Fitzroy Skittles

Sunday Morning saw me drive to the inner city suburb of Fitzroy to the Melbourne Chess Club to catch up with some friends and watch some of the Fitzroy Skittles. It has to be said that Fitzroy doesn't appeal to everyone, and the MCC's location between the large thoroughfares of Brunswick Street and Nicholson Street just to the North of the city has it's detractors. But the club still has a healthy membership of over 150 and 30 players turned out today for the skittles.

Brunswick Street shopping is not to everyone's taste :D

Brunswick Street is a great eating strip with cafes and restaurants to suit everyone's taste. I turned up a little early on purpose so as to go for a coffee in one of my favourite cafes, Cafe Nova. However, Cafe Nova is now Cafe Ethos and it took me a little time for this to register. I walked in, looked at the place where I usually sit and it wasn't there, a booth  that had been replaced by an empty wall space. Still, I had a coffee which was ok and spent a pleasant time reading the novel "Peaches for Monsieur Cure" by Joanne Harris, famous for her novel "Chocolat".

It's been over 6 months since I'd been to the MCC, and walking round from Brunswick Street I was taken by how amazing the building looks. If you haven't seen it, then you should really go and look. Some local street artists undertook a job to liven up the outside of what is an essentially drab building. The back streets of Fitzroy are full of this 'art/graffiti' so the MCC is in keeping with the rest of the neighbourhood, but it is also distinct as a chess venue.

Street Art on the MCC

Street art on the MCC

Inside there was a great vibe, with a buzz of excitement as players waited around for the start of this unique tournament. I spent time chatting with people I hadn't seen for the best part of a year, and there was a really friendly feeling throughout the club today. President Grant Szuveges was running the show, and was acting as arbiter for the event. The event itself runs on the unusual format of a 'losing points' system. Every player is allocated a number of points depending on their rating, the top players starting with 1.5 and the lowest rated starting with 5 points. A swiss tournament is then played, and players are eliminated once they have lost the amount of points they started with. The top rated players in the event were IM's Igor Goldenberg and Ari Dale, but with only 1.5 points they both had little margin for error.

MCC President Grant Szuveges demonstrates what he'll do to anyone that touches his notepad! 

IM's Ari Dale (left) and Igor Goldenberg waiting for the first round to start

As the tournament is a swiss, the top players start to meet about the third round and then they start taking points off each other. The biggest fun is knocking someone out of the event, or "Skittling" them. The first players to be skittled don't usually happen until round 4 or 5, and by round 5 there were 5 players eliminated out of the 32 starters, and top seed Goldenberg was already down to just a half point left. In the end Igor survived until the very last match when he had to face fast improving junior talent Jack Puccini in the sudden death 11th round where both players just had a half point to lose (not sure what would have happened if the game had been a draw?). Igor Goldenberg won the game, and took the Fitzroy Skittles event for 2013.

The event was sponsored by the Red Triangle and life member Tino Fulgenzi who owns the Red Triangle was present at the start of the tournament. I had a brief chat with Igor Goldenberg before the tournament began asking him if he was making a comeback. He said he intends to play some chess in preparation for the 2014 Australian Championships which are being run by Noble Park Chess Club, and in which Igor wants to put in a good performance. The field of about 30 players may have been a bit disappointing, but there was a clash of events with Chess Victoria holding a Victorian Rapid Championship in the seaside town of Lorne over this same weekend. I believe they had about 20 players, so that makes 50 playing tournament allegro chess altogether this weekend. It's just a shame that it didn't happen in one place, as that would have made for a spectacular tournament. I asked FM Bill Jordan if he thought there was too much tournament chess happening in Victoria at the moment. His reply was simply that in the old days, the Skittles tournament would get fields of over 100 players, and it was probably due to the number of events in the calendar that many tournaments are getting smaller numbers. Is this what we want? Personally I'd rather see fewer events, but great numbers turning out for each one, but getting the right balance is certainly a matter of trial and error over the years.

Anyway, all in all it was a great fun event, and the MCC even ran a blitz tournament for those who were skittled early. It's these sort of things, giving the members some fun and something a bit different that can make a club more than just a tournament chess venue. So good on the MCC for hosting this and putting on a good show!

Tino Fulgenzi sponsoring the tournament walks around before the first round starts

The treasured notebook with all the players ratings and allocated points was not to be touched on pain of death!

Allegro, Allegro, Allegro!!!

As the World becomes a smaller place, city dwellers outnumbering country people, and time becoming a precious commodity, so it seems that 21st Century chess needs us to play at 21st Century speeds. At least there is a growing trend in tournaments with a faster rate. Or so it appears to me. I remember growing up in the UK and there being popular 30 minute, and 40 minute tournaments held monthly in London, either in Islington, or at the Barbican. Even those time controls now seem pedestrian.

Frankston Chess Club joined the ranks of organisers for weekend events, this past Saturday with what appeared a very successful 7 round allegro (G15) tournament. There was a good local turn out, and the event attracted players from other parts of the state, though I'm not sure any traveled from far outside the metropolitan area of Melbourne. But even that is good, as Frankston is situated about 40 km south of Melbourne's CBD with fairly easy access via car on the Eastlink, or on public transport via train. This distance will act as a deterrent to a lot of players unless they see something special to travel for. Luckily, it seems that was what was put on, and Frankston Chess Club will hopefully use their organisational skills to put on more weekend events to attract players down the peninsula.

The tournament was won by Chess Victoria President, IM Leonid Sandler who scored 6.5/7. Leonid is a fearsome fast player who has won the Victorian blitz championship in the past. Dimitri Partsi was the only player to hold Sandler, and Dimitri duly finished second on 6/7. It was very close after that, but Milenko Lojanica managed third with 5.5, though there were over 20 players within 1.5 of him. In all, over 50 players competed and it was great to see lots of prizes distributed throughout the field.

Melbourne currently has a gamut of 15 minute allegro chess tournaments. Firstly, most of the junior events run through the city are 15 minute tournaments. That is the interschool tournaments run by Chess Kids and Chess Victoria, and the monthly RJ Shield, and Rookies Cups. At the adult level, the Melbourne Chess Club has a weekly Saturday allegro event and most of the clubs run an allegro tournament at their club at some stage of the year for members to get away from the long play events for a short while. This is all good, and is encouraging juniors to play more and allows them to feel comfortable at adult clubs who provide this time limit, and may act as an introduction to the adult game. Meanwhile, the long play game isn't for everyone so it's good that there are alternatives for players around the city on a regular basis.

Coming up in August is an exciting event run by the Melbourne Chess Club, the Fitzroy Skittles. This is run as a knock out event, and depending on your rating you are assigned a number of points that you can lose throughout the event, the higher your rating the less points you are given. When you have lost the number of points that you were assigned to start with, you are knocked out the event. It is a fun system, and has become a fixture on the Victorian chess calendar. The MCC have already announced the inclusion of 2 IM's, Ari Dale, and ex Victorian Champion Igor Goldenberg, and the tournament usually attracts decent sized fields. In fact, I might see if I can get down to it this year.

So imagine my surprise when I get a facebook message from Frankston winner and CV President Leonid Sandler advertising an event on the same weekend in August. The Victorian Open Rapidplay tournament is to be held over the weekend of August 24-25 in Lorne, with sponsorship from a hotel group in the region. My initial reaction was what a great idea to have a chess tournament in the seaside resort of Lorne. Then when I realised it clashed with the MCC's allegro event on the 25th August I thought "who arranged that?" I could kind of understand if it was a different sort of tournament, perhaps an ACF rated longplay event, or even FIDE rated, but to hold 2 prestigious allegro tournaments at the same time seems a bit ludicrous to me.

So anyway, I had a bit of a dig at MCC President, Grant Szuveges about this, but he claimed ignorance of the organisation of the Lorne event, saying that it was all down to Leonid Sandler. Grant is not only MCC President, but also a committee member of Chess Victoria, so he should have known about the Lorne event. It is after all offering Victorian Open titles, whatever they are? Grant assured me he would not have agreed to hold such an event simultaneously with the Fitzroy Skittles, though to be fair he has been positive about the Lorne tournament, welcoming extra events on the calendar. I am less enthusiastic about the clash. I personally think the Victorian chess calendar is full to brimming with events, and as a result some events suffer from lack of numbers. A tournament in Lorne could be a great fixture but not at the same time as another tournament featuring virtually the same product nearby which has been established for a number of years. To my mind it is simply bad scheduling, and as much as I'd like to see an event on the Great Ocean Road succeed, I'll be pointing my students towards the already established Fitzroy Skittles at the MCC.