2012 ACT Championship - Day 1

The 2012 ACT Championship has begun a little earlier this year, running over the last 2 weekends in February. Using the same format as the previous two years, it is a 9 round FIDE rated event, with 1 Friday night round, followed by 2 rounds on Saturday and Sunday for successive weekends.
This years event has seen a venue change, with the Tuggeranong Chess Club hosting the tournament at the Tuggeranong Vikings Rugby Union Club. There are 31 players entered, although it is a little thin at the top, with some strong players staying away. The top two seeds are FM Junta Ikeda and IM Andrew Brown, followed by a solid bunch of 2000-1900 rated players.
The first round saw no upsets, with the top half beating the bottom half 15 zip. There were a couple of interesting games, but the difference in strength generally told. Probably the most interesting position is the one shown, which occurred in the game between Matt Radisich and Tim Pearce. Radisich thought he had set a particularly evil trap, where if the pawn on g2 queens he has a forced mate. Pearce believed and instead chose 42. ... Nxf5 which also lost, the 43.Nf7+ Kc6 44.Rc7# However 42. ... g1(N)+! would not only have produced 5 knights on the board, it would have left Black with the upper hand.
Results and pairings from the tournament are available from chess-results.com, while a file of games is available from the ANU Chess Club site (under the Games link).