2012 O2C Doeberl Cup - Day 5

The 2012 O2C Doeberl Cup ended in a 4 way tie for first place, after Indian IM K Rathnakaran defeated countryman IM P Karthikeyan in a dramatic last round game. Once the result of that game was known, GM's Adam Horvath and Gergely Szabo immediately shook hands to ensure a share of first place. On board 3 GM Levente Vajda then ground out a win against GM Deep Sengupta to become the fourth player on 7/9.
Not only did the win for Rathnakaran leave him in first place, but he also scored a GM norm, and picked up a bonus $1000 as the sole recipient of the tournaments fighting fund. However the ultimate destination of the Doeberl Cup trophy was GM Adam Horvath who had the best tie-break of the 4 players.
This year the event was dominated by the foreign players, although the depature of Zong Yuan Zhao due to ill health after 4 rounds did contribute to this. However a quartet of Australian IM's finished in the group on 6 points. These were IM Stephen Solomon, IM Gary Lane, IM George Xie and IM Moulthun Ly. One player who would have been delighted to join them was FM Bobby Cheng, as a last round win would have earned him an IM norm, but a loss to IM Akshat Khamparia dashed his hopes.
In the Major Alana Chibnall drew her first two games, and then scored 5 straight win to tie for first with Michael Yu. However her slow start left her with an inferior tie-break and Yu took home the first place trophy. In the Minor tournament Dimity Li defeated previous tournament leader David Cannon to take first place on tie break ahead of Nathan Davidson.
Full results from each of the tournaments, as well as the Saturday night Lightning is available from www.doeberlcup.com.au You can also download games from the premier from the results page (currently top 20 boards up until round 7, but more will appear in the next couple of days).




Rathnakaran,K - Kartikeyan,P
2012 O2C Doeberl Cup Premier Canberra, Australia (9.2), 09.04.2012