First of all, a big thank you to the 102 players who attended the Blackpool Imperial Cup this weekend helping to make it such a successful event. We are proud to be able to say it is now the biggest single flight tournament in the UK, with players from Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Ireland and Singapore making the journey to join us.
There was an excellent turnout for the freeroll events starting on Friday afternoon, and as numbers reached 102 on Saturday morning there was a great atmosphere around the playing room and after 5 rounds of Swiss style matches we reached our 32 qualifiers for the Sunday morning knockout stage with the remaining players starting afresh in the Fylde Trophy.
After dinner Saturday evening 48 players formed 16 teams for our new event “Saturday Night Triples” which proved to be very popular and was played throughout in great spirit. Poker attracted 20 players with a further 8 players in the super-jackpot.
Thanks to our sponsors P40 Boards, Erhan 869 boards and Bone Club boards we were able offer 3 further side events with the winners each receiving a Backgammon board.
Results :-
Main: winner Frank Fleming, runner-up Daniel Molan
Fylde trophy: winner Brian Lever
Washington Cup: winner Andrew Smith
Erhan charity board: Graham Read
P40 charity board: Simon Morecroft
Boneclub charity board: Pim Van Haastert
Nackgammon: Chris Derry
Freeroll 1: Pam Wright
Freeroll 2: Martin Barkwill
Triples: Mate Feher, Wayne Felton, Furbie
Poker: Meta Wright
Super Jackpot: Tariq Siddiqi .
So as you can see a packed weekend !!!
We would like to add a thank you to:
Wayne Felton for generously donating his team winnings.
Andrew Smith who also donated from his winnings.
Steve Bibby for his generous donation from the “Tote”.
Simon Morecroft for his London open collection.
And finally Sean Clennell who was “fined” for constantly misplacing his identification tag.
Prize money and pools totalled £12000 and we paid top 8 in the main, top 8 in the Fylde, top 4 in the Washington as well as running 3 freeroll events meaning plenty of players went home with some cash 🙂
£1500 was raised for The Alzheimers Society.
Finally a mention for Cristi Cozos for his sporting action in the final of the Washington cup. In a tense finish with both players having 2 men left and both needing to avoid throwing a 1. Andrew Smith rolled first……throwing a 1 and offered his hand in
resignation, Cristi sportingly pointed out that he could also throw a 1 which he did resulting in him losing the final.
This year we had an increase of 38 players and if that trend carries over to next next year we will sell out. Registration is now open and our email details can be found on our website http://blackpoolimperialcup.weebly.com/
We look forward to seeing you all again next year.
The Blackpool Team 🙂
May I offer my congratulations and gratitude on a smooth and professionally run tournament, one of my favourites in the calendar.
A small correction in that the “tote” operation and donation was an equal collaboration between Steve Lee, Tim Cross and myself (with contributions from a large number of participants who made it such an enjoyable experience).
Well done to all the weekend winners with a special mention the main event winner Frank Fleming on a fantastic achievement.