Tuesday 12 January 2016

IM Bobby Cheng is the 2016 Australian Champion

Despite a dramatic final round loss, IM Bobby Cheng did enough to take the title of 2016 Australian Champion. Leading the tournament by half a point after 10 rounds, Cheng was demolished in under 30 moves by a fast finishing IM Junta Ikeda to remain suck on 8 points. But when his closest rival for the title FM Karl Zelesco also lost, Cheng became the new Australian Champion. However Cheng's loss allowed IM Kanan Izzat to overtake him to win the overall tournament on 8.5/11. As Izzat is still considered an overseas player the first prize he won did not have a title attached to it.
Cheng finished outright second on 8, while Zelesco was third on 7.5. Tied for 4th was a quartet of young Australian IM's, James Morris, Junta Ikeda, Justin Tan and Anton Smirnov.
While the performance of the younger players was a standout (and will give the 2016 Olympiad selectors some headaches), there were also some players who had less successful tournaments. Soon to be GM Max Illingworth never got going in this event, and the tournament top seed only scored 50%. GM Darryl Johansen started poorly, but finished with 3.5/5 to reach 6/11. IM Stephen Solomon was another player who ended up on 50%, while young Canberra IM Andrew Brown had a complete nightmare, finishing on 2.5.
In the Reserves tournament Patrick Gong from Western Australia won with 9.5/11, with Michael Kethro (ACT) second on 9.
Links to all the results can be found at the tournament website.


Ikeda,Junta - Cheng,Bobby [C11]
Australian Champiomship (11), 12.01.2016


2 comments:

Graham Clayton said...

Interesting to see Greg Canfell's name - I remember when he was a promising junior back in the 1980's!

Unknown said...

Another year rolls by and another Australian chess championship tournament is completed and once again almost completely ignored by the media apart from one or two articles usually written by 3rd rate cub reporter.
Congratulations to part time chess player from the Central Asian republic of Azerbaijan who won the event over the best players in the land as well as two generations of Olympiad representatives. Another ordinary effort by the locals.
It can be said that the evergreen FM William Jordan played very well to finish on the same number of points as GM elect Maximillian Illingworth whose loss to FM Stojic delighted the spectators. Credible performances from the British expert Carlos Gorka who played very well indeed.
IM James Morris amused the spectators with his usual temper tantrums after dropping games. All very entertaining!
The Reserves tournament was won by Patrick Gong who played some very solid chess and it is always entertaining to watch the games of Girgin "The Egg" Ege" who played some marvelous chess! Queenslander Oleg "KGB" Korenevski played some fine chess also but probably the biggest surprise for the spectators was the performance by Kevin Bonham from Tasmania who firmly embedded himself into the ranks of 'standard club player', picking up an award from the Australian Chess Federation in the process. No favouritism here!