Report on the October ‘07 Friends of Chess Rapidplay:
The October Friends of Chess event took place at the Lafiagi Community Centre on the 6th of October 2007 with a total number of 54 registered players but only 50 actually participated. The breakdown of players was; 13 Masters, 38 Opens players, 2 Ladies and 1 Junior.
Notable participants were IM Odion Aikhoje and NM Olusegun Olomola (who incidentally were also sponsors) and Dan Foster of the Cool FM fame (who promised us free publicity for the next event). The only junior was Olalekan Edunwale (son of Edunwale King) who was fresh from winning the U-14 category at the Femi Badejo tournament for juniors.
Top seed for the event was Bunmi Olape followed by his brother Femi, Odion was 3rd seed, Ajibowo 4th and Fola Akintola was 6th seed. Prior to the start of the event Odion had claimed he would make a perfect score of 6 points, a feat nobody had achieved prior to the start of the event!
Round one saw one single upset, the under-14 champ claimed the scalp of Busayo Oluwalasinu who was the first winner in the maiden Friends of Chess rapidplay event back in July 2006. I guess he was underestimated and nobody else made that mistake for the duration of the tournament!
Round two saw the 2nd and 3rd seeds Femi Olape and Odion drop half points against Tijani Olumide and Chike Aniunoh respectively, indeed Odion was rather fortunate as he was a piece down for insufficient compensation but somehow extracted a draw which effectively put paid to his bid to score maximum points. 4th seed Ajibowo lost to his fellow Ife student in Fawole John while top seed Bunmi Olape was in cruise control against Simbo Olabode.
The full tournament report is available from Dashe (dashe13@hotmail.com).
