MIO - FM Felix Xie wins

 New Zealand FM Felix Xie has won the 2025 Melbourne International Open, finishing with 7/9. Needing half a point toe secure a share of 1st, and an IM norm, Xie drew with FM Kai Jie Soo in 38 moves. Indian IM Arghyadip Das had a chance to join Xie in 1st place, but was held to a draw by CM Rheyansh Annapureddy on board 2. This allowed GM Sayantan Das and GM Guha Mitrabha to also take a share of 2nd on 6.5/7.

A number of leading participants in this event will have a few days break before heading for Canberra for the 2025 O2C Doeberl Cup. At this stage the Premier has 61 players, with 5 GM's, 1 WGM, 8 IM's and 2 WIM's entered. The Premier starts on Thursday (17th April), with the other sections starting on Friday (18th April)

Maybe I'm amazed

 There are a couple of big European Opens either running or coming up, including the Reykjavik Open, which is up to round 4. Local Canberra player Tim Pearce is taking part, and may well be the first Australian player to face someone from Greenland in an international event. He is currently on 2/4, but hasn't reached a board high enough to have his games broadcast. 

So instead I found a top board clash which seems to revolve around a somewhat bizarre opening line. 10.h4 is a common reaction to Ng6 type moves, but then it gets a little strange. Pieces get offered and declined, but in the end the an equal middlegame is reached. This lasts a few moves and then White simply collapses. I'm guessing it was time trouble, as White only had 2 minutes on the clock,  but I would not rule out avoiding a draw as the other culprit.

Gunnarsson,Jon Viktor (2439) - Safarli,Eltaj (2617) [B33]
Reykjavik Open 2025 Reykjavik, Iceland (4.5), 11.04.2025

An experiment

 I'm not sure I have tried to show a Fischer Random game on this blog before. but here goes. It is from the current Freestyle Chess event in Paris, and sees Carlsen grinding out a win in Carlsen style

Carlsen,Magnus (2837) - Abdusattorov,Nodirbek (2773)
Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Paris Kn Paris, France (1.2), 09.04.2025

OK, that did not work (I think the ChessTempo viewer does not handle Fischer Random)

So lets try this method

MIO Round 1

 The Melbourne International Open has kicked of in Melbourne, with a strong field contesting the Masters Section. Three GM's are at the top of the field, and the median rating is around 2100. As with events of this type, not everything went according to rating, with a few draws, and a couple of upset wins for the lower rated players. 

Alongside the Masters section is the Amateur section which attracted 87 players. Again there were a few upsets, but the top seeds seemed to do well enough.

Tomorrow is a double round day (9:30am, 3pm), followed by a single round day on Wednesday. The tournament website is https://melbourneio.com.au/ and from there you can find all the tournament results, as well as links to live coverage of the games.

Ghostbusters Chess Game

 Flicking past Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire on TV today, I caught a human v ghost chess game. Fortunately it looked like a decent representation of a real game, right down to the speed the players were moving at (no clock, but no more than 3 seconds a move). The moves also looked pretty legitimate, so much so, that I had a stab at reconstructing the game. The first few moves are pretty clear (Scotch Four Knights), and the so is the end (Philidors Legacy), so it was just a case of filling in the gaps. What I have tried looks pretty plausible, so unless someone has managed to dissect it frame by frame, this is what I will go with.

Phoebe - Melody (Ghost)
Human v Ghost Match, Russell Square, London (standing in for New York)

I guess not all rook and pawn endings are drawn

 The 2025 Women's World Championship is underway in China, and game 2 has already thrown up a bit of excitement. After a solid draw in game 1, game 2 was heading in the same direction, until the 'curse of move 40' struck Wenjun Ju. Although she was dropping the b pawn, she missed a way of giving it up for rook activity, and the position went from equal to losing. Despite attempts to complicate the issue by pushing the h pawn, this did not save the game, resulting in a win for Zhongyi Tan.

Tan,Zhongyi (2555) - Ju,Wenjun (2561) [A29]
FIDE Women's world championship match2025 China Shanghai, China (2.1), 04.04.2025

April fools day

 It might be an age thing, but April Fools Day tends to pass me by more and more. I did catch a couple of chess related ones, although the Carlsen retiring one was pretty obvious. There was one concerning the new BBC Chess Show "Chess Masters: The Endgame" on FB which did catch some people unaware (the contact for the Show was Afo Ools which was a clue).

But elsewhere (away from chess) I did like the installation of floating roundabouts on Sydney Harbour, as a way of helping the traffic flow at the busiest points.