MCC

It's an exciting time of year at my chess club, the Melbourne Chess Club. The current Monday night tournament is reaching it's climax, a big weekender is coming up, the next tournament is on the horizon and the state body is holding its AGM at the MCC soon.

The MCC Cup Weekender is a 9-round swiss held over the long weekend at the start of November. With just under 2 weeks to the start there are already a fair number of entries including 3 IM's and it promises to be a high class event.

The current Monday night event, the MCC Open has now had 7 of the 9 rounds and still the same 2 players dominate the field, as they have done all year at the club. FM Dusan Stojic had a potentially dangerous match up with Ari Dale who has already beaten Guy West this tournament. But Dusan held it together to notch up another victory to take him to 6/7. The only game he has lost was to IM Guy West who also won his 7th round game against Dizdarevic. These 2 are a point clear of myself, Ari Dale, Richard McCart and Jason Chew. I guess we can assume that one of these players will take the title, but it seems hard to see who will stop Guy and Dusan from their winning streaks. I won a hard game against David Beaumont to keep me just a point behind the leaders. The position was highly unbalanced for a while in the middle game before David got short on time and lost the thread. It was interesting as the game seemed to revolve around my light squared bishop and I had to use some imaginative methods to prevent it being trapped.


When this tournament ends, the most unusual tournament of the Monday night calendar starts. The last tournament of the year on Mondays is a series of 6 player round robins. Players are assigned into groups based on their ratings, with the highest rated 6 players in the first group, then the next 6 in the second group and so on. As all other Monday night events are run on the swiss system, this can be a refreshing change. These tournaments start on Monday 19th November and run through till just before Christmas.

Chess Victoria, the state administrative body for chess will be holding their AGM at the MCC on Sunday 11th November, and this will be preceded by the Victorian Blitz Championship. The AGM is mainly for electing or re-electing members of CV's committee, and rumour has it that some of the current members are ready to stand aside, though I have heard of no one new on the horizon to fill any positions. The current President of CV, IM Leonid Sandler is also one of the strongest blitz players in the state, though I guess he will have his hands full if some of our young players decide to try their luck.