2023 NSW Open - Day 1

 The 2023 NSW Open started with 75 players in both sections (Major and Minor), although a couple of last minute withdrawals (illness etc) made each field a little smaller. The Major had 14 players rated above 200, with the top 8 players rated above 2200. New arrival IM Mihajlo Radovanovic is the top seed, with IM Gary Lane seeded second. Both players started the tournament with 2 wins, as did 10 other players. Despite the rating gap in the early rounds there were still a number of interesting games. Bevan Clouston looked to have a crushing attack against CM Hui Li, but Li survived and by the end had enough technique to mate Clouston with KBN v K. Jack Rodgers was held to a first round draw by Kye Walls, while FM Cameron McGowan was beaten by Micah Young in round 2.

The Minor event saw more upsets in the early round than the Major, with only 5 of the top 10 seeds scoring a win in the 1st round. The 2nd round saw more upsets so that only 2 players from the top 10 starting Day 2 on 2 points.

If you want to follow the results online, and live coverage from the top 8 boards, go to nswopen.nswca.org.au and follow the links

For the King

 I'm heading off to the NSW Open tomorrow. This weekend is quite popular with various chess associations, as it is a good weekend to hold a 3 (or 4) day chess event. Unlike Easter, which is dominated by the Doeberl Cup, each Federation usually does it's own thing. The one change this year is of course the title of the weekend. It kind of feels strange to call it the "King's Birthday Weekend". In fact this will be the first title change since I began playing tournament chess, especially as the first weekend event I played in was the NSW Queen's Birthday Weekender way back in 1983.

2023 Asian Championship

 The 2023 Asian Championship is underway in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The 86 player event is a qualifier for the World Cup, and has attracted a field that contains 15 GM's at the top, but also a large number of local players towards the tail. There are no representatives from Australia (or even that Asian powerhouse, Russia) but Stuart Fancy (PNG) is flying the flag for Oceania. Despite being one of the lower rated players, he did grab half a point of an IM in the 2nd round. 

Current results are here, and there are links to the tournament website from that page.

 

Abdyzhapar,Asylbek (2282) - Fancy,Stuart (1930) [A00]
Asian Continental Chess Championship 202 Almaty (2.32), 05.06.2023

Boom

 I used to comment that if I could form a chess club from everyone who turned up to chess clubs/tournaments just once, it would be twice the size of any club in Canberra. It turns out that I could now do this with everyone who was simply a new player on the June 2023 Rating List for the ACT. A record 138 new players were added to the list, which is twice the size of the Gungahlin Chess Club, which is currently Canberra's largest. Not all players received a rating, or played more than 1 or 2 rounds in an event, but it is still quite a remarkable number.

On Delay

 One of the difficulties in broadcasting tournaments over the internet is implementing the delayed broadcast. As part of anti-cheating methods, games are often 'delayed' by 15 to 30 minutes, so there is little chance a player can be signalled by an accomplice during the game.

Implementing this delay  turned out to be a tricky task however, as this feature did not come with the DGT broadcast software. A few people (including myself) programmed a solution to this option, saving timestamped snapshots of the files, and then uploading after the delay time had been reached. At least one online server (chess24) offered this as a service, although setting it up was often tricky.

But recently Lichess introduced a delay setting as part of their standard broadcasting service. It simply added an extra option where the delay period was specified, and the server did the rest. One tournament who is now using it the Trusts Open which is currently running in New Zealand. The tournament has attracted 180 players (a big turnout for NZ), with 42 players in the top section. Based on the time zone differences the 3rd round starts at 7:30am Canberra time, so you can probably watch some of the action over breakfast.

Here is a nice game from round 2 where White looked like they cruised to victory, although Black did miss a saving check on move 25 

Xie,Felix (2307) - Sole,Michael D (1910) [E04]
Trusts Open - (2.2), 03.06.2023

Dubai Open 2023

 Local FM Albert Winkelman is currently playing in the 2023 Dubai Open. He has had a pretty solid start in what is a strong event, scoring 2/5 against 4GM's and an IM. Although his points have come from draws (plus one loss) he has picked up rating points from each game due to the strength of his opponents. 

The field isn't quite as strong as the recently completed Sharjah event, but it still attracted 49 GM's in the 86 player field. For the non GM's this can lead to some tough games, as this game from the 1st round demonstrates.

Bai,Adelard (2409) - Chigaev,Maksim (2628) [E17]
Dubai Open 2023 - Category A Dubai Chess & Culture Club, Un (1.12), 27.05.2023

No Chess Column?

 GM Ian Rogers has announced that the Canberra Times plans to drop his chess column from the Sunday paper in a couple of weeks. Ian has been writing the column for a few weeks short of 30 years, while the column itself has been in existence since 1968. Also likely to go is the Bridge column, which has had the same editor for its entire lifespan, Len Dixon, who is 101 years old!

Sadly this has been a trend in the print media of late, with Ian's Sydney Morning Herald column dropped in 2020, only to be saved by a concerted letter writing campaign. Quite possibly this will have the same effect on the Canberra Times, so I encourage everyone to get to work. If you want your complaints/opinions published, then an email to letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au will do. You can also contact the editor directly at  johnpaul.moloney@canberraTimes.com.au - or make your concerns know to feedback@canberratimes.com.au

** Corrected email address **