Christmas Handicap

Jonathan Welton organised this year’s Christmas Handicap, which was played yesterday (Wednesday 6th) and he has provided the following report:

The first online Christmas Time Handicap was expected to be a chaotic affair, and it exceeded expectations.  We had a generous 16 players, a good mix of adult and juniors, all briefed with the knowledge of how to adjust timers on lichess to match the speed handicaps. But, unfortunately, when we started to play we found that lichess doesn’t allow timers to be adjusted within the confines of a swiss tournament. This caused me to despair we would be unable to continue, but the players took the initiative, abandoned the swiss format, and simply challenged one another to pair-wise games, which could be adjusted to the speed handicap time distribution, and this proceeded successfully for most people. It certainly proved to be an entertaining event.

The evening’s winner by a considerable margin was Arjit Das, playing off an official ECF rapid grade, who won 13 games, including a run of 9 consecutive wins, and losing only one game. Well done Arjit!

Second place on a points basis was Anrudh (7 points), followed closely by Louise and Harvey on 6.5

Second place on a percentage score basis was Louise, (73%) followed very closely by Daniel (72%).

Thank you all for playing and making the night a very memorable, and possibly unique, one in the club’s history. Hopefully next year we can all look forward to being back to a face-to-face Christmas handicap.