2008 Australian Player of the Year

As in last year there were a couple of players in contention for this years award. IM Stephen Solomon won the Australian Championship at the start of the year, as well as winning the 2008 Myer-Tan Grand Prix Series. IM David Smerdon also had a good year, finishing a close second to Solomon in the Grand Prix series, as well as performing well in a number of local events.
However there was one player who clearly stood out from the field. GM Zong Yuan Zhao started the year by score 2 more GM norms to earn the title in the space of a spectacular 2 months. Returning home to Australia he finished equal first in the Sydney International Open (another GM performance), before heading to Brazil to finish equal 1st in a GM round robin. He then played board 1 for Australia at the Dresden Olympiad and finished with a 2600+ performance rating. And all this while still a full time University student!
So for these outstanding results this year, Zong Yuan Zhao is the Chessexpress 2008 Australian Player of the Year.

(**Edit: I've dropped the extra 'h' in his name)

New Years Tournaments

The Christmas-New Year period is still a popular time for chess events, especially in the northern hemisphere. If this was a chess news site, I would have at least half a dozen top events on the go, but as it isn't, you can get up to date coverage from sites like Chessvibes who are either covering the events directly, or have links to the home pages for the tournaments.
For the moment the Hastings tournament is the one I'm watching closely, both for its historical value, and for the fact that a number of familiar players are taking part. The top seeds include Gawain Jones and Stuart Conquest (who have both played tournaments here in Canberra), while David Howell and Mark Hebden are players that many would recognise.
At the end of the 2nd round Jones, Conquest and Hebden are on 2/2 along with Neverov and Gordon. Here is a game from the first round where Hebden takes advantage of some misplaced pieces to win material.

Swiss Pairings Test

Hopefully I'm not giving anything away with this post (and Stewart Reuben is too busy at Hastings to notice), but here is the question on Swiss Pairings that was given as part of the arbiters exam in Dresden. NB I got the answer partly wrong (as did a number of other arbiters), and when I give the answer in a day or 2 (in the comments section) I'll explain the error in my thinking.

Part A: You have a 15 player tournament, the players being identified by their seeding numbers (1 through to 15). The top seed is White in round 1. What are the first round pairings?
The results of round 1 (in board order) are 1-0, 0.5-0.5, 1-0, 0-1, 1-0, 0.5-0.5, 1-0, 1-0
Part B: Player 13 withdraws from the event after round 1. What are the pairings for round 2?

Moravec's Paradox

My regular work in Robotics, and my interest in King and Pawn endings meets at the name Moravec. In the field of robotics, Hans Moravec is a leading researcher, and the creator of Moravec's Paradox. Basically he (and Marvin Minsky et al) argue that seemingly intelligent tasks such as playing chess aren't particularly difficult for computers, while seemingly simple tasks such as walking or picking up an object are quite difficult to get robots to do.
In the field of chess studies, Josef Moravec (1882-1969) composed a number of wonderful K+P endings. I have even thought of bringing them closer together by using Hans Morovec's work on repulsion fields in robot navigation as a way of finding the solution to various K+P endings, in a kind of "Moravec solves Moravec" way. But I haven't progressed much beyond thinking it's a good idea.
For now I'll show you a Moravec study (White to play and win), which could also be titled "Moravec's Paradox", as the obvious idea for White doesn't quite work.

Rain stops play

"Rain stops play" is a familiar refrain for cricket fans (especially English ones), but it is less common at a chess tournament. However todays end of year Street Chess event was held up after round 3 as a summer storm swept through Canberra, forcing us indoors. Although the outdoor area has large umbrellas to shield us from the elements, the fact that players couldn't see how much time they had left due to the clocks being covered in spray, made up our minds for us.
Of course having moved indoors for round 4, the storm abated, meaning that by the time a fire alarm in the venue forced us outside again, the weather had cleared enough to allow us to resume our original positions.
Before the weather disrupted the event I was able to dash of this short game, when veteran player Gus Korda played down the line that Be2 in the English Attack against the Najdorf is designed to prevent.

Press,S - Korda,G [B84]
Street Chess, 27.12.2008

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Be3 a6 7.Be2 b5 (D)
8.Bf3 Bb7 9.e5 Nd5 10.Nxd5 exd5 11.exd6 Bxd6 12.Nf5 Bf8 13.0-0 g6 14.Re1 Qd7 15.Bg5+ Qe6 16.Rxe6+ fxe6 17.Nd4 Kf7 18.Qe2 Bc8 19.Re1 Bc5 20.Nxe6 1-0

All the President's Men

While flying back from Germany, one of the better in-flight movies was "All the President's Men". I had seen some of it when I was younger, so I made the effort to watch all of it this time. It took a couple of goes as I fell asleep at the halfway stage, but managed to watch it properly when I was wide awake somewhere over India.
Not only is it a fine movie (although the standards of journalism have fallen so far and so fast in recent years that it might be considered a work of fiction these days), but it does have a chess reference in there. During one of the scenes a radio is playing in the background, and the big news report is on the 1972 Fischer v Spassky match. Of course this isn't the only reason to watch what is a great movie, but for chess fans it is a bonus.
If you want to catch the movie (and live in Australia), then it is on at 11:40pm tomorrow night (Saturday 27th December) on Channel 9.

The Three O'Clock Rush

When I was a teenager, I used to work at a petrol station in Canberra. As I was a hard worker I always volunteered to work Christmas day, especially as it was always the quietest day of the year, and consequently I had the store, and the day, to myself. That was until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Then the place became bedlam. It seemed that every parent in Weston Creek had finally had enough of being pestered for batteries for the toys that they bought and having finished Christmas lunch, headed to the only place that was open. Within the space of 5 minutes the courtyard would be full of cars and queue of customers would be out the door. Then 15 minutes later the place would be deserted again, and remain so for the rest of the afternoon.
So for anyone who has to work Christmas day (a) make sure you well stocked with batteries and (b) you have 5 minutes until the hordes arrive.