Finding a clear winner

The organisers of the Best in the West tournament, which is currently being held in Melbourne, have made a brave choice in sticking with a 5 round open tournament. This is despite the event attracting 80+ players, which is well above the number of players a 5 round event could be expected to cope with.
I suspect one, somewhat pleasant, reason for this is they did not expect such a large entry, and stuck with the format they had used for previous years.
The general principle for swiss event is that you need at least log₂N rounds to find a clear winner. Of course additional rounds above that number are desirable, to allow the minor places to be determined with some accuracy.
In practice this formula does not always hold, as drawn games will reduce the number of players on perfect scores. And on the flip side, having this number of rounds will not always guarantee an outright first. The most extreme local example of this may well be the 1978 Doeberl Cup, where there was an 8 way tie for first place. The tournament was a 96 player Open, played over 7 rounds. The winning score was 5.5/7 and IM Robert Jamieson won the cup on countback.

Missing your mates

I've been stressing the importance of not missing checkmates in 1 to a couple of coaching groups I've been working with this week. The point I am (obviously) trying to make, is that once the game is over, your chances of losing fall dramatically. Of course I then saw a couple of games where the mate in 1 was overlooked!  In one instance the opponent went on to win, while in the other, a draw was agreed when both players ran short of time.
The diagram shows the second game. In this position Black thought for a while and then played 10 ... Ne7. White then committed the cardinal sin of playing the first move that came into his head and replied 11.Nxe7, missing 11.Nd6#

Max Fuller (1945-2013)

More sad new for Australian chess, with the passing of Max Fuller yesterday. He had been in poor health recently, and had collapsed on the morning of Peter Parr's funeral. He was taken to hospital but his condition gradually worsened and he passed away on the evening of the 27th.
Max was born in Sydney in 1945, and won the Australian Junior Championship in 1963. He was a member of Australia's first Olympiad team (in 1964) and played 9 Olympiads in total. He also captained the 1986 Olympiad team. As a player he was probably Australia's first 'travelling' professional. He spent a lot of time in the UK and Europe, and finished second in the British Championship on 2 occasions. He was Australian Champion in 1972, and won 3 Australian Open's in the 1970's. He finished 1st in the Doeberl Cup 7 times, winning 3 on tie-break.
Towards the end of his playing career he finished second in the 2004 NSW Championship, and tied for 1st in the 2005 Championship. As his health worsened his playing career wound down, but still attended a number of events as a spectator.

Fuller,Maxwell Leonard (2365) - Biyiasas,Peter (2420) [B04]
Nice ol (Men) prel Nice (2), 1974

Sacrifices come in pairs

Twice in the last week I've picked up points using the Greek Gift. I know this shouldn't be anything special, but I though the fact that it happened twice in 6 days is something to note. Here is the first of the games, in which I played Black. The other game was played this evening, and it finished a lot quicker, with a mate after 11 moves (as White).


Kwong,Leron - Press,Shaun [D46]
ANU Winter Swiss, 21.08.2013

What the what now?

First interesting fact: China has an 'International Beer City'. Second interesting fact: They hold chess tournaments.
There was a chess event at the Qingdao International Beer City in China, played under some interesting rules. Before each game, each player had to drink a litre of beer. Every 10 moves of the game, a mug of beer was also drunk. And if you broke any rules, you had to drink a beer. The aim of the event was to find the 'Drunken Champion' of chess.
Apparently there were 100 entrants, resulting in a selection process to whittle the field down to 16 players. The eventual winner (who was not named) possessed both 'wisdom and drinking capacity'.

Make your own newspaper?

A couple of weeks ago I (re-)found paper.li, which is a website that offers you the ability to create your own newspaper. Of course in the 21st century, such papers exist online, rather than in print form, but it is still a way of creating 'new' media. The mechanics are fairly simple, in that you choose a number of new sources and feeds based on you favourite topic and 'hey presto', you have your paper.
Mine is title 'Chessinthenet' (for want of a better name) and currently has a subscription count of 1. In fact I don't mind this as its main purpose is to allow me to quickly find potential topics for this blog. The other reason this isn't a problem is that there are other 'chess newspapers' on the site (for example Chessvibes has one). In looking at my 'competitors' I realised another interesting thing about 21st century media. There are only a few new sources that 'create' news, while the rest simply just serve up other peoples news. So the news items on the Chessvibes paper looked pretty much the same as mine!

How fast can you move?

From today's Street Chess action comes the following position. Black's last move was Kg5-g4 and after about 20 seconds thought White resigned. Of course the gathered kibitzers instantly suggested Rf1 as White's saving move (Rxf1 being stalemate). But the question is: Can you force mate with Black (after Rf1 by White) and do so in under 20 seconds (which is the approximate amount of time Black had left on the clock)?