Sunday 8 August 2010

Australia, where ratings come to die

The 2010 British Championship ended in a predictable win for top seed Michael Adams, who finished 1.5 points ahead of the field. However the result I found most interesting was that of Pete Morriss's in the British Senior Championship.
Pete spent the early part of this year in Australia (at the Australian National University actually), and when he wasn't engaged in academic pursuits, he played plenty of chess. He was a regular at Street Chess (he played his first tournament less than an hour after arriving in Canberra from Ireland) and the ANU Chess Club. He also played the ACT Championship and the Doeberl cup, where is FIDE rating took quite a beating (a donation of 100 or so points in total).
While his rating might have suffered, his chess clearly did not as upon his return to Ireland he came second in a local weekend event. He then followed this up with a good performance in the British Seniors where he score 2.68 points more than his expected score, easily the biggest rating gain in the 42 player field. In fact a win in the final round would have given him outright second, but 4.5/7 was still a good score.

1 comment:

OzChess.com said...

Congratulations to Peter Morris!