Sunday 20 February 2022

ACT v SA - Junior Challenge

 The ACT and South Australia played a junior challenge tournament today, over 18(+2) boards. Using the Tornelo platform, and zoom supervision, the event was over 6 rounds, with a time limit of 15m+5s. It was played as a team swiss, which is like a normal swiss except players from the same team do not play each other. As the ACT had 18 players, and SA ended up with 20, a separate 2 player team (SA2) was required.

Having played under this format a few times, the ACT team shot out to quite a large lead. However, once the South Australian players got used to the format, the margin narrowed over the last two rounds. In the end the ACT scored 59 points, and SA scored 53. The top scorers were James Boyd-Norman (SA) and Minchen Yang (ACT), who both scored 5.5/6

Although players were asked to treat it like a normal event, there was still some games that dragged on for two long (either by failure to resign or agree to draws in drawn positions), and the issue of offering a draw when facing a sure loss still arose. In one incident a game reached K+R v K+R and as both players had plenty of time on the clock. One player even offered a draw, but his opponent refused, and played on instead. So when the second player blundered a rook (instead of exchanging rooks a few moves earlier), the cry of "Yes" that was clearly heard by all the other players could be excused!


Boyd-Norman,James (1479) - Cheng,Larry (1626) [B21]
ACTJCL v SAJCL Tournament Canberra ACT, Australia (5.1), 21.02.2022


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