Newport aces are the rapidplay kings
Newport have dethroned Telepost as Shropshire's speed chess kings after the closest possible finish in the final of the county's team rapidplay championship.
As the dust settled the teams were tied 2.5-2.5, so it was tiebreak time and, under the rules of the competition, the result on the bottom board was deleted.
In that clash, Telepost's Kate Walker had defeated the eight-year-old Newport star of the future Edison Xu, who moved to Shropshire from China a little while ago, and, sadly for Walker and Telepost, once that result had been disregarded it meant that Newport racked up a 2.5-1.5 win on the remaining boards.
In fact, the Shrewsbury-based club already knew they were on a hiding to nothing even as Nathanael Paul and Nigel Ferrington were squeezing all they could out of a bishops and pawns ending on the top board as a win for Ferrington to even the match score – which he duly ground out – was not going to be enough under the countback tiebreak system.
Newport had a little help in the competition from a guest player, William Bates of Priorslee Lions, who did not field a team. The other Newport players were Chris Lewis and Athar Ansari – previously known as Athar Mehmood.
Six teams entered the competition held at the Wrekin Housing Trust in Telford, and the format was a league followed by knockout stages, with a time limit of 15 minutes per player to complete all the moves of the game.
Final result: Newport 2.5, Telepost 2.5 (Newport win on tiebreak): Nathanael Paul 0 Nigel Ferrington 1; William Bates 1 Phil Zabrocki 0; Chris Lewis 0.5 John Bashall 0.5; Athar Ansari 1 Matthew Clark 0; Edison Xu 0 Kate Walker 1.
Third/fourth place game: Shrewsbury beat Newport B.
