2018 Australian Championships - Illingworth wins

GM Max Illingworth finished his dominate run in the 2018 Australian Chess Championship with a final round win over FM Gene Nakauchi. Nakauchi chose a line against the French Defence that was known to be bad from one of his previous tournament games and Illingworth was already better by move 10. The game ended with a sacrificial attack followed by a smothered mate combination. The win moved him to 10 points from 11 rounds, a full point ahead of GM Anton Smirnov.
Smirnov had a quick final round game after WGM Pauline Guichard miscalculated a pawn grab and dropped a piece. GM Moulthun Ly secured third fourth place with a short final day draw with IM James Morris.
The other game of significance was between IM Ari Dale and IM Gary Lane. A win for Dale would have given him a 9 game GM norm, as he was able to drop two winning games over lower rated opponent earlier in the event, to raise the average rating of his opponents to the required level. Lane chose an aggressive attacking line against Dale's Caro-Kan, but once the attack petered out, Lane's lack of development proved fatal. The win gave Dale a TPR of just over 2600 which was enough for the norm.
The Reserves event also had a dramatic finish with WCM Nguyen Phan beating round 10 leader Willis Lo, to capture first place on 9/11. Phan, who lost her first round game, recovered from a slow start to finish the tournament with a run of 6.5/7. Despite the loss, Lo still finished outright second on 8.5/11.

Lane,Gary W (2401) - Dale,Ari (2356) [B18]
2018 Australian Championship Sydney (11.4), 12.01.2018