Portsmouth Chess Congress, 21-23 February 2003

Last Edited: Saturday March 29, 2003 4:15 PM

Pat McEvoy reports: The Portsmouth Chess Congress was held from 21-23 February 2003, as part of the British Chess Federation 2003 Grand Prix, at Portsmouth Grammar School.

After last year's disappointing retreat in numbers, it was positively exhilarating to experience this year's resurgence. When late entries and non-appearances had all settled down, the final tally was 197 paying customers, a most gratifying improvement from last year's 164, and our best turnout for quite some years.

A particular relief was that the Premier returned to more normal numbers. Last year, an additional £500 prize had been added to the top of the Premier prize fund to secure "elite" status on the Grand Prix circuit. Unfortunately, only 14 entries had been received, where we had been used to having a couple of dozen. I was therefore nervous for this year. In fact, this proved to be our strongest Premier ever, with 1 Grandmaster, 8 International Masters and 2 Fide Masters. The winner, Alexander Cherniaev from Russia, was very impressive throughout, allowing his coolness to slip only at the start of the last round when he was unhappy about the colour assigned to him. I was concerned he might become distracted by this detail and blunder, but I also expected an early draw whatever colour he had, and this duly arrived after 20 moves. Grandmaster Peter Wells, last year's winner, had his chance with the white pieces against Cherniaev in Round 5, but could make no headway.

Zipped PGN File of all 81 Games

PREMIER PRIZEWINNERS
1st A Cherniaev, IM (Russia) 5 / 6 500.00
= 2nd P K Wells, IGM (Portsmouth) 4.5 / 6 200.00
A C Hunt, IM (Brighton) 4.5 200.00
D Gormally, IM (London) 4.5 200.00
= 5th S T Buckley, (Bath) 4 / 6 30.00
J Lappage, (Kidlington) 4 30.00
= U-210 D J Ledger, FM (London) 3 20.00
P Kemp, (Crawley) 3 20.00
K Coates, (Yateley) 3 20.00
U-185 M Singleton, (Guildford) 3 30.00

Other scores :- S K Williams, IM 3.5
C S Crouch, IM 3.5
R Gwaze, IM 3.5
N E Povah, IM 3.5
R M Webb, FM 3
J T Sherwin, IM 2.5

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