Easter 2013 Kitchen Table Café in the Park Invitational

I ran another tournament this morning at the Kitchen Table Café in East Ham Central Park . This was for students I teach here in Olympic Newham and also friends and family. I had been concerned that I had invited too many people - the venue, the time required and my organisational capabilites would have struggled with more than 32 competitors - but 25 showed up. This was a good number and included seven adults. The entrants included at least six chess.com members - TheTrickyOne (Richard S), mr_inappropriate (Javaid), chipboard (Richard B), JPBright (Jonathan), MichaelBE6 (Michael) and Cruiseylee78 (Lee).

The format was a five-round Swiss over two and a half hours. the top two boards had clocks with a 12+2 time control: 12 minutes with a two-second increment per move. I might gradually invest in more clocks since one or two games outside the top two boards would have benefitted from them.

I thought that pre-tournament favourites were Richard S, Lee and Moaz. Richard used to be 160 BCF; Lee is 120 ECF and improving fast; and Moaz tends to score 50% against me. I also thought that Javaid would do well (1562 here on chess.com). Jerzy Dybowski, a FIDE Master, brought his three sons - whom, he said, were around 90-100 ECF. Jerzy himself did not compete.

I seeded the first round - adults by perceived strength and others by age and pairing top half against lower half. Four games went against seeding, including wins for two of Jerzy's sons - Oscar and Robert.

After three rounds three players shared the lead on 3/3. Two of them, Richard S and Moaz, then drew on board one, while the third, Oscar, floated down to beat Jonathan, who had dropped only half a point until then.

The final round saw the following top pairings:

Oscar (4) vs Richard S (3 1/2)

Moaz (3 1/2) vs Artur (3)

Javaid (3) vs Lee (3)

Jonathan (2 1/2) vs Jason (3)

Richard and Moaz both won to leave them joint top - Moaz winning via sum-of-opponents'-scores tie break; Javaid consigned Lee to his second loss of the tournament; and Jonathan won to finish on fifth place and the highest scoring of my three competing sons.

Nisha, a mother of another competitor, was really pleased to compete in her first tournament and her 3/5 secured the ladies' prize.

Thank you again to Anne Cross and her staff at the Kitchen Table for providing such a great venue and a warm welcome.

Click here for more photos.