Our first Streatham Library Rapidplay: Great venue, great day, and more to come (we hope).

Richard Tillett reports.

Last Sunday was the day of the Streatham Library Rapidplay, the first such event that Streatham & Brixton Chess Club has held for 28 years.

‘Round 1 will be starting shortly, please take your places…’

Martin wrote about the 1986 event here, and two stalwarts of our club who were there on that day turned up on Sunday – Robin Haldane to play in the Open and Angus French to take charge of proceedings as tournament controller. Alongside Angus was a 6-strong team of S&B helpers - Shez, Paul, Barry, Martin, David and yours truly. Together we comprised an awesome management team… or that’s what we reckon anyway.

And what a lovely day it was. The sun shone, there were lots of smiles, and nothing went wrong. Except maybe the weather was a bit too glorious – we think it may have kept some last minute entries away and as a result there were some empty places.

Perhaps the star of the show was the venue itself, the newly refurbished Mark Bennett Streatham Centre at Streatham Library. It’s a terrific venue for chess - spacious, high ceilinged and well lit. There’s a small kitchen for serving drinks and snacks, and between rounds players can relax in the garden at the back of the hall. Moreover the venue is easy to reach with two overground stations and a constant stream of buses plying their trade along Streatham High Road.

So we don’t intend to wait another 28 years before we do this again. ‘Streatham Library Rapidplays’ has a certain ring to it and we now wondering whether we could make this a regular event in the London tournament schedule.

First prize in the Open section went to S&B member Nick Fordham
(on the right receiving his prize from Angus) with 5/6.
Sebastian Ponulak took the Under 140 with an impressive 6/6.

The Streatham Library Rapidplay results page is here and there are more pictures of the event here. 

We would like to thank Streatham Library and Lambeth Council for their support, and the Surrey County Chess Association for generously lending us chess sets, boards and clocks.