City of Melbourne Open

The Grand Prix idea for Monday night tournaments at the Melbourne Chess Club seems to have increased the numbers playing in events. While the MCC has often attracted quite top heavy fields, we are now seeing more of an even spread of players. Extra rating prizes will only increase this trend. The upshot of the policy has been bigger fields, more competition and a general rise in standard of those players who were below the half way mark earlier this year. Of course, it takes consistency to generally move up the ratings, but giant killing certainly helps players along the way, and Roger McCart, Anthony Hain and Charlotte Dilnutt should all be lloking forward to this event after their performances in the recently finished Malitis Memorial.

There were no surprises at the top with all the seeds coming through unscathed. There were some giant killing feats lower down the field. Marcus Ogden took out Kerry Stead, while Alex Kaplan continued his upward trend with a win against Frank Lekkas. 8 players requested half point byes in the first round, but there were no other draws, an interesting statistic!

Here are some games and images from the first round :)

 Justin Penrose tries to obscure giant killer Alex Kaplan

 Gyula Plaganyi, a welcome visitor to the MCC from WA

James Martin

 Sylvester Urban has struggled to find time for chess this year, so it is good to see him playing again!

 2010 Victorian Champion, Dusan Stojic

 Kerry Stead was one of the seeded players upset in this round.

 Tanya Kolak and Damien Feaine

David Beaumont will hope to repeat his excellent performance from the MCC Open