Sunday 8 April 2012

2012 O2C Doeberl Cup - Day 3

The big news from day 3 of the 2012 O2C Doeberl Cup was the withdrawal of 3rd seed GM Zong Yuan Zhao. Zhao had been unwell since the start of the tournament, but had struggled through the first two days. However his illness did not improve and so he had to pull out of the event and return to Sydney. Indian IM P Karthikeyan is the outright leader in the Premier, on 5.5/6. Having drawn his round 1 game against Yi Liu, he has reeled off 5 straight wins, beating GM's Szabo, Rodriguez and Vajda in successive rounds. He is closely followed by IM K. Rathnakaran and GM Adam Horvath on 5. Last night also saw the 2012 Statesman's Hotel Doeberl Lightning. This year was an 'up' year for the tournament with 80 entries, around double last years numbers. The field was also very strong, with a couple of IM's, and the usual large number of young 2200+ players. The winner was IM James Morris (for a second time), who defeated IM George Xie in the final round to score 8/9.
Full results from all the tournaments are avail from www.doeberlcup.com.au. Today's play starts at 9:30 am and GM Ian Rogers will be doing live coverage at the venue.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 50th Doeberl is somewhat unwelcoming for GMs, isn't it? Zhao has withdrawn because of the illness, Kunte couldn't come for family reasons (as said at chesschat.org) and I'm staying in Moscow with my leg, restricted.

Anyway, best of luck to all the tournament stuff and players, especially the remained GMs :) It's a pity I couldn't come to Australia this year but I am sure this was not the last chance.

Andrey Deviatkin

Anonymous said...

P.S. Of course I meant staff, not stuff :)