2012 ANU Open - Round 4

At the end of the first day of the 2012 ANU Open, nobody is left with a perfect score! Part of this was due to the effort required to play 4 games in a day, but part of it was the fact that the tournament favourites were paired against each other.
On the top board IM Moulthun Ly decided to try and hack GM Zong Yuan Zhao, although from my untrained eye it did not look convincing. Zhao fended off the attack and was in fact an exchange up, but a draw was agreed when both players were short of time. The second board seemed to have a similar story with Illingworth up material against Xie, but again a draw was the result. Joining these four players in the lead was Anton Smirnov, who took advantage of the generosity of the organisers, by taking a 4th round (half point) bye.
In the Minor tournament, Simon Ong and Mark Patterson drew on board 1, which allowed Jason Gillard to catch them with a win over Donghoon Shin. There is also a group of players on 3 who still have good chances of winning the tournament.
Crosstables and Round 5 pairings for both tournament are available at ANU Chess Club site. Play kicks off at 9:30am tomorrow, and a live broadcast of the top board game can be found here.