Club Success in DCCA Darlington Congress

First of all, massive congratulations to Mick Riding for organising the biggest and best DCCA congress ever with almost 160 entries. A big “Thank you”, too, to Alex Macfarlane for managing such a large event all by himself. A tribute to both that everything went smoothly.

It was a successful tournament for South Shields. Our representation in the Open was limited to part-time Durham League players, Tim Wall and Dave Walker, but they both finished equal second on 4/5 behind sole winner IM Brandon Clarke on 4.5/5

In the Major Anthony Sweeting also finished equal second on 4/5 behind Durham University’s Luke Elliot on 5/5. Brian Towers finished fourth equal on 3.5/5 (after losing a winning position against tournament winner, Luke Elliot) and Eddie Czestochowski was unlucky to finish on 0.5/5 having managed to gift his much higher rated opponent a draw in round one when Eddie was also completely winning.

It was a similar story in the Minor where Michael Allen finished equal third on 4/5 having managed to lose a winning position against the tournament winner, Maksym Kryshtafor. Dave Patterson finished 11th equal on 3/5 and Stan Johnson scored 1.5/5.

Here is one of Anthony’s games with annotations by him.