James retains his Lightning title

Last week the club held its annual Lightning tournament of 10 second buzzer chess. James Mansson managed to retain his title (a rare feat in this format!) on a night of the usual mayhem...

With a very healthy turnout this year we were back to three qualifying groups. Last time this happened there was a three-way tie for qualification to the final - surely it couldn't happen again?! Well it did, with me, Mike and James all topping our groups with 100%! Other notable group performances were Alex Taylor and Tim Pavlovic 7/8, Nayan Keats Rastogi 6/8, Daniel Miller and Benjamin Jordan 5/7. Also creative credit to Guy who tried to avoid mate next move by mating me, one move too slow and I took the king!

In the three-way final I somehow failed to beat Mike despite a huge position and went on to lose, followed by James beating Mike in the second game. Had I beaten James in the third we would have gone on to further tiebreaks but James played well to finish me off and therefore win the event.

Congratulations to James who retains the Lightning Tankard trophy and also won a Sudoku book donated by new member Andrew - thank you for the extra prize this year.