2025 NSW Open

 The 2025 NSW Open finished in a tie for 1st between GM Jacek Stopa and IM George Xie. They were the top 2 seeds and went through the event undefeated. They started with 4 straight wins, before drawing their round 5 game. Stopa then defeated IM Gary Lane in round 6, before a quick draw with Ethan Chang in round 7 left him in the lead on 6/7. Xie drew his round 6 game against WCM Bayasgalan Khishigbaatar, before beating CM Hui Li to join Stopa in 1st place.

Equal third was shared between Chang, CM Daniel Wang, CM Seth Peramunetilleke and Taifeng Liu. Chang and Wang were both undefeated in the event, but dropped some early half points to lag behind the winners for most of the event.

The 98 player Open section ran without any serious incidents. Probably the major issue was the number of forfeits and withdrawals (NB this also affected to Under 1600) event. While some players had the courtesy to inform us of their withdrawals a few players simply failed to show up. This has been an ongoing issue with this event for a few years now, and I am not quite sure what the best solution is.

The Under 1600 event attracted a competitive field of 77 players. Kamal Jain  won the event with 6.5/7, his only draw the result of a stalemate trick in a totally lost ending. Steven Hemsley finished outright 2nd on 6 points, losing to Jain and winning the rest of his games. Isaac Huang was third on 5.5, ahead of another 12 players tied for 4th on 5 points. Again a number of forfeited games did inconvenience the players who did show up, but in at least 2 cases, this was because some players (in their first event) thought it was a knockout competition!