Belfast South Tourney: part 1
Banker's Club, Malone Road
UCU Members will be familiar with the organisation of the tournament following on from earlier Fisherwick Flexible Tournaments. It is effectively an Autumn/Winter version of the Summer Tournament. Indeed with the change of club venue to the Banker's Club on the Malone Road, the competition conveniently echoes the summer tournament of 2013.
There are more details of the tournament rules on the Club's own website and the club's news section.
The first part of the tournament finished just before Christmas after 9 weeks. So far 21 players have joined the competition with an expected majority from Belfast South itself. But it is Balynafeigh's Robert Lavery who is the current front-runner sharing top spot with Belfast South's Philip Morrison.
Current competition standings are available in the Results Service with details of who played who in each week.
As an encouragement to all players the organisers have agreed to award best games prizes in addition to the existing prize fund and to publish them on local websites. Two best-game prizes are up for grabs: a pre-Christmas game - there are 4 contenders under consideration at present, and submissions for the second half of the tournament start January 6th.
There will prizes for the overall tournament winner and runner-up based upon overall percentage scored. Based on players ratings, there are 2 grading bands: below 1300 and over 1301. Prizes will be awarded to the player with the lowest rating and best percentage score within the grading bands. To be eligible for a prize players must play a minimum of 10 games and play twice during the last 3 weeks of the tournament. As there are still 11 weeks to go there is still time for players to aim for a tournament win.
Note that it is percentage performance that counts, not match points. Potentially Geoff Hindley could claim the tournament if he can maintain his 100% record by winning another 8 games. So despite their lead, Robert & Philip (78%) can easily be caught by any one of the challengers such as Bruce MacLean (75%), Bernard Jaffa (70%), Sam Flanagan (63%) and Stewart McConaghy (56%) or indeed a new player starting in 2014.
