Monday 12 January 2009

IM Aleks Wohl and IM George Xie share first place in 2009 Australian Open

The 2009 Australian Open has finished in a tie for first place between IM Aleks Wohl and IM George Xie. Both players finished on 9/11 but IM Aleks Wohl was awarded the title of Australian Open Champion on tie-break. Wohl scored 8 wins, 2 draws and a loss (to Xie), while Xie lost 2 games but scored 9 wins, managing to win his last 5 games.
Equal third was shared between IM Mark Chapman, Eugene Schon and Jason Hue. Schon, still a junior, narrowly missed scoring an IM norm, after losing to Chapman in round 10.
The Under 1600 event finished in a tie between Calvin Bennett and Anton Smirnov. Smirnov's performance is very impressive, given that he is only 7 years old! Click on the above link for full results for both tournaments.



5 comments:

TrueFiendish said...

Interesting that Wohl is awarded the title on tiebreak even though Xie beat him (quite convincingly, one might add). Such are the vagaries of the tiebreak system!

Shaun Press said...

George paid for his slow start, dropping 2 games in the first 6 rounds, meaning he had an easier field than Aleks for much of the tournament.
The ACF Tie-break system is Average of Opponents Ratings - Lowest Rated Opponent (and I am assuming they used ACF ratings for this purpose).
FIDE use a couple of different system, although Stewart Reuben remarks "There is no good tie-break system for Swisses"
In the case where "all players have reliable ratings" they use the same system as the ACF, but for tournaments where "only a majority have reliable ratings" or "most or all players are not rated" they start with the result between the tied players.
Interestingly in 1989 Aleks Wohl also tied for first in the Australian Open (with Robin Hill) and he requested that the ACF organise a play-off match. There was some attempt to do this but if I recall correctly no match was held.

Kevin Bonham said...

The ratings used for the tiebreaking are those by which the tournament was seeded; in this case FIDE.

OzChess.com said...

Its fantastic to see George bounce back after a less then impressive Olympiad experience! Well done George!

Alana Chibnall said...

Well done Anton!