2017 – Results & games | 2023 East Devon Chess Congress

Update (Tue 14 Mar):

All of the games from Rounds 1-5 are now available in PDF format – please scroll down to the bottom of this page!

To see the final prize list, including the two teams who finished first and second in our popular team competition, please click the link below:

East Devon Chess Congress 2017 Prize list

Sunday update – Final results

GM John Nunn has triumphed in the Open section of the 2017 East Devon Chess Congress in Exeter, with a score of 4.5/5. In joint 2nd place were GM Keith Arkell, IM Jack Rudd, and Mike Waddington, all with 4/5. The top two final round games – Rudd vs Nunn, and Pardo Simon vs Arkell – were both drawn, the first after 10 moves, and the second after more than 60! Photos of the scoresheets from these games appear below (immediately after the Open wall-charts).

In the Major section, David Archer (South Hams) took first place with a score of 4.5/5, closely followed by Arthur Hibbitt, Lander Arrasate, Brendan O’Gorman, Charles Keen, and Darrell Watson, all with 4/5.

Finally, the Minor section was won by Grant Daly (Downend & Fishponds) with 4.5/5, with six players sharing second place with 4/5: Ken Alexander, Ray Hunt, Paul Errington, Tim Crouch, Maurice Richards, and Tim Roberts.

The scoresheet PDFs from all rounds are now available – please scroll down to the very bottom of this page!

A crowd gathers to witness the closing moments of Pardo Simon vs Arkell (Round 5)

Crowd

Round 4 update (Sunday lunchtime) –

The scoresheets from the top two R4 clashes: Arkell vs Rudd and Nunn vs Pardo Simon are below, followed by the pairings at the top of the Open.

Saturday update

(Please scroll down for wall-chart images – and click them to enlarge)

At the end of Saturday, the Open currently has a 4-way tie for first place, with GM Keith Arkell, GM John Nunn, IM David Pardo Simon, and IM Jack Rudd all having a perfect score of 3/3. In the chasing pack with 2.5/3 are Mark Littleton, Robert Taylor, and 14-year-old Max French, who scored an excellent win over 5th-seed Dominic Mackle in Round 3. It promises to be a very exciting final day!

In the Major, David Archer (South Hams) and Charles Keen (Sidmouth) lead the field with a perfect 3/3, and there are seven players on 2.5/3: Arthur Hibbitt, Lander Arrasate, Brendan O’Gorman, Malcolm Steevens, Petra Nunn, Robert Wilby, and Jamie Beviss.

In the Minor, Stephen Mead (Exeter) and Timothy Roberts (Exeter University) are the only players with 3/3, and there are no fewer than nine players with 2.5/3: Ken Alexander, Ray Hunt, Paul Errington, Paul Doherty, Grant Daly, Martyn Maber, Joy Fursman, Maurice Richards, and Sid Jones.

Please click on the wall-charts below to see all the scores after Round 3.

Friday update

The strongest and largest East Devon Congress for many years (with no fewer than 155 entrants – and at least 50 in every section) kicked off at 7pm on Friday 10 March 2017.

In the Open, 42 players participated in the opening round – the remaining 8 will join the action tomorrow. As might be expected, the first round saw the top half of the Open score highly against the bottom half, but there were a few surprises, with Paul Hampton (166) prevailing over 7th-seed Graham Bolt (197), and Robert Taylor (167) overcoming a 41 point grading deficit to hold 5th-seed Dominic Mackle (208) to a draw. The top of the Major also saw a few upsets, with Colin Knight (137) triumphing over top seed Alex Conway (153), and Peter Dimond (135) claiming the full point against 3rd-seed Neville Senior (151). In the Minor, most matches went with rating – though one notable giant-killing saw Steve Mead (103) take down 4th-seed Martin Jones (121). Roll on Round 2!

UPDATE: Bob Jones (Keverel Chess) has written an excellent blog about this year’s Congress, along with some photos of the first night – to read this, please click the following link: http://www.keverelchess.com/e-devon-congress-2017-exeter-rd-1-10-03-2017/ (opens in new tab).

Wall-charts after Round 1 (two per section)

Play through all the games! (Rounds 1-5 now all available)

With well over 300 games played in the Congress, transcribing everything into PGN format would be a truly Herculean task – so to give competitors and spectators timely access to all of the games, we have scanned the scoresheets as PDFs (one file per section, per round). These PDFs are available for viewing / download below. Both players’ scoresheets have been scanned for each game, so you should be able to cross-check any moves that are not written clearly!

Update: In addition, interactive animations of the top games from Round 3 are visible at the Exeter Chess Club page: http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/2017-east-devon-congress [more games will be added in due course!]

For remote spectators who are following the Congress action via this website, we’d be really interested to hear which of the games are your favourites – did any really catch your eye? Drop an email to timpaulden@gmail.com and let us know!

After the tournament, we hope to publish a short electronic bulletin containing a few of the key games from the event, annotated by the players involved… watch this space!

Technical note: Each file is around 30Mb, but should only take a few seconds to load if you have broadband. You may need to rotate the view by 90 degrees, depending on how you open the file. Please get in touch if you encounter any technical issues or spot any significant errors!