Boil for just 20 minutes
By Malcolm Pein
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 14/02/2008
The first ever Lexmark 20 Seconds Chess Tournament took place at Hammersmith in west London on Saturday 19th January. Victory in this original format went to David Howell who defeated fellow GM Keith Arkell in a tense final.
Howell overcame Laurence Trent in his semi-final while Arkell defeated Aaron Summerscale in the other semi-final although the result was in dispute after Summerscale was originally declared the winner.
The arbiters struggled to deal with the original situations caused by the ‘egg timer’ clock settings in which both players start with just 20 seconds each on the clock and one player’s time increases as the other’s decreases when they are thinking. Naturally this leads to entertaining chess, quick-fire moves and huge pressure on everyone involved.
The Open format gave all comers an opportunity to play grandmasters in the knockout stages and overall the event was judged a great success. The Organisers 20 Second Sports are planning a second tournament in mid-March.
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That’s too fast for me. I need at least 21 seconds 🙂
That’s not chess. That’s beat the clock!
Nonsense is every game of chess in TC less than 5 min.
In theory the game can go on for many hours! (eg if both players continue to take a little less than 20 seconds per move)