2011 ACT Championship - Day 5

FM Junta Ikeda completed a comprehensive victory in the 2011 ACT Championship, with a win over Josh Bishop in the final round. His score of 8.5/9 is almost certainly a record, and left him a full 2 points clear of second place getters Daniel Abrahams, Andrey Bliznyuk and Wenlin Yin. Abrahams scored the biggest upset of the final round after Andrew Brown dropped a rook while trying to win a drawish position. This left Brown in 5th place on 6/9, with his 3 losses coming against the other top seeds. Stu Mason on 5.5/9 was the highest placed non-FIDE rated player, while sister Jo shared the Under 1200 prize with Bazli Karattiyattil.

The tournament attracted 33 players, which was about the same as last year. Once again the format of 9 rounds over 2 weekends was popular with the players that played, but there were a significant number of players from last years tournament who did not back up for this year. With the ACT Chess Association covering the tournament overheads, the prize pool (from the tournament entries) was a very nice $1690.

Full results and games can be found at the ANU Chess Club website.

Ingham,Glenn - Mason,Stu [E91]

2011 ACT Championship (9.6), 14.03.2011

1.e4 e6 2.d4 c5 3.d5 exd5 4.exd5 d6 5.c4 Nf6 6.Nf3 Bg4 7.Be2 g6 8.h3 Bxf3 9.Bxf3 Bg7 10.0-0 0-0 11.Nc3 a6 12.Bf4 Qb6 13.Rb1 Nbd7 14.Na4 Qc7 15.b3 b5 16.Nb2 Nb6 17.h4 Nfd7 18.h5 Ne5 19.h6 Bh8 20.Be2 b4 21.Nd3 Nbd7 22.Bg3 Rae8 23.Ne1 f5 24.Bf4 Nf6 25.f3 Nh5 26.Bxe5 Bxe5 27.f4 Nxf4 28.Bf3 Qe7 29.g3 Qg5 30.Ng2 Qxg3 31.Qd2 Nh3+ 0-1