Michael Botteley’s withdrawal saw only four Bedford players in the final two round shake-up, played at the OU yesterday.
Round 5 produced the perfect results with Paul Habershon, Steve Ledger, Steve Pike and Ben Pike beating Graham Borrowdale, Adrain Elwin, Colin Solloway and Karthik Ramesh respectively.
This setup a nail-biting last round with Paul on 4½ playing black against Steve L on 4, the rest of the field a further half point adrift. The game is worth playing through although the sight of Steve winning an even (or worse) endgame will be familiar to most of us!
So Steve retained his title with 5 points and Paul was second with 4½.
Steve P who beat Peter Taylor won the “slow starter prize” (damming with faint praise!) with 3½ points after only managing 1 from the first 3 rounds. Ben lost to Adrian Elwin in the final round so finished on 2½ – not a bad result given that five of his six opponents were graded 169 or better!
Many thanks to Brian and Adrian for organising the tournament.
A full list of results may be found here.
Adrian presented the Individual shield to Steve L and the Beds League Division 1 cup, won by Bedford A, to Paul. Ben took some photos on his phone that typify chess players winning trophies the world over!
