British Rapidplay 2024

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Are the performance prizes winners listed anywhere?

The chess-results.com page says this:

Congratulations to Danny Gormally who beat Trisha Kanyamarala in the playoff for the title of British Rapidplay Champion 2024.

Congratulations also to Trishna who is the British Womens Rapidplay Champion.

Performance Prize - Rating Sections

- 2097 and above
- 1900 to 2096
- 1640 to 1899
- Up to 1639

This page currently blank:

https://www.4ncl.co.uk/rp/2024/prizewinners.htm

But will presumably be updated in due course.

Some nice photos to be able to put names to faces. Nice set of photos of the playoff and Trisha and Danny with the trophy.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Any candidates for excellent games?

Harris-Wells (1-0) in round 7 was a nice giant killing:

https://lichess.org/broadcast/british-r ... z/sNeAReLW

Royal-Gormally (0-1) went a long way to deciding the tournament:

https://lichess.org/broadcast/british-r ... h/JR68RVf2

Any more upsets or spectacular games?

[Alan Walton]

Always an enjoyable tournament, and obviously you'll always hope you are avoiding the youngsters for as long as possible

Only gripes I had about the weekend

1) The behaviour/respect to the clock needs better enforcement; one board next to me in one round had two kids playing "whack-a-mole" with the clock for the first 20 moves (pieces flying around all over the place as well); highly off putting, some better education required to get rid of this behaviour

2) With the high volume of families present, the hotel couldn't accommodate the volume, the restaurant/bar area was full all day with nowhere to sit down and eat/relax between games (only option on Saturday was to go back to your room, Sunday was stand up for 45-30 mins until the next game)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

There is always some unlucky person who meets more juniors (whether strong, or under-rated or not) than others. I wonder if anyone met a particularly high number? Probably best to define juniors as those born in 2006 or later. I know at least one person (not a junior themselves) who met 4 juniors, which is not that many over 11 rounds. It would be nice if it was easier to query the tournament metadata to find out statistics like this. Maybe it is possible, I don't know.

I did notice that IM Graeme Buckley had the misfortune(?) to play 8 juniors from the 11 rounds:

https://chess-results.com/tnr894705.asp ... =30&snr=10

All three of his losses came against juniors (Bodhana Sivanandan, Adam Nawalaniec, Oleg Verbytski). He recovered with 5 straight wins to reach 8/11, but didn't play anyone rated above 2150, which is going to play havoc with his rating!

[Kevin Thurlow]

Nice to see Danny winning a tie-break - he has had some misfortune with tie-breaks where you don't play extra games.

[Neil Graham]

One entrant, in his sixties, told me that the ages of his first six opponents added together was only 6 years above his own age.

[Graham Borrowdale]

I can only presume that young players make similar observations about the number of old fogies they see at these events.
I have to echo Alan Walton’s comments about clock bashing - 15 minutes plus increment is slow enough to pause between moves, but some of the players seemed to think they were playing bullet chess.
Perhaps explains why seniors events are so popular.

[LawrenceCooper]

One entrant, in his sixties, told me that the ages of his first six opponents added together was only 6 years above his own age.

I did notice than Yichen Han's rounds 7-10 opponents had a combined age of slightly less than his round 11 opponent.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

One entrant, in his sixties, told me that the ages of his first six opponents added together was only 6 years above his own age.

I did notice than Yichen Han's rounds 7-10 opponents had a combined age of slightly less than his round 11 opponent.

I correctly guessed three of the round 7-10 opponents (Bodhana, Supratit and Freddy), but Danny Gormally must feel old reading that! [I feel old reading that, as have just realised that Danny is only a year older than me! ]

[John Moore]

I noticed that young players, quite often, still play on until they are mated. This really is rather tedious when they are playing in a serious event or indeed against me when it's hardly a serious event. Perhaps their coaches might explain this point to them.

[Ian Thompson]

I noticed that young players, quite often, still play on until they are mated. This really is rather tedious when they are playing in a serious event or indeed against me when it's hardly a serious event. Perhaps their coaches might explain this point to them.

Not just young players - see some of these Varsity match games from last Saturday.

[Matt Mackenzie]

It really is something they mostly grow out of given time, though there will always be a few exceptions.

[Roger Lancaster]

I noticed that young players, quite often, still play on until they are mated. This really is rather tedious when they are playing in a serious event or indeed against me when it's hardly a serious event. Perhaps their coaches might explain this point to them.

I'm one such coach. In principle, I agree. What I haven't altogether worked out is how to explain this convincingly to a youngster whose last game ended when his opponent - with an extra queen, rook and much else - managed to deliver a stalemate!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Lots of coverage of this event in Leonard Barden's Guardian column:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/ ... -rapidplay

He even quotes from Alan Walton further up this thread!