Suffolk are promoted …

Last Monday, for the first time, we took part in the Inter County Battle Blitz.  This is an event run by Alex Holowczak and is formed of two divisions.  We joined in Division 2 while our friends in Essex Junior Chess, having been promoted to Division 1 in the last round, were playing in Division 1.The event took the form of an Arena tournament played over 90 minutes, and with 10 teams in Division 2 and 144 players representing their local teams, this was a big event.  We were delighted that no less than 21 players played for Suffolk in this competition – a great turn out.  So – what happened? Well, we came second – a fantastic result.  For much of the event we were neck and neck with Yorkshire and Hampshire and at times in first place.  As the event wore on, Yorkshire pulled away to take a well deserved first place and the race was on between Hampshire and Suffolk for the Silver medal position.  This went down to the wire and some great results in the last few minutes secured our silver medal position – well played to all.

In an outstanding performance meancactus scored 26 points for the team, a scored equalled only by RowanKent and meancactus performed at 134points above his grade – to score so many points and outperform your grade is an really excellent.  ADannatt26 also had an excellent event.  Not only did he score 18 points for the team, he played to a performance grade of 1798, which is no less than 221 points above his Lichess grade – another great effort. derpydough123, understoodporcupine, Mystic17 and RowanKent were also among the players to play well above their grade.  Well done to all these players.  Well played also to WiseCrabbyCoconut who scored no less than 19 points, and to Midnight17 and HarryOscar who both scored 18 points, and also to Sana333 who is a relatively new player, but who scored 12 points.

We have congratulated lots of players and I would like to mention everyone, but that would be a very long article.  But, what pleased me the most about our performance was how well the team performed as a whole.  You need 2 things among others to succeed in these events.  You do need your top players, they will score you points.  But that is not enough.  To borrow a cricketing phrase, you need to bat a long way down the order.  What I mean by this is that you need to be able to score plenty of points throughout the team.  Firstly, you need all those points, and secondly, players will always have an off day so we need a strong team.  And that is what the team did so well.  Everyone contributed to the result – so well done to the whole team.

You can see the full results and all the games here: lichess.org/tournament/ApuMThsZ

So, where does that leave us? – in Division 1!  How amazing is that?  Our first match in Division 1 will be on Monday 4th January at 6pm.  We will send out a link to the event as soon as we are able to, most likely a week before.