2025 O2C Doeberl Cup Major

 One of the big surprises from this years Doeberl was the large number of players playing in the Major. The 100 player limit was reached about a month in advance of the tournament, and I was constantly dealing with requests to become the 101st player in the field. One of the reasons was that the cutoff for the premier was raised to 2000 ACF or FIDE (up from 1900 last year), which meant more players had to play the Major. The 1st prize of $1600 was also attractive, although only 1 player with an ACF rating above 2000 chose to play the Major.

The large field also left the top seeds with somewhat of a problem, in how to win the event. One loss was almost fatal to outright winning changes, while even a good score of 5.5 may leave them out of the prize list. 

As it turned out, this was how the tournament played out. DM Daniel Ding started with 5 wins, as did overseas visitor Balanandan Ayyappan. Their 6th round game was drawn, leaving them tied for 1st going into the last round. Wang defeated WFM Alaina Vincent to go to 6.5, while Ayyappan drew with Ethan Retnaraja to take a share of 2nd. He was joined by Vincent Qiang, whose only loss in the event was to the tournament winner.

With such big numbers, and a desire to make the tournament numbers a little more even, the rating limits for the Major (and Minor) are going to be squeezed, like for the Premier. The bottom floor will 1700 ACF or a FIDE rating to be decided later. So you have 12 months to get to work if you want to play this very popular event!

 

So ends a big 3 weeks of chess in Australia

 The Sydney International Open finished today, with a win for GM Mitrabha Guha. This follows on from his win in last weeks O2C Doeberl Cup. and an equal 2nd in the Melbourne International Open. He takes home almost $10,000 in prizes from the 3 events, which is a pretty handy return.

Of course he, and a lot of other players, had to work hard. Three 9 round events, over the course of 21 days is not easy, especially if you factor in the travel. Quite a few other players did the 3 tournament circuit, as did at least one arbiter. All 3 events were successful in terms of numbers, and hopefully the format will continue next year. 

Now that the 'circuit' has been established, the next challenge is to get more OS players to take part. One of the goals for each of the events is to provide title opportunities for local players, and increasing the number of visitors will help do that. At least for the Doeberl Cup, the feedback was very positive, and I expect that the other events were similarly well recieved.

So watch this space later in the year, and hopefully the 2026 Australian Circuit will have some exciting announcements.

Tragedy in the Endgame

 Each year (for the past 3 years), the Hobsons Bay Chess Club has organised a junior challenge match involving clubs across Australia and New Zealand. Played as a hybrid event (online play supervised by an arbiter at a local venue), the event consists of a RR of 6 teams across 6 boards. 

This years event was won by the ACT Junior Chess League team, finishing just ahead of a much improved Hobson Bay A team (who beat the ACT team 4-2 in their individual match). The quality of play has improved over the last 3 years, although one game saw a very tragic ending.

Around move 65 Black is completely winning. However White keeps playing, and Black misses 69 ... f6! which keeps the win in hand. After the exchange of pawns, the position is now drawn, as the White King is close enough to assist the pawn to the end of the board. However, Black thinks their might be one last trick in the position with 76 ... Kf6?? While the idea of threatening mate, or skewering the King and Queen might look tempting, White has a few moves to avoid this, and keep the Queen. Even then it is still a tough ending to win, until White forces the rook away from the king on move 115, when it is picked off by the Queen.

Annapureddy,Dhru (1543) - Nguyen,Kiet Anh (1516)
ANZAC Day Inter Club Hybrid Rapid 2025 Tornelo INT (4.3), 25.04.2025

2025 O2C Doeberl Cup - GM Mitrabha Guha wins

 The 2025 O2C Doeberl Cup has seen the top seed GM Mitrabha Guha finish in 1st place, with 7.5/9  He went through the tournament undefeated, and played the other 4 GM's in the field along the way. Interestingly, the top 5 places were all occupied by the 5 GM's in the tournament, with GM Das Sayantan in 2nd on 7/9, and GM's Zhao, Antonio and Stopa all tying for 3rd on 6.5.

The 59 player field was tougher than last year, with the the Premier being harder to qualify for. Despite this, Guha won when he needed to, and event though he only needed a draw in the final round, still pushed hard for a win (it was eventually drawn). His style suited the  shortened tournament format ( 9 rounds over 5 days), keeping his positions under control until his opponent made a mis-step. 

For winning this years event Guha collects $5000 first prize. Das picked up $3000 for 2nd, as well as a 33% share of the Fighting Fun, alongside Zhao and Stopa.

 Overall the tournament attracted 377 players across the 5 division, while the Saturday night blitz attracted 200 players across 2 sections. 

Reports on the other events to follow across the next few days

Mitrabha,Guha (2505) - Antonio,Rogelio Jr (2363) [E11]
2025 O2C Doeberl Cup Premier Canberra, Australia (4.2), 18.04.2025

Not sleeping, just busy

 The 2025 O2C Doeberl Cup has me swamped. Updates (including a lot about the tournament) will resume in the next few days.

2025 O2C Doeberl Cup

 The 2025 O2C Doeberl Cup begins tomorrow, at the Woden Southern Cross Club, Canberra. While not quite achieving the numbers of the last 2 years (367+-), the Premier is once again quite strong, with 5 GM's in this years field. With defending champion GM Hrant Melkumyan choosing to sit out this years event, Indian GM Mitrabha Guha is the top seed. The tournament is significantly stronger this year, with the median rating over 100 points higher than last year. Of course the raising of the tournament floor explains this, with the added effect of the Major and Minor events filling up quite quickly.

The first round of the Premier is at 1pm tomorrow, with round 2 at 7pm. The other events all begin at 1pm on Friday, with all running through to Monday (with the exception of the 2 day Under 1200 tournament) 

The tournament website www.doeberlcup.com.au has links to results, pairings, and live coverage from the premier.

MIO - FM Felix Xie wins

 New Zealand FM Felix Xie has won the 2025 Melbourne International Open, finishing with 7/9. Needing half a point toe secure a share of 1st, and an IM norm, Xie drew with FM Kai Jie Soo in 38 moves. Indian IM Arghyadip Das had a chance to join Xie in 1st place, but was held to a draw by CM Rheyansh Annapureddy on board 2. This allowed GM Sayantan Das and GM Guha Mitrabha to also take a share of 2nd on 6.5/7.

A number of leading participants in this event will have a few days break before heading for Canberra for the 2025 O2C Doeberl Cup. At this stage the Premier has 61 players, with 5 GM's, 1 WGM, 8 IM's and 2 WIM's entered. The Premier starts on Thursday (17th April), with the other sections starting on Friday (18th April)

Maybe I'm amazed

 There are a couple of big European Opens either running or coming up, including the Reykjavik Open, which is up to round 4. Local Canberra player Tim Pearce is taking part, and may well be the first Australian player to face someone from Greenland in an international event. He is currently on 2/4, but hasn't reached a board high enough to have his games broadcast. 

So instead I found a top board clash which seems to revolve around a somewhat bizarre opening line. 10.h4 is a common reaction to Ng6 type moves, but then it gets a little strange. Pieces get offered and declined, but in the end the an equal middlegame is reached. This lasts a few moves and then White simply collapses. I'm guessing it was time trouble, as White only had 2 minutes on the clock,  but I would not rule out avoiding a draw as the other culprit.

Gunnarsson,Jon Viktor (2439) - Safarli,Eltaj (2617) [B33]
Reykjavik Open 2025 Reykjavik, Iceland (4.5), 11.04.2025

An experiment

 I'm not sure I have tried to show a Fischer Random game on this blog before. but here goes. It is from the current Freestyle Chess event in Paris, and sees Carlsen grinding out a win in Carlsen style

Carlsen,Magnus (2837) - Abdusattorov,Nodirbek (2773)
Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Paris Kn Paris, France (1.2), 09.04.2025

OK, that did not work (I think the ChessTempo viewer does not handle Fischer Random)

So lets try this method

MIO Round 1

 The Melbourne International Open has kicked of in Melbourne, with a strong field contesting the Masters Section. Three GM's are at the top of the field, and the median rating is around 2100. As with events of this type, not everything went according to rating, with a few draws, and a couple of upset wins for the lower rated players. 

Alongside the Masters section is the Amateur section which attracted 87 players. Again there were a few upsets, but the top seeds seemed to do well enough.

Tomorrow is a double round day (9:30am, 3pm), followed by a single round day on Wednesday. The tournament website is https://melbourneio.com.au/ and from there you can find all the tournament results, as well as links to live coverage of the games.

Ghostbusters Chess Game

 Flicking past Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire on TV today, I caught a human v ghost chess game. Fortunately it looked like a decent representation of a real game, right down to the speed the players were moving at (no clock, but no more than 3 seconds a move). The moves also looked pretty legitimate, so much so, that I had a stab at reconstructing the game. The first few moves are pretty clear (Scotch Four Knights), and the so is the end (Philidors Legacy), so it was just a case of filling in the gaps. What I have tried looks pretty plausible, so unless someone has managed to dissect it frame by frame, this is what I will go with.

Phoebe - Melody (Ghost)
Human v Ghost Match, Russell Square, London (standing in for New York)

I guess not all rook and pawn endings are drawn

 The 2025 Women's World Championship is underway in China, and game 2 has already thrown up a bit of excitement. After a solid draw in game 1, game 2 was heading in the same direction, until the 'curse of move 40' struck Wenjun Ju. Although she was dropping the b pawn, she missed a way of giving it up for rook activity, and the position went from equal to losing. Despite attempts to complicate the issue by pushing the h pawn, this did not save the game, resulting in a win for Zhongyi Tan.

Tan,Zhongyi (2555) - Ju,Wenjun (2561) [A29]
FIDE Women's world championship match2025 China Shanghai, China (2.1), 04.04.2025

April fools day

 It might be an age thing, but April Fools Day tends to pass me by more and more. I did catch a couple of chess related ones, although the Carlsen retiring one was pretty obvious. There was one concerning the new BBC Chess Show "Chess Masters: The Endgame" on FB which did catch some people unaware (the contact for the Show was Afo Ools which was a clue).

But elsewhere (away from chess) I did like the installation of floating roundabouts on Sydney Harbour, as a way of helping the traffic flow at the busiest points.