Ballarat: The Longest Day

The second day of the long weekend tournament at Ballarat is a battle of endurance as much as a battle over the chess board. The day starts with round 3 at 9.30am, the next game is at 2,30pm and the final round starts at 7.30pm. With a time control of 90 minutes plus 30 seconds increment from move one, the games are averagely lasting 3-4 hours. So this means somewhere between 10 hours or more of play is pretty standard. Needless to say, the standard of play can become pretty patchy later in the day.

The first round of the day, the third of the tournament, is always a bit odd as the accelerated pairings are switched off. This means a number of huge rating differences can occur. For example, visiting Italian FM Patrick Scharrer, 2288, found himself playing black on board 4 against young Jason Chew rated 1394. This sort of discrepancy happened throughout the draw. On 1.5 there was Cameron Yung (1351)-Doug Hamilton (2040), on 1 point there was an average 700 rating point difference between players, but perhaps the biggest difference in ratings between opponent's was between those yet to score, where Angelo Tsagarakis (1760) played Daniel Poberezovky (263). So for most players, the morning game is a run through the motions. However, I was not quite so lucky. My reward for giant killing in the previous round was to play on board 1 against FM Chris Wallis. What was worse was that the last time we played I managed to win against Chris, so he was out for revenge. Chris showed his class at Queenstown, New Zealand, earlier this year where he scored 2.5/6 against the GM's he played including an epic win against Gawain Jones (2653). We repeated the same line as in our last game (my first mistake) but this time Chris was ready and he made no mistakes in following his attack. As bad as it feels to lose, I was mollified by the fact that my opponent is unbelievably strong and a really nice guy!

Round 4 was an interesting affair as many of the top players were working their way back up after earlier shocks. Or at least they were trying to! While Chris Wallis was working hard against GM's in Queenstown, the Australian Junior championship was being held in Melbourne, an unfortunate clash. With a number of Australia's top junior's playing in Queenstown I had heard it said that the Australian Junior Champion was therefore not Australia's top junior player, and the championship was devalued. However, the winner of the 2012 Australian Junior Championship, South Australian Alistair Cameron was proving in Ballarat that he was a worthy Champion. In the fourth round he added to IM George Xie's woes by defeating the Australian number 3! In this round I had one of those moments in chess where something happens that makes your stomach twist. My opponent played one of those tricky lines that I didn't know anything about, the Belgrade Gambit in the Four Knights Opening. So I played some rubbish that wasn't particularly critical, and luckily played a bit better than my opponent later in the game.

I don't really want to talk too much about the final round of the day. I admire anyone who can get through the third round in one day without making mistakes that are too horrible. As an example, my final game with Tony Davis was a very tentative affair where neither of us seemed to have any positive ideas. Tony made one more aimless move than me and allowed me a central break which looked good, but I still wasn't convinced by my position. I came up with a convoluted plan to rearrange my pieces, then changed it, then changed it back again, made a move I immediately regretted, and then realised it was actually pretty good! I'm not sure what was going through Tony's mind, but he seemed equally adrift, and I was lucky enough to finish stronger and take the point!

After the second day was eventually finished (about 12.30am was when the last game finished!) no one was on maximum points. I overheard someone saying that no one had ever scored 7/7 at Ballarat to win the event. I don't know if this is true, or if it was just another player disgruntled with the acceleration policy! Three players shared first place on 4.5/5: Domogoj Dragicevic, Alistair Cameron and Patrick Scharrer. However, there were over 25 players within a point of these 3 players all waiting to pounce.

Worst Tipster

The next time I  say someone will win something, then pick someone else to win it! It's official, my predictions are very poor. However, self knowledge is a great thing, and I know that this is a weakness of mine so I don't gamble. In fact, I don't even buy lottery tickets! Let's see my last set of predictions and assess their progress so far....

Wijk A: Aronian
Wijk B: Potkin
Wijk C: Sadler
Aus Junior: Justin Tan
Queenstown: Jones


Well 1/5 is not so bad, is it? Levon Aronian took the lead in the Wijk A group yesterday, after Magnus Carlsen suffered a defeat to World Number 7 Karjakin. So this leaves Carlsen in joint second place with Ivanchuk and Radjabov, but a whole point behind Aronian. There are 4 rounds to go, so nothing is clear yet, though Aronian is in the box seat.

In the B-group, I chose Potkin, the 2011 European Champion, but he has played well below that form and currently sits in the bottom half of the field. Indian GM Harikrishna is a point clear here of L'Ami, Bruzon and Motylev, and these are well clear of the rest. In the C-group, Matthew Sadler has been really disappointing in my opinion. He is at plus one but doesn't seem to be able to win games. With a strong finish he may still end near the top of the table, but he is too far back to win (2.5 points back with 4 games to go). After his comeback successes before Christmas, I thought Matthew would run away with this tournament, but 2 other GM's, Turov and Tikkanen lead the field.

Queenstown seemed like a great swiss event this year, but my prediction didn't live up to expectations. In the early rounds Jones was in with the leaders, but in consecutive rounds he faltered against young Victorian players. First he could only draw with IM James Morris, who produced a nice exchange sacrifice to stabilise the position, and then in the following game, he was outplayed by FM Chris Wallis. This game ended with the unusual material imbalance of rook and 4 pawns versus rook, bishop and knight. Chris had no pawns, but managed to exchange rooks and win all the pawns, finally showing he knew the technique to win with knight and bishop.

The tournament was won by Melbourne GM Darryl Johansen who was backing up from the Australian Championship that he also won. In Queenstown, he finished joint first but won on tiebreak ahead of Chinese GM's Li Chao and Zhao Jun. It's a great effort by Darryl and good to see him at his very best form. With the current crop of strong young players around Australia, it is important that older players retain their strength and force the youngsters to stretch themselves to overtake them.

The Australian Junior Championship concluded at the weekend and was certainly affected at the top level by the absence of players competing in Queenstown. However, there were still a group of talented players and there was no clear favourite for the under 18 Championship. All the results can be seen online at the site of the tournament management software, tornelo. It was a close affair in the end, but finally, South Australian third seed Alistair Cameron won by half a point from Justin Tan and 10 year old Anton Smirnov. All of these are very good players, and Alistair was a worthy and popular winner. The 9-round format which was used for the first time last year, again proved sufficient and all the age group championships were hard fought. On the tornelo site, there is a database of 1142 games, most of which were uploaded by the kids themselves during the event.

Australian Under 18 Champions, Miranda Webb-Liddle and Alistair Cameron

As the worst tipster, I thought it best not to predict any more results, bringing my kiss of death to players. However, I couldn't help myself when a friendly debate at the Australian Junior occurred between IM's Leonid Sandler and Vladimir Smirnov reagrding the upcoming World Championship. The upshot is that I have now officially tipped Anand to win, which I guess must dramatically increase Gelfand's chances in this match!

I'm back...

I have been in New Zealand for the past week and missed some action.

The Australian Championship was won by GM Darryl Johansen for a record 6th time! He took the lead before I left and never relinquished it winning the event by a full point from an elite group of players consisting of  GM Zhao, IM's Xie, Solomon and Smirnov. The contingent of younger players failed to breach this experienced group, and FM Junta Ikeda and IM Moulton Ly led the younger challenge a further point behind, and alongside IM Wohl.

The Reserves tournament was won by MCC member Justin Penrose. I have never played Justin but my impression is a tough fighter who is happy to play difficult positions with a dogged determination. He will cause problems for his opponents at any turn and does not give up on positions which others might think too troublesome to continue the effort. Another MCC member came second, and pleasingly a junior. Like most juniors, Ari Dale has good days and bad days, but he is generally moving forward at an alarming rate. This result confirms that the MCC has another young player of 2000+ strength. Joint third were Omar Bashar, David Spuler, and another MCC member, Frank Lekkas.

All the games from the Championship are available in pgn format and the latter rounds of the Reserves have been made available as well. This is a pretty good effort seeing there was such a small staff on duty. I haven't been able to go through these games yet, but I will see if any interesting things show up over the next couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, the Hastings Congress reverted back to the days when the foreign visitors dominated. The event was won by top seed GM Wang Yue of China half a point clear of GM Istracescu of France and IM's Lalith and Shyam from India. The top English players were a further point behind in joint 8th, the GM group of Howell, Hebden, Flear, Williams and Nick Pert. This group on 6 points also included Icelandic IM G Kjartansson who seems to have had a very good tournament, scoring 2/3 in the final rounds against GM's Howell, Hebden and Istratescu!

So I have got back just in time for the start of 3 tournaments of interest to me. There is the SuperGM event in Holland, the Tatasteel Wijk aan Zee starring World number 1 Magnus Carlsen. The Australian Junior Championship started yesterday as well and runs until next weekend. And the Queenstown Classic started today and runs until next weekend. This last tournament is especially interesting to me as I've just been on holiday in Queenstown. This beautiful new Zealand town is a perfect holiday destination and I hope that the players will get some chance to experience some of the beauty of their surroundings!

Bob's Peak from Queenstown beach

OK, I suppose I better put my head on the block and throw out some tips for these tournaments:

Wijk A: Aronian
Wijk B: Potkin
Wijk C: Sadler
Aus Junior: Justin Tan
Queenstown: Jones


But good luck to all, and great to have so much interesting chess around!

Waiting for Wijk

It's almost Christmas and chess is playing second fiddle to eating, drinking and making merry! But the festive holidays are a traditional time for chess and the break from work gives chess players time to recharge ready for the next batch of tournaments. Here in Australia, Christmas marks the start of the summer holidays, and with it comes the typical glut of chess tournaments.

First is the Australian Championship, and associated events, which are due to start December 27th in Geelong, Victoria. Geelong is about 45 minutes west drive from Melbourne so I guess players have the choice to commute if they want. Of course, the National Championship will have players from all over Australia and overseas. It is quite an impressive list of players, and it is a tournament that I would some day like to play in. Although I am currently English on the FIDE list, I think that I qualify as an entrant based on my residence and citizenship, which is now Australian. I think that by the next Championship (they are every 2 years), I will probably have Australia next to my name anyway!

After the Championship, 2 tournaments start. One is the Australian Junior Championships which are being held in Melbourne. The other is the biennial Queenstown Classic in New Zealand. I will be at the Australian Junior as a coach and helper so I should be able to report first hand on what is happening. The Queenstown tournament will be followed avidly here in Australia, as so many of our players will be playing. With 11 GM's already in the field, this is likely to be a great tournament. Congratulations to Murray Chandler, Paul Spiller and Helen Milligan (and everyone else) who have put together another great tournament.

I will be watching some of the action from New Zealand while at the Australian Junior Championship. Both tournaments start on the same day, Saturday 14th January. At a local level, these are hugely important events, but in the scheme of things both will be overshadowed by the traditional Wijk tournament in Holland. The Tata Steel tournament has an amazing field led by World Number 1, Magnus Carlsen. Probably the best thing for us in Australia, is that the games in Holland will be starting at night for us so it is doubtful we will be able to follow them live. However, the games and analysis will be followed closely while live action from this end of the World is also being watched.

I reckon that by the end of my holiday, which coincides with end of the Tata Steel Tournament, I'll be in need of another holiday!

Anyway, I suppose I better stick my neck out with some tips:

Australian Champion: George Xie (really nice guy, deserves it this time)
Queenstown Classic: Gawain Jones (go with the English!)
Tata Steel: Levon Aronian (Time for him to go for World number 1 spot!)