Friday 30 December 2016

2016/17 Hastings International Day 2 - A good day for the Australians

Day 2 of the 2016/17 Hastings International saw the 3 Australian players all end up with good results. IM Bobby Cheng defeated GM Deep Sengupta on the top board to go to 2/2, while IM Justin Tan had a quick win over IM Robert Bellin. Harry Press scored his second draw of the tournament, holding on despite being a pawn down against Alan Byron.
Top seed SP Sethuraman had another tough day, drawing with English FM Robert Eames. GM Danny Gormally was another upset loss, with FM Ravi Haria finding a nice win in a Q+2 Minors v Q+R position.
Currently 9 players are on 2/2, including GM's Allan Rasmussen (DEN) and Mark Hebden (ENG). Tomorrows round is the last accelerated round as well, with the top half getting a bonus 0.5 for this round (as defined in the new Baku rules). So far the acceleration seems to have worked well, with the pairings not being too problematic. In round 4 everyone will be paired using their 'natural' scores, but even then I don't expect too many unbalanced pairings.

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