The final round of the Gladstone 2025. Round 4 left things just too tight for comfort. If the two leaders of the pack won their games, as was likely, it was poised to be decided on the tiebreak. And indeed it was.
Let’s get straight to the business end of the evening. Mister Khan went in to the round the slight favourite. Surely the stronger player overall – as befits the NLC board 1 – he had also, perhaps, the slightly easier game against Mister Edgell – when compared to the Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon)’s opponent, who was the defending champion Mister Barton.
But all this was on paper. What would happen on the board? Could Mister Khan win through to pressure his rival?
He did, after some expert use of the bishops to eventually pin and win a white knight and force through an advanced pawn.
He’d done his part. Now it was all down to Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon). Would he crack under the pressure?
A tough game for Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon) because, as noted above, he had to play the defending champion. Although Mister Barton was in effect out of the running by round 5, he is still a fearsome opponent, and plays a mean Caro Kann.
But Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon) had done his preparation and had something prepared, with a pawn to c5 attack up his sleeve. He pushed on in a tight game but eventually got the better of Mister Barton after spotting that his knight was short of safe squares.
So the two top men had won. And as predicted, it all came down to the dreaded Buchholz tiebreak method. This meant that, once all the games were finished, the scores of each player’s opponents over the five rounds were tallied, and whoever had the highest aggregate score of their opponents had the highest Buchholz score and so would win.
Mister Khan does not enjoy tiebreaks. He had come off worse using this method in the NLC blitz earlier this year. The Kennedy Cup, after a full nine rounds, was, remarkably, found to be completely even on score, head-to-head and (sadly for Mister Khan) exactly even on the tie break Buchholz. So a play-off was required, and he lost narrowly.
This time the Buchholz method delivered a winner. Here were the scores of the other games:
- Birrane 0 – 1 Landless
- Saldanha 0 -1 Jacobs
- Widdicombe 1 – 0 Dias
- Ross 1 – 0 Barnett
- Taylor 1 – 0 Mooney
- Sam 1 – 0 Sharland
What did this all mean for the tiebreak?
It meant that Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon) won it by a smidge. He had 4.5 points out of 5, and a Buchholz score of 15. Mister Khan also had 4.5 points from 5, but a Buchholz score of only 13.5.
Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon) had done it.
Gladstone duly reached down, and appointed his new Favourite Son.
Congratulations Mister Giffin KC MA (Oxon). A worthy winner, and NLC Chess Champion 2025.
The infamous Buchholz! It also played a role in the recent FIDE Grand Swiss (I’m not suggesting that tournament is as relevant as the Gladstone, of course).
An alternative is to do a tie-break with a rapid armageddon game, where White gets more time on the clock but a draw means Black wins.