I believe this was a team effort

I'm not sure of the exact format that was used to play the following game, but I believe this was a team effort. In this case , too many cooks did spoil the broth. (BTW I have played this asBlack in some quickplay games, but not as badly as this)


Women - Men [C44]
Battle of the Sexes ICCF, 25.12.2019

Andrew Tridgell OAM

Congratulations to Dr Andrew Tridgell OAM. 'Tridge' as he is commonly known, received his Order of Australia Medal for services to Computer Science in the most recent honours list. His contributions to the field of computer science is well known, through software such as Rsync and Samba, but Andrew is also a pretty good chessplayer.
I first met him at the 1983 Australian Junior Championship in Canberra, where he finished ahead of me (as did the rest of the field!). When he moved to Canberra to work on his PhD, he joined the Belconnen Chess Club for a while. In the mid 1990's he was lecturing and researching at the ANU, where our paths crossed once again. He then combined his interest in chess and computers to develop the program Knightcap, which was one of the worlds first successful "self learning" engines.
As a player he was pretty god, despite his academic work being a priority. We played on the same team together in an interclub competition in the late 1990's, and if my memory serves me correctly, was responsible for winning a crucial game that gave us a win over the top seeds.
 

Gungahlin (formerly Belconnen) Chess Club - New Venue

The Belconnen Chess Club is changing both its venue and its name for 2020. It will now be known as the Gungahlin Chess Club, and will be meeting at the Eastlake Gungahlin, 51 Hinder St Gungahlin.
The day and time will still be Tuesday 7pm.
The move has come about due to a change in access policy at out old venue. Talk of a move to Gungahlin (where a lot of members live) has been happening for a while, but with the need for a new playing space, the decision has been made.
BTW this is the 7th venue the club has had in the last 40 years. Previous venues were Belconnen Library, Belconnen Labor Club, Norths Rugby Union Club, Wests Rugby Union Club, Belconnen Community Centre, and University of Canberra.
The advantage of the new venue is location (a walk from the Light Rail station and Gungahlin Busses), plenty of parking, and access to drinks and dining facilities. The first club night will be Tuesday 4th February, and we expect a big turnout of old and new members.

A big win for Caruana

Fabiano Caruana has scored an important tournament win at Wijk Aan Zee, finishing 2 points ahead of a start studded field. After a slow start to the tournament, he finished with 6.5/7 (including 4 straight wins from round 9) to score a record equalling 10/13 (+7=6). In second place on 8/13 was World Champion Magnus Carlsen, while Wesley So finished 3rd on 7.5
This is the first win for Caruana in the top section at Wijk Aan Zee, but he has previously on the B and C sections. The margin of victory, as well as finishing ahead of Carlsen, puts Caruana back into serious contention as the next challenger for Carlsen's title.
In the Challengers section  David Anton Guijarro finished in first place on 8.5 and qualifies for the top section in 2021. Young Australian GM Anton Smirnov found the tournament tough going finishing on 4.5. FM Michael Kethro, who was playing in one of the supporting round robins, scored a credible 50% (4.5/9), although he might have hoped for more with a couple of rounds to go.

Congratulations Athena Hathiramani

Congratulations to Athena Hathiramani for winning the title of Australian Under 16 Girls Champion a the just completed Australian Junior Chess Championship. She was the best scoring Under 16 girl, as well as finishing second in the overall tournament (Under 18 years). Despite losing her first round game, she fought back to win her next 7 games, before being beaten by the tournament winner Lillian Lu in the final round.
Cameron McGowan finished first in the Under 18 Open with 7/9, ahead of a small, but tough field. Jason Wang finished first in the Blitz tournament,  while Sravan Renjith won the Problem Solving competition.


Hathiramani,Athena - Cheng,Amanda [D05]
Gold Coast AUS U/18 Girls (6.1), 24.01.2020

2020 Women's World Championship

While the score after 12 games of the 2020 Women;'s World Championship was the same as the 2018 World Championship (6-6), how they got there was far more entertaining. Six of the twelve games were decisive, including the crucial 12th game where Goryachkina had to win to force the game into tie breaks. This she did, but then lost to Wenjun Ju 2.5-1.5 in the tiebreak games. Ju therefore retains her title as Women;'s World Champion.
This was a close match all the way through, with Goryachkina missing a couple of wins early on. As chess playing friend of mine put it "Goryachkina was the better player, but Ju was the tougher player"


Goryachkina,A (2578) - Ju Wenjun (2584) [D00]
WCh Women 2020 Shanghai/Vladivostok CHN (12), 23.01.2020

The Forace Rule

Early on in his chess career Lee Forace came up with a rule that you are unlikely to find in any chess book. "Swap off when you are behind". This is of course the opposite to the usual "Swap off when you are ahead", but was intended as a humorous take on how to lose a game.
While in general the rule doesn't help much, there are of course situations when swapping off can save a half point. Rook and pawn endings are a good example, where taking rooks from the board can result in a drawn pawn ending.
Having said that, here is an example where the rule definitely does not help. Having lost a pawn in the opening, my opponent obligingly allows me to swap everything off into a pawn ending that was easily winning for me. I didn't speak to him after the game, but I can only assume he thought he could stop my king from breaking through on the kingside.


Press,Shaun - Scully,Mark [C41]
Canberra Cup (7), 23.01.2020