Monday, 5 April 2010

2010 O2C Doeberl Cup - Chao wins & Norms galore

Top seed GM Li Chao calmly wrapped up the 2010 O2C Doeberl Cup with a 12 move draw against GM Vladimir Malaniuk. His score of 7.5 points consisted of 6 wins and 3 draws. He led the tournament from round 1, and despite having to work hard in a couple of games, it was exactly this capacity to continually push for victory that enabled him to win the tournament. There were a couple of late night games which looked like they would be drawn, but Chao kept pushing and pushing, and was eventually rewarded with a full point.
In second place was IM George Xie, who also scored his third Grandmaster norm. Needing to win against Indian GM Abhihit Kunte, he was gifted the point (and norm) by a horrendous blunder from Kunte, just after the first time control. While his round 9 win may have been a gift, he played excellent chess throughout, finishing without a loss, and wins over GM's Bojkov and Zhao.
Third place was shared between GM Malaniuk, GM Magesh Panchanathan, GM David Smerdon and IM Saptarshi Roy Chowdrey.
Amazingly all the players going into the final round with norm chances managed to convert. Contrary to yesterdays blog post, FM Tomek Rej had already earned the IM norm (by virtue of being paired against GNM Gawain Jones) and simply had to turn up to make it official. He made the norm doubly sure by drawing the game against Jones. FM Erik Teichmann continued a recent run of good form by defeating IM Igor Goldenberg for his IM norm, while Moulthan Ly recorded his third IM norm with a win over IM Gary Lane, after the latter blundered into a mate.
In the Major (Under 2000), Sam Dalton defeated Allen Setiabudi to finish the outright winner, while Michael Addamo scored a perfect 7 from 7 to win the Minor (Under 2000). A few days earlier the Mind Games Under 1200 event was completed, with ACT junior Josh Walker winning with 5.5/6

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thanks for the update shaun!