2013 ANU Masters - Week 1

The ANU Chess Club is holding the ANU Masters for its 4th year, and the tournament began this evening. The event is a FIDE rated Round Robin, with the field consisting of 3 invited players, and 7 club members who qualified by winning ANU Club events in the previous year.
As in previous years the field is headed by IM Andrew Brown and FM Junta Ikeda, while Michale Wei joins them as an invited player. Andrey Bliznyuk is the top rated player from the ANU qualifiers, while Stephen Sengstock, Justin Chow and Kishore Streetharan make up a strong group of FIDE unrateds
The first game to finish was between Yijun Zhang and Adrian de Noskowski. de Noskowski was saddled with an isolated pawn on an open file, but Zhang felt a draw was a good outcome, and so the game was halved. Stephen Sengstock felt he had a good position against Andrey Bliznyuk, especially when Bliznyuk had all his pieces on the back rank, but giving up the exchange proved unsound and Bliznyuk won the ending. Junta Ikeda was able to win a pawn going into the ending against Kishore Sreetharan, and despite attempts to complicate the position, Ikeda was able to start the tournament with a win.
In the game below, Jeremy Ready essayed the Sniper against IM Andrew Brown, but Brown came prepared, although the position was still equal in the middle game.  Brown then sacrificed a piece to get his central pawns rolling, and eventually Reading had to return the piece, before losing a second. The game between Michael Wei and Justin Chow will be played at a later date.


Brown,Andrew (2295) - Reading,Jeremy (1888)
2013 ANU Masters Canberra, Australia AUS (1), 13.02.2013