Saturday 20 August 2011

I guess you had to be there

Lev Aronian is a sometimes visitor to Canberra, as his girlfriend WIM Arianne Caoili is a PhD student at the Australian National University. Whenever I see Lev I always invite him to play in Street Chess. "Lev" I say, "$5 to enter, and there is a $45 first prize on offer". "Maybe one day" is his usual diplomatic reply.
So today at Street Chess, we managed to attract the smallest field for about 3 years. Due to regulars being overseas to play chess, or on holidays, or just deciding to sleep in, we ended up holding an 8 player round robin. And of course just before it finished, Lev and Arianne decided to drop in and play some blitz. So those few who did turn up today at Street Chess got to see some very entertaining 5m v 1m blitz between the current World Blitz Champion and WIM Caoili. (Lev had the 1m btw). I didn't keep track of the score of the match, but I did catch a few of the games. The funniest moment, when Nxf7 was played in the Fried Liver, with the comment "Are you familiar with the games of Paul Morphy?". This almost brought about instant resignation, but the spectators were happily treated to a nice king hunt.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

One should have been there...

Henrik Mortensen

BlunderCheck said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I've been following your blog just recently to gain more info about chess arbitration and issues about chess abroad...also, It's nice to hear for our "Comrade" WIM Caoili most especially her study pursuits and then her chess...BTW, Shaun I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you what's the most popular tie-breaks used in a Swiss tourneys? I am running a 40+ clubmembers here in the Philippines...thanks for your time...Allan Pelias...email: allanpelias@hotmail.com

Shaun Press said...

Allan, the most common tie breaks used in Australian events are Buccholz (sum of opponents scores), Median Buccholz and Progressive. This is mainly due to the default settings on Swiss Perfect, the most commonly used pairing program in Australia.
FIDE recommend Direct encounter, Progressive score, Buccholz,Playoff, Sonneborn-Berger, Won games, and then Games with Black.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reply and the info... Good to hear on the Swiss Perfect, I find it not too complex for pairings purposes...Thanks a lot!...

Allan