Rapid Teams 2012

This tournament was a good innovation and a lot of fun I think. We almost managed two 7 board matches every round, and the teams were reasonably stable and coherent. The winning Capablancans put up the same seven players in each of the six rounds, and the second place Karpovians did almost as well. Perhaps consistency is the key to success ?

Full results below. Credit in particular to Scott Wastney for stellar play and 4/5 (not counting a win by default) on board 1. Also to Anthony Ker for getting into the spirit of things and abandoning his normal repertoire to play Karpovian openings instead. Some great results on the lower boards from Irek and Layla Timergazi, Paul Frost (5.5 out of 6!) and Ken Heaton (5 out of 5! [not counting a win by default]). Thanks to Ian for taking on a trickier than usual organisational job and for sacrificing his own enjoyment by making himself a super-sub only.

I reconstructed most of my games (perhaps slightly less than 100% accurately in all cases) for Ian's blog. It's not too late for you to do the same, email your game(s) to Ian and no doubt he will publish them.

Actually for the record it is amusing to note that the decisive part of my two remaining games comprised only 6 moves in one case and 1 move (?!) in the other. Against Ross (black), my game went 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4 Nf6 4.e3 e5? 5.Nxe5 {hoping for} Bxb4?? 6.Qa4+! {winning a piece} 1-0 {eventually}. Against Ian (white) my game went 1.c4 2.b5?? 1-0 {quite quickly}. I think I can confidently claim that my insane attempt to invent a new opening (The accelerated Benko gambit perhaps?) on the spur of the moment, at the board, gave me a completely lost position after one move. Ian confidently dispatched me, demonstrating that white has the pawn and the compensation. In general I enjoyed the rapid time limit, it made it possible to just play, without overthinking things. But this last game was an exception to this enjoyment principle for me if not for Ian!