Sunday 24 March 2013

Litchfield blitzes field

The ACT Junior Chess League kicked off its weekend chess season today with the ACT Junior Lightning Championship. The tournament attracted a big field of 63 players (23 up from last year), and pleasingly, a number of strong juniors turned up to play.
Despite the strong field, Fred Litchfield took out first place with a Fischer-esque 11 from 11. After the first few rounds he was essentially taking on all his closest rivals, and managed to defeat every one of them. In second place was Michael Kethro on 10/11, who after losing to Litchfield, kept chasing him for the rest of the tournament. In third pace was Harry Press with 9 points (losses to Litchfield and Kethro), a score that was in fact good enough to win outright last year.
The tournament was run by WIM Emma Guo (who was in fact eligible to play if she chose), and went off with a minimum of problems or tears. For a number of players it was also their first 'real' chess event, and based on what I saw, they all seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.

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