2010 Australian Player of the Year

Picking a ChessExpress player of the year for 2010 has been a little tougher than previous years, as the leading Australian players all seemed to have good years, without anyone having an outstanding year. An example of this was the 2010 Olympiad where the Open team played pretty much to their rating level.

However earlier in the year there was one significant performance for Australian chess and that was IM George Xie scoring his third GM norm at the O2C Doeberl Cup. He went through the event undefeated and scored wins over GM's Bojkov and Zhao. He continued to play good chess throughout the rest of the year, winning several weekenders and finishing in second place in the Yulgilbar-Think Big Australian Grand Prix.

Therefore George Xie is the (ChessExpress) 2010 Australian Player of the Year, and hopefully next year will see him pick up enough rating points to confirm his GM title.

Ikeda wins Gold Coast Chess Festival

The 2010 Gold Coast International had an exciting final round, with a number of players in a position to win the event. However id was FM Junta Ikeda who finished outright first after defeating Sally Yu, and seeing a couple of other results go his way. With the tournament using the 3-1-0 scoring system, Ikeda's 7 wins,1 draw and one loss was enough to finish ahead of Moulthun Ly (6 wins, 3 draws) and GM Zong Yuan Zhao (7 wins, 2 losses).

While the event did not have enough overseas players to qualify as a norm event, it did provide the opportunity for some players to pick up important rating points. Ly (who already has 3 IM norms) should move towards th 2400 mark he needs for the title, while Ikeda recovers some of the points he dropped at the Australian Junior Masters earlier this year.

The top two seeds (Zhao and Xie), might be dropping points, but at least they played what looks like the game of the tournament. The final round clash saw Xie choose an interesting idea in the French (10. ... g5) although the game was still theory up until move 15. Zhao then played a new move (16.Rf4 rather than 16.c3) and a few moves later sacrificed a piece for an attack on the king. Xie wasn't able to protect h7 and with mate beckoning, resigned.

Zhao,Zong-Yuan (2586) - Xie,George (2478)

2010 Gold Coast International Chess Tour Gold Coast (9), 29.12.2010

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Be3 a6 8.Qd2 b5 9.a3 Bb7 10.Bd3 g5 11.fxg5 cxd4 12.Nxd4 Ncxe5 13.0-0 Bg7 14.Nce2 0-0 15.Ng3 Ng4 16.Rf4 Nde5 17.Raf1 Nxe3 18.Qxe3 Nxd3 (D)

19.Rf6 Nc5 20.Nh5 Bh8 21.Rh6 Ne4 22.Nf6+ Bxf6 23.gxf6 Qd6 24.Rh5 1-0

Hastings 2010/11

One event that has stuck solidly to its traditional dates is the Hastings Chess Congress. Of course some things have changed over the years, with the Premier event being a swiss event rather than Round-Robin, involving a mixture of English players and various visiting GM's.

The event began yesterday, with its usual strong field (plenty of GM's are quite happy to play a swiss). Australian IM Aleks Wohl is also a participant, and is playing on the top board in round 2. Tournament home page is here, including links to live coverage and results,

Bookshop raiding

About to head out for a day or two to the middle of New South Wales for a bit of RR. While net connection may be a little shaky, I'll hopefully make up for it by finding a few second hand bookshops to raid. Of course chess books are often a scarcity in those parts, but with crossed fingers I might strike it lucky.

A shortage of arbiters

Within the last 3 weeks I was asked whether I would be able to be an arbiter at 3 different tournaments. Two of those requests were as last minute fill-ins, while the other was further down the track. Unfortunately I had to say no to each request, as they clashed with prior commitments (which was a shame as I would have liked to do at least 2 of them).

The requests came from a couple of fellow (senior) arbiters, and during the discussion we agreed that there is a pretty small pool of arbiters in Australia to call upon. This partly explains why the same faces keep popping up at the 'big' events, although organiser preferences also play a part.

While there may be a few reasons why there aren't more arbiters in Australia, I would like to focus on one reason. I believe the lack of arbiter accreditation in Australia has a lot to do with the problem. Without accreditation there is no impetus for arbiter training, and there is no way that organisers know who is qualified to run their tournaments (apart from word of mouth). More importantly, the lack of accreditation also leads to a situation where potential arbiters are left behind/ overlooked as they themselves don't have a yard stick to measure themselves against. There may be a number of people who could do a good job of being an arbiter, they just don't realise it.

Of course the sensible solution is to have an arbiter training and certification program, as many other countries have, but movement in this area has been somewhat glacial. For the moment the training seems to be left with local clubs, with a belief that arbiters will just bubble up to the higher levels. From my experience this hasn't really happened, and therefore a new approach is what is required.

Gold Coast Chess Festival begins

There was a time when the post Christmas period was either for playing in the Australian Open/ Championship or not playing chess at all. Then a decline in numbers for these events made potential organisers think that no one really wanted to play chess in the period between Christmas and New Year, and for the last few years the Australian Open/ Championship has started in the New Year (usually the 2nd).
However other organisers decided that people did want to play in the period between Christmas and New Year (even if they didn't want to play in the Australian Champs/Open), and began to slot events into that period.
One event that is taking advantage of this gap is the Gold Coast International. This event has attracted a field of 55 players, with a couple of strong players at the top (GM Zong Yuan Zhao, IM George Xie), a group of up and coming junior players (Ly, Ikeda, Morris, Brown and Nakauchi), and a then a field consisting mainly of Queensland players.
The event started today, with the first two rounds being completed. Results have gone mostly to seedings, although a couple of players in the top 10 were held to second round draws. One nice feature of this event is the live coverage of the top 10 boards, (using the Monroi devices), meaning I can divide my time between chess and the cricket (shudder!).
Here is a game from round 2 where 4th seed FM Junta Ikeda demolishes his opponent after an unwise two pieces for rook and pawn exchange.

Ousmand,T N (1757) - Ikeda,Junta (2262)
2010 Gold Coast International Chess Tour Gold Coast (2), 26.12.2010

1.d4 g6 2.c4 d6 3.Nc3 a6 4.e4 Nd7 5.Be2 Bg7 6.Bg5 c5 7.d5 Qa5 8.Qd2 Rb8 9.f4 b5 10.cxb5 axb5 11.Nxb5 Rxb5 12.Bxb5 Qxb5 13.Rb1 Ngf6 14.Bxf6 Nxf6 15.Nf3 Nxe4 16.Qe2 Qb4+ 17.Nd2 Nxd2 18.Qxd2 Qe4+ 19.Kf2 Bd4+ 20.Kg3 Be3 0-1

A random Christmas Game

While we are all recovering from what was hopefully an enjoyable Christmas Day, the chess world moves on. Yesterday saw Hou Yifan become Womens World Champion, while tomorrow sees the Gold Coast Chess Festival kick off.

While I don't have any games played today at hand, I did dig

up this game played a few years ago. While it involved a couple of 2500+ players, I wonder if Black had too much of the Christmas spirit, as he seemed to gift White a fairly straight forward attack.

Predojevic,B (2645) - Stojanovic,Da (2510) [C10]

3rd ch-BIH Sarajevo BIH (8), 25.12.2007

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Nf3 Ngf6 6.Nxf6+ Nxf6 7.Be3 Nd5 8.Bd2 c5 9.dx

c5 Bxc5 10.Bd3 Qc7 11.Qe2 a6 12.0-0-0 Nf4 13.Bxf4 Qxf4+ 14.Kb1 0-0 15.g3 Qf6 ((D)

16.Ne5 g6 17.f4 Bd6 18.h4 Rd8 19.h5 Bf8 20.hxg6 hxg6 21.Qh2 Bg7 22.Qh7+ Kf8 23.Be4 Rxd1+ 24.Rxd1 Rb8 25.Rd7 Qxe5 26.Rd8+ 1-0