City of Melbourne Open

With a quickish draw in the final round, I secured first place in the City of Melbourne Open at the Melbourne Chess Club. I have to admit that I'm pretty happy, as this is my first win in one of the Monday night events at MCC in my 10 years of playing there. In some respects I was lucky to be playing Malcolm Pyke in the last round, who has had an overkill of chess over the past couple of weeks due to his participation in the Victorian Championships. He was telling me that he's had a tough weekend personally as well, so a short game suited both players tonight. Malcolm is off to sunshine next week, where I hope he can get some much needed relaxation along with whatever sightseeing he finds to do.

The final round of the tournament was spoiled somewhat by the non participation of a number of players. There were 6 forfeits today which is completely ridiculous. If a player knows they can't play a round, they should tell the arbiter before the pairings are produced. If the reason for being unable to play occurs after the pairings have been published, then it would be decent to let the arbiter know so that they can inform your opponent.

So I finished first with 7.5/9 only half a point clear of IM Mirko Rujevic who won his last round game to finish on 7/9. FM Jack Puccini finished third on 6.5 despite being held to a draw by Simon Schmidt, who has been playing excellent chess recently as can be seen by his strong placing in the Victorian Championship. Sharing 4th place on 6/9 were Richard Voon, Simon Schmidt, Tristan Krstevski and David Lacey.

There weren't really any upsets tonight, except for the lack of players, but the rating prizes would have been decided.

U-1900 leaders were Richard Voon and Tristan Krstevski 6/9
U-1750 leader was Roger Beattie 5.5/9
U-1600 leaders Natlie Bartnik 5/9

Those were all excellent performances. The tournament was played in excellent spirits, and was run well by IA Kerry Stead.