Husbands sweeps National Blitz chess championship

Over the last weekend Barbados’s top rated active chess player international master Orlando Husbands put in a stellar performance to capture the 2024 national Blitz chess championship when he scored an unblemished 9 wins from 9 games to clinch the title from the two dozen competitors at the Coles Building, Bridgetown.

Blitz chess is where the two players in a game each have less than 5 minutes to complete the whole game. As such the action is fast and furious and many blunders can occur due to the time pressure. It is like T-20 cricket due to its phonetic pace.

Husbands had hit the front by round four, when he had overcome Kemp Lynch, the winner of the recent Governors Cup blitz event. He then kept his foot on the gas pedal and by round 8 when he defeated the current female champion woman FIDE master Hannah Wilson, it would be of academic interest what happened in the last round as Husbands had now taken an unassailable lead. Husbands, however, did not waiver and dispatched Emar Edwards in the last round to record an emphatic victory.

Veteran Philip Corbin turned back the clock to finish second with 7 points from his 9 games. Corbin only losses were  to the champion Husbands and the junior Jerimiah Farley.

Kemp Lynch finished in third with 6 ½ points, while a group of players inclusive of Noah Clarke, Hannah Wilson and Justins Parsons finished joint 4^th to 6^th on 5 ½ points. Wilson won the prize for the highest placed female, while Jerimiah Farley with his 5 points won the prize for the best performance of a player with a rating below 1600.