Yesterday the Even Steven blitz tournament was held. This is the 2nd year that we try this format for a blitz tournament and in general people seem to be happy with it.
The format is a time handicap so that the stronger player in some cases has to play with 1 minute vs 9 minutes for the lower rated albeit with a 1 second increment. The rules are if the rating difference is over 100 then its 4 vs 6, if it’s over 200 it’s 3 vs 7 etc….
Last year this tournament was won by online blitz/bullet specialist Yaacov Norowitz. This year we had an upset right in the first round when he lost surprisingly to local girl Hallgerdur Helga Thorsteinsdottir who used her time handicap and managed to flag Yaacov although she also had a winning position for a while before that.
Vladimir Hamitevici started strongly and had a full house after 5 rounds before conceding a draw to Idany Pouya who had trailed him with half a point. These two were in the lead for most of the tournament but Yaacov made a late surge and eventually caught up in the last round when he beat Hamitevici. Hamitevici however held a better tiebreak and prevailed as the winner with Yaacov 2nd. Pouya had the best tiebreak of those with 7 out of 9.
In general the atmosphere was good and after some early projector problems the tournament ran rather smoothly after that. Some inevitable incidents and disputes got dealt with rather peacefully. For instance in the early rounds people struggled setting the clocks and in some cases the increment wasn’t working in some games. Some draws were agreed because of this etc and everybody was in good spirits. Also there was one funny incident when white promoted her b7 pawn by putting a queen on b8 but failed to remove the pawn. Black went on playing, made his own queen and then moved once again before pointing out the illegal move by white. At that point however black had accepted the illegal move by not claiming it immeditaely and therefore white could play on with the extra b7 pawn which was enough to win 😉
The results you can find here: http://chess-results.com/tnr126978.aspx?lan=1&art=1&wi=821
