Welsh Championships 2010

The first Welsh Championships were held in Cardiff on the Thursday 10 June 2010.

Following same late withdrawals the turnout was the disappointing minimum requirement of 6. However, as the saying goes its quality not quantity that counts and that's certainly what we had. The first round brought about its first upset of the day with the 1926 rated Gary Thomas losing to the unknown Andrew Thomas of the Land Registry. It soon became clear that Andrew was somewhat of a dark horse as he duly put away each opponent with aplomb. The top seed Gareth Harley-Yeo of HMRC had to equal Andrew's blistering start to keep him in the running, which he managed to do by beating the less experienced players, eagerly awaiting the heavyweight final round clash.

Two more upsets came about in the final round. Gary lost again, this time to James Evans, a player rated over 400 points lower than his opponent, and in doing so dropped to 4^th place. On the bottom board the unrated Steve Cuff who's come on leaps and bounds in the lasts few years managed to beat the 1400 rated club player Brenda Miles to lift himself off the bottom of the table to a respectable 5^th.

And so it was a head to head between Gareth and Andrew for first place. The first round saw a tactical Queen's Indian end in a drawn endgame. Wanting an outright winner, the colours were reversed and the spectators were this time treated to a Colle, again no winner could be found. Both players agreed to one final effort, this time a King's Indian was played out, but even with a completely imbalanced position, an opposite colour bishop ending presented itself and both players agreed to tie for first place, qualifying for the National Final in Leeds and taking home a digital alarm clock each for their Herculean efforts.

The final standings were:

1^st Gareth Harley-Yeo

1^st Andrew Thomas

3^rd James Evans

4^th Gary Thomas

5^th Steve Cuff

6^th Brenda Miles