Bristol Chess Congress
The Bristol Winter Congress 2017
The Bristol Winter Congress was held at Bristol Grammar School November 24th – 26th.
The Winter Congress was notable for its domination by juniors who made up a large proportion of all three sections. However, this time the more experienced adults managed to hold their own for the top places despite the daunting opposition.
98 players competed in the three sections, the second highest number of entries in our tournaments. 22 juniors took part and there were standout performances by Max French, Svyatoslav Vorobyev, Max Walker, and Kandara Acharya.
The Minor section was particularly well supported. For the next tournament we will do some rearranging of the grade boundaries to rebalance the Major section, which was the smallest this time around.
FIDE rated Open
Keith Arkell had a particularly tough game against Lewis Martin and though a pawn down in the rook ending he had the better winning chances, but in the end decided to steer it into a draw and try to win the final round. He then proved too tough for the Russian junior Svyatoslav Vorobyev and ended up the clear winner with Lewis beating another junior, Chirag Hosdurga, for second. Max French drew his final game to end up in the third-place group along with Svyatoslav, Horia Bogdan from Bath and Chris Smith of North Bristol.
For full results see here.
Major
Somerset junior Max Walker was on fire with four straight wins but Stephen Williams proved too canny in the final round and managed to dominate the game despite a tough fightback. Chris Strong proved his competitive ability with an unbeaten 4/5 to join Max in second place.
For full results see here.
Minor
This was a large section and there was a particularly fine performance by nine year old Kandara Acharya who was only able to play three of the rounds but won them all! Alistair Drummond managed to stay ahead with a final round draw to win the tournament, and after a long final game Caspian Fowler from Millfield School joined Alistair Marston and Matthew Goatcher in second place.
For full results see here.
