Curtis James-Britton, age 14, became the first Portishead player to play in a rated ECF tournament on the weekend! The Bristol Blitz was an adult tournament with 67 players including a Grandmaster and two International Masters. In the first round Curtis was paired with a very strong opponent (1984) and the best that he could have been hoped for was to put up a good fight - instead he scored an astonishing win! The trouble with winning in the first round is that you tend to get a tougher draw and in the next round and so it happened - in the next round he was paired with an even stronger Ukrainian opponent (2124) and unsurprisingly was unable to repeat the feat of the first round. The next few rounds were tough but at the end Curtis romped back with two draws and a win (against a 1636 opponent from Bath). A fantastic performance which I hope will inspire more of our players to take up the gauntlet and enter future tournaments!
The full tournament results can be found at https://chess-results.com/tnr832050.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=11
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