2012 ACT Championship - Brown and Ikeda share title

The 2012 ACT Championship has ended with IM Andrew Brown and FM Junta Ikeda sharing the title after they finished on 8/9. Going into the final day Ikeda had a half point lead over Brown, but was held to a draw in round 8 after some determined defence by Josh Bishop. This allowed Brown to join him the lead on 7 points, with one round to play. In the final round Brown defeated Matthew Bennet, while Ikeda was once again forced to work hard, finally beating Willis Lo in the last game of the tournament to finish. As the ACT Chess Association happily awards shared titles, both names will be engraved on the Championship trophy. Jeremy Reading finished in third place with 6/9 after defeating Jamie Lee-Guo in round 9. Despite the loss Guo picked up a rating prize as well as performing well above his tournament seeding. Another player who had a good tournament was Lachlan Smart, who scored 5/9 despite being the bottom seed! Full results of the tournament can be found here, while the pgn file of the games is available at the ANU Chess Club website.

2012 ACT Championship - Day 4

The 2012 ACT Championship is essentially down to two players, with FM Junta Ikeda leading IM Andrew Brown by half a point. Ikeda had finished the first weekend with 5/5 but was held to a draw in round 6 by a determined Adrian de Noskowski. In the longest game of the tournament Ikeda was up the exchange but de Noskowski captured enough pawns to force a K+N v K+R ending (shades of Queenstown anyone!). Ikeda tried to win the position but on move 115 (with the 50 move limit about to be reached), moved his rook en pris to end the game. This allowed Andrew Brown to close the gap to half a point after he defeated third seed Sam Grigg. Both Ikeda and Brown then won their round 7 games to finish the day with 6.5 and 6 points respectively.
In third place is Allen Setiabudi on 5/7. His 8th round opponent is Andrew Brown, which may give some hope for the group of players in 4th place/
Full results from this event can be found at chess-results, while a pgn file of the games is available from the ANU Chess Club page, under the Games link.


Setiabudi,Allen (1966) - De Noskowski,Adrian (1913)
2012 ACT Championship Canberra, Australia AUS (7), 25.02.2012

Is chess missing a sizeable market?

The cliché that chess is for "nerds" is a stereotype that is strongly resisted inside the chess community. When chess is publicised there is always a strong push (at least in English speaking countries) to point out that chess isn't just for 'brainiacs' and lots of 'normal' people play as well. A case in point is this story about chess in Central Queensland. 'Nerdy, brainy kids' gets mentioned in the first line, almost as a way of bringing the non-player into the story, by offering to overturn conventional wisdom. Not that I'm criticising the overall thrust of the story, but the lead in has become a cliché itself.
But having turned its back on the 'nerd' market, chess may be missing a vast pool of potential recruits. A month ago I dropped in on the Canberra Games Convention, which is an event for wargamers, board gamers, card players, and in the dim dark past, even role players. It is quite a large event, and attracts a lot more players than any Australian chess tournament. I was only there for a short while, but it was obvious to me that the 'nerd factor' was pretty high. The choice of clothes, conversations and general demeanour reminded me chess tournaments from 20 years ago. I mentioned this to a friend who straddles both worlds and he agreed with me. I suggested to him that maybe chess should re-embrace its inner 'nerd' and endeavour to recruit these players into the game. But he chose to deflate my balloon with the following observation (which I am not quoting exactly)

"Most of these people used to play chess when they were younger, but gave it up because they found it too hard"

Minature of the Month - January 2012

I haven't posted a game under this category for a while, so I thought I better dig one up. It is from the Gibraltar Open, and while the result (and possibly the game) is indicative of the rating gap between the two players, it does show that you can play a 'hack' line against the Caro-Kan and come up with a quick win.

Dvirnyy,Daniyyl (2492) - Sos Andreu,Eric (2113) [B15]
Gibraltar Open Caleta ENG (4.37), 27.01.2012

2012 ANU Masters - Week 3

Week 3 of the 2012 ANU Masters saw the top seeds get through this round without a huge amount of difficulty. FM Junta Ikeda played a Benko Gambit against Ethan Derwent, and managed not only to win back the gambit pawn, but another pawn as well. IM Andrew Brown obtained a very strong pawn centre out of the opening and then used them to win material. Martijn Van de Pol had to work harder against Harry Press when some opening prep puled the teeth from the Budapest Gambit. However the wrong plan by Press allowed Van de Pol to coordinate his rooks and launch a decisive invasion.
The most exciting game of the night was between Sam Grigg and Miles Patterson. Griig had a slight edge which turned into a huge advantage after Patterson gave up material for an attacking idea that wasn't sound. However it was exactly this plan that saved Patterson half a point after Grigg missed a defensive move allowing Patterson to score a perpetual check.


Grigg, Sam (2042) - Patterson, Miles (1898)
2012 ANU Masters Canberra AUS (3), 22.02.2012

Am I just a chess player, or a person who just plays chess?

This thought occurred to me after I attended the funeral of Gunars Lamberts last week. In the eulogy his sister listed a large number of things that Gunars achieved in his life but also pointed out that in his free time he "played chess and played chess and played chess". She even mentioned that the reason he did not marry was that he was "already married to chess". However I'm pretty sure that Gunars would not have felt that he was only a chess player, just that chess was an important part of his life. Of course there are people who have been defined as "just a chessplayer". Such a tag weighed heavily on Paul Morphy as he tried to start a career in law, and Bobby Fischer could not escape the label either. It will be interesting to see where the current generation of players ends up in this regard. While it is impossible to reach the very top without being a full time player, I'm sure that almost everyone has interests away from the board. Of course finding the balance may be difficult which I suspect is one of the reasons why Kasparov the politician is not Kasparov the chess player. But for some perspective on this, it might be having a look at the 60 Minutes story on Magnus Carlsen. The early reviews on this are pretty mixed (it is obviously aimed at the non serious or non chess player) but it at least shows who Magnus is as a person.

Who has the neatest handwriting?

The plural of anecdote is not 'data', so treat this post as totally non-scientific. From the 'kids today' file comes an observation about the quality of handwriting being taught in todays schools. Having gone through about 30 scoresheets after each round of the ACT Championship I can see a clear difference in handwriting ability based on the age of the authors. Contrary to the claims that kids today aren't as polite/smart/neater as previous generations, the neatest handwriting is mainly by the junior players in the tournament. Those still at school seem to present both legible and intelligible scoresheets, with those submitted by the older generations diminishing in quality. In fact the quality seems to get worse as the participants get older, leading me to assume that despite the claimed death of handwriting skills due to the prevalence of keyboards and texting, today's education system is doing a far better job of teaching children how to write, than it did in my day, and in the days of my parents.