the average rating significantly.

The Champion

A huge congratulations to Simon Knight, who won the tournament before the start of the last round! Two points clear heading into round 8, Simon held a performance of 7/7 with six wins and one full-point bye at that point. Sadly he was to face FM Jon Ady in the final round and suffered a loss, ending on 7/8. Nevertheless, Simon takes the title from last year’s joint-champions Daniel and Colin with a championship-worthy performance.

Simon had joined the club for the first time that week to participate, and we are incredibly happy to welcome him for our summer of tournaments and championships. I suspect the time at our casual Sunday afternoons at Pine Ridge Golf Club had given Simon all the inside information needed to cut through the competition and earn the title! Well played, and we hope to see you at more of our events in the future.

Blitz is always a roll of the dice. In 3+2 time control over the board, even the best players may stop and think for a second too long, and get into time trouble. For this reason, blitz events are always a mixed bag of expected results, and unexpected upsets. Here are the full standings after round 8:

After unluckily flagging in a round 2 matchup against Steve Harley, winner of last year’s Open Blitz FM Jon Ady warned me you must not “fall in love with the position” – Going to show that even master-level players may think for a moment too long and suffer the consequences.

Warren Wright took down A-team legend Tim Mowlem in round 6, and ended on a respectable 4/8 with a high performance rating a few hundred points over his current rating! Warren’s style of all-out attack is seems very well suited to the blitz time control, well played Warren.

The Club Blitz started the 2025 summer cirucit of events with a bang, and I for one am looking forward to the next tournament!

Maybe I may even win one… one can only hope.