Originally scheduled for the 5th September at the Morriston Chess Club question marks over the venue's availability resulted in the annual Lightning Tournament being rescheduled for Wednesday 6th September at the Upper Killay Chess Club. With 18 entries this was slightly up on last year and likely would have been higher had it not clashed with an already arranged White Knights Tournament.

The event saw the welcome return to the league of Moss McCarthy (joint Welsh Champion in 1973 & 1987) while Richard Cleveland was back after a year's lay off and Upper Killay's Ben Mora (rated at 1800 for the tournament) was playing his first Lightning Tournament. Other strong players were Carl Strugnell and Ian Jones with the numbers being made up of mainly Upper Killay and Morriston club members.

Going into round 5 of the 5 round event, Richard Cleveland seemed to be walking away with the Tournament on 4/4 having beaten both Moss and Carl. It was not to be, however, and in the last round with the white pieces he lost to Ian Jones.

This resulted in a five way tie for first place with the winners all on 4 out of 5.

Paul Bevan (from the De la Beche club), one of the joint winners and whose normal style of play resembles the Lightning move rate, was awarded the under 1400 trophy, while newcomer Ben Mora took home the winners trophy.

All the games were decisive; there were no draws.

Paul Bevan , Richard Cleveland ,Ian Jones, Ben Mora, Carl Strugnell ; 4/5

Ralph Cook, Albert Easton, Greg Goold, Moss MacCarthy ; 3/5

,Alan Bean, Sean Denton, Bill Flew, Tony Goodchild, John Ward ; 2/5

Janet Evans, Richard Morgan, Joe Spooner ; 1/5

Julian Bradshaw 0/5

07/09/2017