Queenstown 2012 - Round 1

A very long first day has almost come to an end. With a long time control and a 3:00 pm round start, I suspect there will be plenty of post 11pm finishes. Even is today's supposedly 'easy' round, there were a couple of games that went over the 6 hour mark.
The day itself got off to a surprising start, with the hills around Queenstown covered in snow. Although the snow didn't make it all the way down to the town, the cold made my morning walk quite bracing. After a bit of exercise, the next few hours were spent making the playing hall ready for the tournament. A lot of this was due to the need to correctly program the clocks, but fortunately this should only need to be done once. A last minute technical check of the broadcast/blogging systems, a 20 minute opening ceremony, and we were under way.
With 74 games in progress I though there would be a number of upsets, but it tuned out that there were only a few. Ryan Louie scored the first in from the bottom half beating Quentin Johnson, while Jean Watson win over her higher rated opponent caused some distress (for the opponent).
There were also a number of semi-upsets (ie drawn games), with Hans Gao drawing an ending(!) with IM Stephen Solomon, and Jamie-Lee Guo splitting the point with WIM Sue Maroroa. It would also be remiss of me not to mention (and in fact show), the following draw between Harry Press and IM Russell Dive.


Press,Harry - Dive,Russell [B03]
Queenstown International Queenstown, 15.01.2012

1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 Nc6 5. c4 Nb6 6. exd6 exd6 7. Nc3 Be7 8. Be2 O-O 9. O-O a5 10. Be3 Bf5 11. d5 Nb4 12. Nd4 Bd7 13. a3 Na6 14. Nb3 a4 15. Nd2 Nc5 16. Nce4 Bf5 17. Nxc5 dxc5 18. g4 Bd7 19. Ne4 Ra5 20. Bd2 Ra6 21. Be3 Ra5 22. Bd2 Ra7 23. Be3 Ra5 1/2-1/2

Round 2 begins at 3pm NZ Time (1 pm Canberra Time) so folow the live games and coverage at www.queenstownchess.com