With most chess activity for 2020 taking place online, the question of whether this helps or hurts chess development is still to be answered. However, as chess emerges into the sunlight (in the form of OTB tournaments), it is likely that an answer is not long off.
One OTB with interesting results was the 2020 Brisbane Xmas swiss which was held last weekend. 12th seed Byron Morris (1482) finished in 1st place, beating seeds 3 and 1 in the last 2 rounds to finish on 5.5/6. In equal 2nd was Benjamin Leong (1426) who was seeded 16th in the tournament.
Further south, a number of juniors who performed well in online events have carried their good form into the Melbourne Chess Club Allegro, showing that improving during lockdown is quite feasible. Although the data points are pretty small at this stage, I suspect that there will be number of young players who will see quick rating jumps (from OTB chess), as the OTB system catches up with their online improvement.
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