The football World Cup may have ended, but on Monday 20/07 we ran our own extremely convoluted version of it, this one being played at the chess board!
The idea originated from our member Joe Francis, who was recently featured on The Independent’s article “Is online gaming ruining chess? Players say it’s not quite as black and white as that“. Joe also crafted some prizes for the winners! Each player would get assigned a country from the World Cup and play for either the Cup, the Plate, or the Cake!
This is how it all worked: the tournament started with the Group Stage, with the top 2 of each group moving on to the Round of 16. Games were played with Blitz time controls and the players getting eliminated either at the group stages or at the round of 16 would then get entered into a Swiss tournament – winner gets the Cake! This meant that everyone got a chance to play several games, even after getting knocked out of the main competition early on.
The second “split” would take place after the Quarterfinals, meaning once again that the number of games remained relatively similar for each player. The winners of this stage would move on to the Semifinals and aim to win the Cup, while the losers of the QFs would go into their own bracket, competing for the Plate.
The Cup Final was a 4-game match between Luke Lau and Uri Weitzenfeld. The former was playing as Norway, perhaps more of a homage to Magnus Carlsen than to Erling Haaland, while the latter was representing Spain and trying to replicate their success at the Metlife Stadium on Sunday.
As most of our Rapid and Blitz tournaments go, Luke was victorious! In the other sections, the Plate Final saw Gaston Franco‘s Argentina barely defeating Mark Addis‘s Australia in their 4th game, while the Swiss tournament ended with a clear win for Daniel Ludlam‘s Scotland, who took home the Cake!
Many thanks once again to Joe Francis for the idea and the prizes, and to Adam Cranston for running the tournament on the day. Hope all the participants enjoyed the event, and let us know if you’d like to suggest or plan any other activity in the future!