On Friday, June 1st, the Club hosted the much anticipated Hart House Summer Blitz Tournament 2018. The five double round Swiss tournament had demanding 3 +2 time controls, and with twenty participants, this led to some heated play. Emerging from the dust of the struggle Joseph Bellissimo snatched first place. This win for Joe marks another for his trophy cabinet, as he came into the tournament having won the Spring Blitz.

This is not to say that the tournament was smooth sailing for the winner. In a hotly contested tie breaker first seed Nikita Gusev seemed as though he may push forward to win. However, as pressure from the clock mounted, a few mistakes gave way to a clear losing position, giving Nikita a very respectable second place.

In terms of aggressive tie breakers, the third place tie breakers would be hard to match, as four players of considerable strength faced off against one another.

Juliaan Posaratnanathan would emerge the winner but was given considerable difficulty by Ranmal Bandara, the deceptive Edward Chan, and Haizhou Xu, who has the apt nickname “Zeus”.

Though Ranmal may not have come third, he did win best under 1600 player. A well deserved prize for an excellent performance.

It must be said that under the cool shade of the trees with green grass gleaming it made for a memorable occasion, even for those who did not come away with a prize.

We must give a special thank you to Hart House, and specifically to its staging staff, who went beyond the call of duty in helping us to carry outside the heavy fold-up tables. We are also very grateful to Sahan Karunaratne and Vithushan Surendran, who lent us a very generous hand of support in setting up the stage for the tournament.

An additional note of thanks must be given to Panayoti Tsialas, the chief organizer of the tournament, whose preparation allowed the tournament to run like clockwork.

Finally, we were stunned by Stephanie Chen’s unique eye for photography and we would like to thank her for the amazing close-ups she snapped!

We would also like to extend a big thank you to all the participants and congratulate the winners. We sincerely hope to see you all again, especially in competitive play!

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