Saturday 28 March 2009

Dubbo Weekender - Day 1


An excellent field of 43 players turned up for the 2009 Dubbo Open. Top seed is Raul Samar, while tournament regular David Castor seeded second. The Canberra contingent is also there in force, with 20 players from the nation's capital making the 4 hour trip north.
In the second round there was an interesting, and amusing incident on board 3. Jamie Davidson (white) and Angelito Camer had reached the diagrammed position after 2 hours of play. Davidson had 2 and half minutes on the clock, while Camer had about 5 minutes. At this point Camer put out his hand, for what most assumed was a draw offer, and Davidson accepted. Of course this isn't the correct way of offering a draw, although I have seen it happen plenty of times, even at the highest levels. And it turned out that while Camer had assumed the draw had been agreed, Davidson believed his opponent was resigning. The mix up was only discovered when the draw for the third round was announced. The only solution was to resume the game from the last position reached, which both players were happy to do. After a few more moves, the game was drawn anyway!
After 3 rounds Samar, Castor and Emma Guo share the lead with 3/3. I started with a loss in round 1 (to Joshua Bishop), a draw in Round 2 (to Charles Bishop), before finally managing a win in round 3. My only hope of a decent finish is if the trend (0,0.5,1.0) continues and I score 1.5 in round 4.

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