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Edd · Joined: 22 Jan 2006 Posts: 59

This season's Hampshire Open was a strong one with most of the local past champions playing such as Tony Corkett, Dominik Tunks, Mike Yeo, and other strong players like Gavin Lock, Dave Cordner, and the new county champion Steve Kawuma. The latter beat the very strong player Gavin Lock in the final round in a game where the positonal pressure was never let up.

I believe there were no easy draws this year, with most players rated quite high, and the lower rated players performing above their grade. I was surprised at the grade distribution of the two tournaments; I didn't expect to be the lowest rated player in the Open but I was with a grade of 113, and the only other players less than 130 in the tournament were [an under-rated] 119 and 129. The list of the 20 entrants (with Hampshire titles in parentheses) is:

200 Tony Corkett [1989,1990,1993,1995,2003,2004,2005]
186 Mike Yeo [2002]
181 Gavin Lock
180 Dave Cordner
173 Dominik Tunks [1998,1999,2001]
159 Tom Anderson [2006]
157 Richard McMaster
145 R. Edney
144 Peter Williams
143 M. Wallman
139 Joe Coburn
138 P. Hurn
135 Sherif Gonem
131 Gillian Moore
129 Ian Matthew
129 Les Allen
119 David Deacon
113 Edd Davies

Ungraded Steve Kawuma
Ungraded Chris Sidle