Last year I reported on the ACT Under 8 championship and this year was not any warmer. I'm pretty sure that the temperature didn't get above 8 degrees, and the situation wasn't helped by a lack of power in the hall (no heaters!). However, everyone seemed to have dressed warmer this year (forewarned is forearmed) and with my relaxed rules about running in the hall in play, everyone seemed to cope with the cold.
The winner of the event was Lucas Leung on 6/7, just ahead of Oscar Ho on 5.5 There was a little bit of luck for the winner in his final game as his opponent missed a back rank mate which would have changed the final standings significantly. The best scoring Under 6 was Charles Huang who scored a creditable 4.5/7, and may turn out to be a future talent.
As an arbiter is was pretty smooth sailing, although there is one issue that is becoming common in junior events. Every round there were one or two incidents of the DGT clocks 'mysteriously' resetting during the game. Both players would simply say 'it just happened', and claim they did nothing wrong. Having reset the clock and restarted the game, the fact that the next move involved someone slamming the clock pretty hard provided a simple explanation for what had gone wrong. For some reason this is occurring with greater frequency, so the next tournament may start with a lecture on proper clock etiquette.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Juniors bashing clocks seems to be a tradition that has survived the transition from brass to plastic :)
Having the clocks wired to trigger a 240v shock each time it is slammed way too vigorously may do the trick.
aussie 8-year olds must be pretty strong to ruin dgt
Post a Comment