IM Peter Large won the 8th All Saints Blitz on 27 November for the second time in a row
Photo: Peter Large receiving first prize from Stephen Moss
Peter Large cantered through the All Saints Blitz disposing of his opponents without too much difficulty to win the monthly event with 5/5. Twelve people competed in total. There was one new person who had not played chess over the board in 40 years. He found out about the event through a leaflet he picked up in the church next to the Christmas cards display.
We played in the Heritage Room, which is an ideal venue for chess – quiet and warm. The electric underfloor heating is supplemented by gas-fired radiators, all very welcome during this freezing snap.
I used the occasion to test how many spare queens should be placed on the tables. I allocated one black and one white queen to each table, on each of which two games were being played. As it happened, nobody used an extra queen. The games were quite decisive and any queen promotions were in the endgame after the original queens had been exchanged off. This is useful information for optimising our equipment storage, the crucial question being to size the container for the standard complement of 32 pieces or an expanded 34 pieces. The results of this research will be revealed to a bemused chess world at the end of the season. The matter arises because of the industry fashion from the year 2000 of including an extra queen in each set despite the most likely piece to need replacing being a pawn. There are a tiny number of competitive games (less than 0.1%) where one side has more than one queen. Perhaps the most famous is Fischer v Petrosian from the Candidates Tournament 1959.
Returning to our event, the final positions were
Peter Large 5/5
Robin Haldane 3.5/5
John Bussmann, Alan Hayward, David Rowson 3/5
First prize was an advent calendar with an obligatory chocolate for each day of December up till Christmas Day. Peter said he had not yet finished the box of chocolates he won for coming first at the October Blitz, but this will not deter him from playing chess, which he loves. In any case, he now has two months to work though the backlog. The All Saints Blitz rests in December, while the church reverts to more traditional activities, and resumes on Wednesday 29 January.
