Sunday 2 October 2016

2016 Ryde Eastwood Weekender - Day 1

The 2016 Ryde Eastwood Weekender started today, with  field of 52 players. With some leading players still overseas after the Olympiad (or back at full time work), the top seeds were IM's Igor Bjelobrk and Andrew Brown, along with Baham Kargosha. The rest of the field was made up of strong club players, talented juniors, and those who wished to avoid seeing the Sydney Swans lose the AFL Grand Final.
There were 3 rounds on the first day, and after the games were finished, there were only 3 players on a perfect score. IM Andrew Brown had to work hard to collect his points with some stiff resistance from his opponents, while Dimitri Silver upset top seed Bjelobrk on his way to 3 from 3. Donato Mallari rounded out the trio, beat CM Christopher Ball in the evening round.
There are five more players on 2.5, including Baham Kargoshi, who beat me in an exciting third round game (I will post it at a later time). But probably the real surprise of the tournament is 9 year old Marco Le Lun Zheng, who despite being unrated, is in the 2.5 group.
Tomorrow sees the next two rounds (with the NRL Grand Final an evening priority), and Monday sees rounds 6&7.

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