August Blitz Results

Slightly more players attended the August blitz, held on Thursday 29th August, than in the previous couple of months, doubtless due to the end of the unfortunately warm and dry weather we were suffering from in June and July.  The tournament was tightly contested, but in the end the winner, as in January and March this year, was Zalan Nemeth, with six points out of seven.  This will presumably be Zalan’s last blitz tournament for a while, as he is leaving us to go to university in Dublin; we wish him well there, and do hope to see him whenever he is able to visit Galway.

There was a tie for second place between Brendan Buckley, Denis Ruchko, and Pete Morriss, all on five points; Denis, incidentally, was the player who managed to take a point off Zalan, though he somehow didn’t manage to repeat that feat against Brendan and Pete.  The rating prize, for the best player rated in the bottom half, was won by Paul Ward with 4 points, beating Pete and last month’s winner Jason Rawlinson, amongst others.  Paul is usually considered to be too strong to be eligible for the rating prize, but this tournament was a particularly strong one, so that the cut-off point for the prize had to be set at under-1600.