There was a definite buzz of excitement as the full house of sixteen players gathered on Wednesday night for the inaugural Ealing Invitational Knockout. Not surprising, given there was £800 at stake, with £560 going to the winner and £240 to the runner up.
To put that in perspective, if the winner were to have a full time job paying at the equivalent of the hourly rate for their efforts on Wednesday, they'd be on more than £230 grand a year...
And so the big guns, the wannabes, the high rollers and the quietly confidents all got down to the task at hand, bang on 6.30 pm.
The Ealing Invitational was created to breathe new life into the Club's long history of offering knockout tournaments that attract some of the best players in town, and so it was great to see players of the calibre of Peter Bennet and Kazuhiro Shino, as well as on-form players like Gavin Anderson, Dan Feeny, Tariq Siddiqi, Tom O'Connor and Jonathan Shaul, displaying their skills.
From the very beginning, it was obvious that this tournament was going to be a fierce battle. The pick of the first round matches was probably the one between Shino and Dan Feeny, with Dan coming out on top. In the second round there were some really tough matches with Chris Dolphin managing to claw his way to victory over Peter Bennet and the O'Connor brothers both advancing to play each other in one of the semi-finals.
Meanwhile, Gavin Anderson beat both Jonathan Shaul and Dan Feeny to play Chris Dolphin in the other semi-final.
And so it came down to Gavin and Tom in the final; a match that started well for Tom, going into a 3-0 lead, but as time went by, Gavin was able to capitalise on some risky plays from Tom that saw him win 7-4.
Hearty congratulations to Gavin, the winner of the inaugural Ealing Invitational Knockout. Just a pity it isn't a full time job....
His 4 victories on Wednesday also propel Gavin into the Top 20 players on the UKBGF National Player Ratings for the first time - a great achievement!
Given the overwhelming success of this first edition, we are excited about the next monthly installment which is on Wednesday 19 February. If you'd like to play, why not sign up now? The main tournament is strictly limited to 16 players, but we will offer additional 8 player knockouts with the same entry requirements if we have more than 16 sign-ups and also offer a consolation tournament, so you can be guaranteed of 2 matches in the evening.
Here’s to many more amazing Ealing Invitational tournaments to come!
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