Saturday, August 29, 2015

Glen Eira Last Chance

It is getting to the final stages of our last 7 round Swiss qualifying event for 2015. The Last Chance event has seen 6 out of 7 rounds played, and the only qualifier for the championship so far is John Nemeth. It is great to have John along at the club, away from his usual Noble Park Chess Club. Noble Park are coming to the end of one their events too, and we are not far away from Noble Park's annual weekender.

The Noble Park Classic is an excellent weekend event, rated on the ACF system and run under a 60 + 10 time control. This means that there can comfortably be 7 rounds played over the weekend. The tournament will be held over the weekend of 19th and 20th September, and I would urge everyone to play in it. I've played before and had a great time there.

Anyway, it is great to attract players to our club from other clubs, and hopefully we are making them feel welcome. John is currently tied in first place with me on 5/6, we drew with each other and both took a half point bye. In third place is IM James Morris who was unable to play today because he was playing a catch up game in the Noble Park event that finishes tomorrow! James is on 4/6 and will qualify for the championship next week if he draws or wins.

After that there are a bunch of players lined up for the final qualifying place. Young Daniel Dessau has 3.5 and sits in clear 4th in the tournament, but he will have to avoid losing to a tough opponent if he wants a chance of making it to the championship. Then there are 3 players half a point behind, 2 of whom are looking for that final place: Axel Ahmer, and Alastair Locke, who had a great victory tonight against Alistair McCutcheon. There is an outside chance for Jerzy Krysiak to qualify, as he sits on 2.5, but other results will have to go his way.

Interestingly, the games between the juniors tonight were the longest games, with Mahalakshme Thiagarajaran and Gabriel Rips playing for 2.5 hours, and the Alastair-Alistair game lasting 2 hours. All the adults tonight were finished earlier!

I was quite happy to be told by IM James Morris a few weeks back that he thought my endgame play was a strength of mine. So here's a nice study that I found. I've been showing to some students.

White to play and win
I'll give you all a few days before giving you the answer!

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