2010 Australian Player of the Year

Picking a ChessExpress player of the year for 2010 has been a little tougher than previous years, as the leading Australian players all seemed to have good years, without anyone having an outstanding year. An example of this was the 2010 Olympiad where the Open team played pretty much to their rating level.

However earlier in the year there was one significant performance for Australian chess and that was IM George Xie scoring his third GM norm at the O2C Doeberl Cup. He went through the event undefeated and scored wins over GM's Bojkov and Zhao. He continued to play good chess throughout the rest of the year, winning several weekenders and finishing in second place in the Yulgilbar-Think Big Australian Grand Prix.

Therefore George Xie is the (ChessExpress) 2010 Australian Player of the Year, and hopefully next year will see him pick up enough rating points to confirm his GM title.