Done exams? Have a Christmas holiday coming up? Looking for some great chess? Why not join the Canadian Christmas Open, hosted by yours truly. It should be a challenging and comeptitive affair, with a 12 player round robin. The winner will receive a custom 1st place trophy in recognition of winning the Open.

There are currently 6 spots left. Players presently signed up for the tournament are in the 1600-1800 range (1622, 1622, 1792, 1793, 1796, 1825).

Please be advised that this tournament has the following restrictions:
1) Played at least 5 games
2) Has an average move speed of at least <6 hours.
3) A 3 day time restriction on moves

It is also important to note that you will be playing 22 concurrent games [11 white, 11 black; 2 against each opponent]. This will allow the most accurate representation of who deserves to walk away with the crown.

http://www.chess.com/tournament/pykes-canadian-christmas-open

Hope to see you on the chess board!

7 people registered. Hope to see a few more.

That was a great tournament, I enjoyed a lot. Thank you very much Pyke.

You're welcome. Thanks for playing. It looks like warrior or centaurus will win.

Congratulations to warrior103 for winning the first Christmas Open!

Congratulations as well to holojay (2nd) and ming (3rd) on their strong play.

I would also like to take a moment to congratulate Yanner. Yanner entered the tournament as the lowest ranked player, far below the average of 1701; and not even with any real opponents in his range [1911, 1820, 1792, 1776, 1770, 1743, 1640, 1628, 1592, 1483, 1425, 1306 being the rated players at the start of the tournament].

Despite this shortcoming, Yanner would go on to beat Warrior (one of only 3 losses to the #1 player), as well as picking up at least one win against every one of the players below 1743 [except the 1628]. Congratulations for an outstanding performance.

I hope everyone had as much fun playing in the tournament as I had directing it.

-Pyke