You Say Blitz Championship...

...and I say rest day!

After 7 rounds in 6 days there were a lot of players at the Australian Chess Championship who were looking pretty tired. There aren't many players, especially in the Reserves event where there are a lot of young juniors playing, who would have played this much intense chess before. Of course, we all love it and wouldn't have it any other way, but that doesn't mean that there were those in the playing hall yesterday who left with the sole intention of having a free day today.

The sensational results continued in the Championship with Karl Zelesco beating leader Kanan Izzat to draw level on 6/7. Half a point behind are Vasily Papin and Bobby Cheng, while a further half point back on 5/7 is Luke Li who beat Junta Ikeda. Besides fighting for the title of Australian Champion, Karl and Luke are looking for IM norms, and both must be close to getting them. Luke Li next faces another 2400+ player in Anton Smirnov who is a further half point back alongside James Morris. However, with 4 rounds left I still can imagine a lot of players crashing through the remaining games and taking the title. The disappointing pair of Tan and Illingworth both won for a second time bringing their score to within half a point of Smirnov and Morris, and only 2 behind the leaders.

I managed to get up to 3 points yesterday after drawing against Jack Puccini when I certainly didn't deserve to. Maybe I'll be able to claim a swindle of the Championship from this...

I'm black and 3 pawns down, and almost ready to resign. I saw one last chance, and because Jack was down to a minute plus the increment on his clock, I thought to give it a shot. Sensing no danger, Jack played 35.Rxc6 going 4 pawns up and attacking my bishop.

Chess is a cruel game as I played my one chance to save the game, 35..Rd2.

Now white cannot stop the Nh2-f3-h2 perpetual without sacrificing at least a piece, and with only the increment left on his clock, Jack wasn't prepared to go down that line. I don't feel good about this draw, I was completely outplayed and deserved to lose, and I even apologised to Jack after the game for swindling this draw. If you haven't seen this pattern before, then it is worth remembering, as it might help you to save a game too.

The Reserves has tightened up again as the top board was a draw. Kris Chan, Michael Kethro and Patrick Gong lead on 6/7, but 4 players sit half a point back, and a further 17 players are just a point behind the leaders on 5/7. Anyone with designs on winning the tournament will need to finish strong, and this includes players further down the field, who aren't out of the running yet, especially for the rating prizes. There is over $12000 in prize money for the 2 events, including rating prizes and slow starter prizes.

As for the blitz, I didn't play but took a rest. I believe it was won by Bobby Cheng, though the full results aren't on the site yet. They will eventually find their way to the results page.

Who Will Be Australian Champion?

Without wanting to tempt fate, Kanan Izzat is looking unstoppable in the Championship, as he moved to 6/6 with a win over Luke Li. He is a point clear, and the talk around the tournament hall is not so much about who will win the tournament as who is going to win the title of Australian Champion.

The players in the mix for the title are all young. Karl Zelesco is having a dream tournament sitting on an unbeaten 5/6, and in a strong position to gain an IM norm. Bobby Cheng is on 4.5 and has already played Izzat and Russian GM Papin who also sits on 4.5. Two years ago, Bobby was leading the tournament and looking good but then he faltered over the last few rounds eventually finishing 5th. Hopefully he will have learned from this experience and he'll finish the tournament strong. Half a point back on 4/6 are a group of strong young players: Ari Dale and Luke Li have been mentioned on this blog already, but flying under the radar a little are Junta Ikeda and Brodie MacClymont, both of whom now find thenselves in the leading pack. Junta is a known quality player, representing Australia at Olympiad level. Brodie also has a strong pedigree gaining his IM title when he came equal first at the Oceania Zonal in 2015. This sensational result very nearly saw Brodie representing Australia at the World Cup in 2015, but Max Illingworth beat him in a playoff.

Talking about Max, he has won a second game to jump back to half points, 3/6 along with Justin Tan. These 2 young stars are now just 2 points from Zelesco, although with a fair bit of traffic in the way. But with 5 rounds still to go, I would still not count Max or Justin out of the running yet.

At the lower end of the Championship the player who has been impressing most has been Jason Hu who found himself on board 3 today against another GM, Vasily Papin. Unfortunately for Jason this was one superstar too many and he lost, but his 3.5/6 including both GM's and Max Illingworth is an excellent first half of the tournament.

The Reserves field is finally beginning to stretch out, with 2 players on 5.5/6 (Michael Kethro and Patrick Gong who play tomorrow) and only 3 players on 5/6. Saying that, there are then 14 on 4.5 and 21 on 4. If any of these players can score 4 points from the final 5 rounds, they will have to be close to winning. It's a tall ask, but that's what it takes to win one of these events!

In the commentary room spectators are really getting their monies worth. Today IM Robert Jamieson was happily defending any hack attacks the crowd threw at him, yesterday IM Guy West was thinking quite schematically about positions, while the day before IM Leonid Sandler was enthusing about interesting ideas and possibilities hidden in positions. In the end, their judgements were what counted, as much as the analysis, and it has been good to see these different thinking styles.

My own personal favourite position was this one between James Morris and Luke Li.

Leonid Sandler was the commentator, but among the spectators was GM Papin. White's position is good with a space advantage and pressure on the d-file. Luke, as black, played 28..f6, a move which caused great excitement from Leonid sacrificing a pawn to blockade and give his king some space. 29.exf6 Kf7, when James grabbed more space by 30.b4 and Luke looked to regain his pawn, 30..Qd8

Leonid then erupted with "Wow, James sacrifices, bishop g6!" Then the room buzzes with why he did it and whether it is sound. After 31.Bxg6+ hxg6 James followed with 32.Rd4

The clash of personalities is never stronger than during analysis, and in the commentary room while Leonid was excited about the ideas, Vasily Papin was almost deadpan about the fact that white wants to promote a pawn. In the above position Luke brought his queen across to blockade the pawn from reaching h7, but blundered not long after. While most of us patzers in the room were trying to work out how James would take advantage of his past h-pawn, and whether he had compensation, Papin made a passing comment that perhaps white can just play a g4-g5 plan, tie down at least one of black's pieces, and then try to infiltrate. Funnily enough, when I asked James whether his sacrifice was sound after the game, he replied with almost the same plan adding "and if I get a pawn to g5, I can't be losing".

If you get the chance, then do yourself a favour and sit in on the commentary sessions. You will learn more in a couple of hours, than a month spent with a database and an engine, and you'll have fun doing it!

The Last Day at Ballarat

It was a beautiful morning in Ballarat. I went for a run at sunrise helping me to wake up, and getting some hill practice for my race against Puffing Billy later in the year. I have to admit, I felt pretty terrible after the run back up to my apartment in Sovereign Hill but it will help me later in the year. Getting better at anything involves practice and training which as close as possible follows the activity you're taking part in. The same can be said for chess, and I will repeat as in an earlier post, it is vitally important to work on your endgames. But more about this later!

The top of the tournament is thinning out, and it is being dominated by youth. After 3 rounds, there are only 3 players on 5/5, FM Chris Wallis, IM James Morris, and last year's joint winner, Brodie McClymont. Youth is the order of the day, as Zachary Loh, Yi Liu, Karl Zelesco, Justin Tan, Ari Dale, and Jack Puccini all find themselves on the top 10 boards. Round 4 saw the clash we were all waiting for as the 2 top IM's went head to head. The result was a win for James Morris against Stephen Solomon. I asked James if he could sum up how he won. He just replied, "Endgame!" James apparently won a drawn opposite bishop coloured endgame against one of last year's winners, Domagoj Dragicevic, while against Solomon he went inot a rook ending a pawn up and converted the material advantage to a win.

Sticking with the theme of youth, the youngest player in the top 10 boards is 11 year old David Cannon, who in the past has been Australian under 10 champion. David is moving around with crutches at the moment because of a badly sprained ankle which makes it even more remarkable that he is able to focus so well. Let's hope he continues his good form, and gets well soon! Also 13 year old Karl Zelesco is right up there, after having to go through a difficult game when the accelerated pairings came off in round 3. Karl was expecting a really tough opponent in round 3, perhaps McClymont. The draw put him against 1000 rated Regan Crowley. This came as a disappointment to Karl who was revved up for a big game, but his reaction was perfect for the situation. Apparently, according to Karl's dad, he just worked out that he needed to knuckle down, win this game and then he would get his reward of a tough game. This is incredibly encouraging, as one of the problems that many people suffer from is not being able to get fully enthused for lower rated opponent's (in fact, Regan is a fast imroving player and not to be taken lightly). But, of course, the danger then is that the dreaded upset will happen, and most of us have been in that position!

Zac Loh on board 3

Karl Zelesco has a great attitude

David Cannon performing strongly despite an injury!

Chess Numbers

There are loads of numerical theories (eg) that pertain to chess. Whole sets of maths puzzles are based around chess, and I wouldn't be surprised if some numerologists have tried to put together some greater meaning behind some chess related number patterns. This post has got nothing to do with that but is just a random post about some numbers that I have found interesting.

2693 This is the FIDE rating of Pavel Eljanov and Gabriel Sargissian who are playing each other in round 5 of the Olympiad. What I found particularly interesting  about this is that 2 players with such whopping ratings should find themsleves on the bottom board for their respective teams. The Olympiad is now going through a tough phase (especially as they are using match points as the first determining factor of rank) where the top teams will all have to play each other. Hungary against Russia is another mouth watering pairing, where a repeat of the 2004 World Championship match between Kramnik and Leko is being played out on board 1.

46 (No, not the age I'll be turning next birthday!!) Australia's men's team rank before round 5, 15 places above their starting rank. I'm not sure what the team will consider a good final placing but it is an interesting subject. If Australia finish in the top 50 this may be considered a good result for a team starting from 61st place. Maybe top 40? Will it depend on the opposition. So far, the Australian team have done ok beating the teams ranked below them, and drawing with one of the teams above while only narrowly losing to the other. I also wonder if there is a team perspective on this subject or whether the players themselves are left to set their own targets? The women's team are performing a little below par. They have won 2 and lost 2, but one of their losses was to a team ranked below them, so they will not be happy with that. From a starting position of 50th, I guess the women will be looking to finish above that and perhaps challenge the top 30.

33 Of all players born in 1999, Melbourne youngster Karl Zelesco is ranked 33 in the new FIDE rating list published today. His 2116 rating is still a far cry from the top player of that year group, Yi Wei (2453) of China. However, it only seems like yesterday that Karl was coming through Junior rapid tournaments and we considered him a talented Primary School kid. I will be interested to see just how close he is to representing Australia at the next Olympiad in Norway as the improvement of our youngsters seems to know no bounds. Even Karl's international placing is eclipsed by Sydney's Anton Smirnov who currently sits at number 2 for players born in 2001, his 2139 rating just 15 points shy of the 2154 of Iranian youngster Tabatabaei in first place. So with Karl in Melbourne and Anton in Sydney Australian chess playing adults have a long suffering future ahead of us :(

Karl Zelesco

30 The number of moves in the Olympiad before a draw can be agreed. Also, coincidentally, roughly the amount of time in minutes taken for 30 moves to be made in the game Nguyen-Gagunashvili before it was agreed a draw. I guess if 2 players want to make a draw, then its going to happen! Was there any prearrangement here? Of course not!.....Riiiiiiiiiiiigghhhhtt!!!

21 The record number of Olympiad appearances, made by GM Eugenio Torre of the Philippines. Torre moves clear of Hungary's Lajos Portisch who played in 20, while Finnish GM Westerinen played in 19. The top English participants are Nigel Short and John Speelman who have played in 14 a piece, while the top Aussie is Ian Rogers who has played in 14!

The last number I lost count of, which was the number of tweets I ignored about the Melbourne Storm's win against the West Sydeny Tigers while I was trying to find out why Anish Giri hadn't been playing for Holland at the Olympiad. While obviously happy to see the Storm win, I was even happier to notice a tweet from chessvibes not saying why Giri hasn't been playing, but at least saying that he has finally arrived in Istanbul and will hopefully start helping the Dutch pull themselves up to a respectable position. I'll now go back to Twitter to see if I can find out any more info about this and other chess news matters while sifting through the hundreds of tweets about my other favourite team, West Ham who are currently beating Fulham in the Premiership!