Victorian Championship Round 6

Last week we had 4 players tied on equal first, but there is now an outright leader, John Nemeth. John beat me in a tough game, while the other 2 players, FM's Greg Canfell and Luis Chan drew another hard fought game. The games can be seen on the Box Hill website. This leaves John half a point ahead of Greg and Luis with me a further half point, where I am joined by Milenko Lojanica and Himath Dissanayake. There are a lot of players just behind these leaders, but my feeling is that 7/9 will need to be scored to win, so these are the only contenders for the title. Almost anyone with a 3/3 finish will come near the top, but I feel the winner is now from these 6 players. Next week will be a reckoning, as they will all have to play each other assuming no one takes a bye. The pairings are likely to be:

Nemeth (5) -Canfell (4.5) (not sure the colours as they are both due Black)

Chan (4.5) -Lojanica (4) (again, not sure of the colours)

Gorka (4) -Dissanayake (4) (and again, not sure of the colours)

Before the tournament started Leonid Sandler told me this is probably the first time that 2 women have competed in the Victorian Championship final. It was a good day for them as they both won. Cassandra Lim is performing well and after beating the experienced Rad Chmiel, finds herself on 3.5. Sarah Anton also won, beating James Watson to climb to 2.5, a very creditable performance by the lowest rated player in the event.

The biggest upset winner of the day was Omar Khaled, though my own personal experience of Omar is that he is a very resourceful and skillful player capable of playing well above his rating. He beat Thomas Feng who isn't having the best tournament, possibly because he hasn't played too much competitive chess recently. It would be good to see Thomas make a full return to chess as he is a very talented player.

A couple of moves caught my eye on the display boards today.

Dissanayake-Zou, White to move

Himath Dissanayake seems to me to be an under rated player. He seems very solid, and is proving his ability in this tournament so far with 4/6 and equal 4th from a starting position of 16th. As well as beating the talented youngster Brendan Zou, he also beat experienced campaigner, FM David Hacche. In the above position Himath finished stylishly with 33.Bxf8 Rd2 34.Bh6! and mate is unavoidable. Another move that was possible in the diagram position is 33.Qxf7+!! also leading to a forced mate.

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The other position that interested me was this position.

Levi-Davis, White to move

FM Eddy Levi is a very imaginative player, so it is no surprise that he came up with the destructive move 23.Rxe6!. This wins a pawn at least as it can't be taken. Tony Davis found this out the hard way. 23..fxe6 24.Qxg6+ Kh8 25.Ne5 and Black had to resign. An impressive win from Eddy!

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This tournament is producing a lot of fighting chess and there is still much more to come in the final 3 rounds. Next week's game starts later than normal, at 6.30 pm rather than 4.00 pm so it will be a late finish and stamina will be an issue for some players! I'll leave this with one more game which started in a crazy Najdorf, and then heated up. David Beaumont upset top seed FM Domagoj Dragicevic in a game that was too confusing for me to follow. Enjoy!

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Victorian Championship Round 5

The State Championship crossed the half way mark this week and has become very close at the top. Four players now share 1st on 4/5: FM Luis Chan, FM Greg Canfell, John Nemeth, and myself, Carl Gorka.

The leaders, Chan and Nemeth played out a tense, but brief draw. The position where a draw was agreed would have been risky for either side to play on. The most fascinating position was on board 2 where FM's Dragicevic and Canfell were playing. I got up to walk around at one stage and saw this position:

I couldn't work out who was better here. Black is 3 pawns up, but his king side is paralysed, an amazing position. Later, Greg was able to untangle and won the game.

Following on from my loss of an exchange last week, I decided to sacrifice the exchange this week, gaining two pawns in the endgame. The computer engine doesn't like my decision, but practically, I think it was quite good and difficult to react to. FM Eddy Levi needed to activate his pieces, but was unable to do so, and I won.

This is where I sacrificed the exchange by Rxe6. White is already a pawn ahead, and wins the c5 pawn. White's central connected passed pawns are a long term worry for Black, which is what I was counting on.

The results of these 3 games left 4 players in first with probable pairings of Canfell-Chan and Nemeth-Gorka next week. Half a point behind is Milenko Lojanica who took on David Beaumont's Dragon in aggressive style. David sacrificed an exchange but it wasn't enough. There are then a further 4 players another half point behind, and all of them have floated up or down recently, so I have no idea what the pairings will be! FM Dragicevic stays on 3/5 and is joined by Brendan Zou, Himath Dissanayake and Bill Jiang. I will stick my neck out and say that the winner is going to come from this group of players with only 4 rounds to go. The rest of the field are tightly packed with everybody on at least 1.5, so a strong finish from anybody will guarantee a good place. But 7/9 seems like a outright winning score to me which is why I think anyone of 2.5 or below will not be the new Champion.

Himath Dissanayake scored the biggest upset result of the day beating FM David Hacche. The game wasn't on the display boards, but there was an early trade of queens on d8. I thought David had equalised as Black untangling his position, but Himath was able to win some material and I guess he held on to win.

There are byes allowed through till round 7 which could further disrupt the pairings, but it is settling into an exciting finish.

Victorian Championship Approaches Half Way

We have now had 4 rounds of the 2018 Victorian Championship and no one has made a perfect score. The tournament is led by 2 players, FM Luis Chan and John Nemeth who are on 3.5, with a group of players half a point including top seed FM Domagoj Dragicevic, FM Greg Canfell, and myself, Carl Gorka. Interestingly, we are the 5 highest rated players, and I wonder if we'll still occupy the top 5 spots come the end of the event?

Most of the rest of the field are in the 1.5-2.5 area and any of these could still finish high with a good score from now. In fact, it is going to get tough at the top as the highest rated players are all going to have to start playing each other. The big game of round 4 saw top seed Dragicevic playing second seed Chan. The game was hard fought, and I thought that Domagoj had an advantage out of the opening, but the game ended a draw. Meanwhile, I thought third seed, John Nemeth was being held easily by Bill Jiang in an Exchange Spanish, but as often happens, pieces get exchanged and White has an extra king side pawn that is more valuable than Black's queen side majority. Bill blundered a further pawn on the king side and resigned. Greg Canfell very efficiently dominated Thomas Feng on the White side of a French, while I struggled against Marcus Raine before he exchanged down too much leaving an endgame where I had dangerous connected passed pawns in compensation for an exchange.

Box Hill Chess Club were showing games live and though they have 12 new DGT's they displayed the top 6 games. I think they are having some technical issue, but hopefully all the games will be transmitted by the end of the tournament. There were some interesting games lower down the boards with a big shout to Regan Crowley for scoring the upset of the round beating Milojevic who out rates him by nearly 200 points. As with lots of young players, Regan can be very dangerous but just needs to gain some consistency to spring forward.

My game was an up and down affair. Early in the middlegame I won a pawn, but then almost immediately lost the exchange. I had compensation, but didn't use it and Marcus took advantage of this. Then in the endgame Marcus seemed too eager to trade pieces, leaving m with dangerous connected pawns which he didn't deal with and I was able to win the game. But let me give hope to anyone playing me in the future. This is what I missed!

In this position I had planned the natural Rd3, but decided to look for something better. I came up with the idea of Nd4 stopping Black from developing their bishop and guarding f5, as I'd seen that my opponent might want to play Ne3-f5 dislodging my rook. Of course there is a flaw in my thinking!

After Black plays..Ne3 I will have to move my Rf1 and then Black has Nc4 which I'd conveniently not thought about when I played my last move. :D My central knights and strong passed pawn gave me compensation, but Marcus neutralised it, and really should have won, and definitely shouldn't have lost. I will be working this week not on opening preparation for my next game, but on calculation exercises which make me think about what my opponent wants to do!

Box Hill Chess Club Championship

The final round of the Box Hill Chess Club Championship was played last night, and it was a very close affair. The event was split into two divisions. There was a 10 player round robin championship event, and a Swiss open reserves event. The winner of the reserves qualifies to play in the following years championship.

I was playing in the Championship and was low on confidence and will power at the start of the tournament, but seemed to have played myself back into some sort of form by the end, so I was happy to compete. The Championship was very close with only 1 point separating the top 7 players. There was a 3-way tie for first place between IM Leonid Sandler and FM's Domogoj Dragicevic and Luis Chan on 6/9. I finished half a point behind along with John Nemeth, while a further half point back were FM Eugene Schon and Kris Chan. Nobody went through the event unbeaten and all players showed both the strengths and frailties of the 2000-2300 band of players, and having to play late on a Friday night after a week's work.

I'm not sure what will happen with a 3-way tie. I don't know if the Championship is shared, if a tie break system is used, or if there is a playoff. There was no tie in the Reserves, with Brendan Zou winning another competitive event. Brendan went through the tournament unbeaten, taking 2 draws, and a half point bye in the middle of the event. Brendan has made big improvement in the past 2 years, and is now a 2000+ strength player, so he should be a good addition to the Championship field next year.

I didn't get to see too much of the other games as I was putting a lot of effort into my own. So I'll show my best and worst moments from the tournament!

This was my endgame as White against FM Domaogoj Dragicevic. I had played for this sort of position thinking (correctly), that my outside a-pawn must guarantee me a winning advantage. What I had failed to consider in the immediate lead up to this position was that there is still a lot of play in this position, and I'd missed a couple of chances to make my win a lot easier in the previous few moves, which must have given Dom some hope. Here as White, there is only 1 winning move, and after some thought I was bale to find it! This was my best moment of the tournament, and I'll give the game at the end of the article.

Now for my worst! I had been playing a tough game against FM Doug Hamilton who had thrown a lot in my direction and I'd managed to find a way to equality, but nothing more, and perhaps I was the one who was fighting to hold the position.

I saw the continuation 1.Ke3 Bd6 2.Nb4 as a fairly natural way the game would go with neither side really able to make much progress. I hesitated and looked again, and again, convincing myself that my knight would go to b4 after he played Bd6, and I hesitated again, thinking through the same thing, and then picked up my knight and put it on b4!! 1.Nb4?? Doug took my f-pawn, then my g-pawn and I then should have resigned straight away, but I played on for a few moves more out of shock than anything else.

Anyway, besides the errors, I enjoyed the tournament Box Hill's venue is absolutely fantastic. Congratulations to all the winners, the arbiters, IA Peter Tsai and Kyle Gibson, and to Box Hill Chess Club for making this a great event to play in.

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Victorian Chess Championship 2018 Round 2

The second round of the Victorian Championship was played yesterday and showed how tight this event will be as half the games played finished in draws. There are now only 2 players on 2/2, FM Luis Chan and myself.

When I say half the games played, there were a couple of postponed games, and 3 players took a half point bye this round. In the first round 5 players took a half point bye and the question has arisen as to whether we should allow byes in a Championship event. In the previous format, when the tournament was a round robin, there were no byes, but players could rearrange games as the draw was all prearranged. Now with the Swiss system in place, the pairings only come out a few days before the round so it is more difficult to rearrange with a specific opponent. But saying that, the round dates and times are known and so players should have some idea of whether they'll be able to play games or not.

My personal feeling is that the tournament would be better off as a round robin without byes, even if that meant I didn't qualify to play. However, as a Swiss event I don't see a problem with players being allowed to take byes, and I know the move to the Swiss format was partly due to Chess Victoria's funding of the event. There used to be 2 or more round robins running as Championship, Reserves etc, but it became harder to find players to enter these events as the Victorian chess calendar became more packed with club and weekend tournaments. These round robin tournaments were excellent. I played in both Championship and Reserves sections, which were competitive and great for learning about preparation and working on your chess in general.

In the second round, 8 games were played yesterday though I didn't get to see too much as I was grovelling as Black against Milenko Lojanica and having to work hard to cause him some problems. This paid off as Milenko failed to take advantage of promising positions, and the game finally equalised, and then I was able to take an initiative which my opponent seemed oblivious to. Instead of going in to deep defence he continued to try to play actively and his position fell apart.

Even though I was hard at work at the board for most of my game, I am still able to see a lot of games after the round because Box Hill Chess Club have now got 6 DGT boards displaying live games. I remember getting up after about 20 minutes and having a brief look at the openings of the games, then again about about 45 later. But the next time I got up to stretch, some games were already finished! FM Luis Chan won to go to 2/2, but it was a tough game against David Beaumont, with an interesting ending of rook and 4 vs rook and 3 which would be worth looking at in some detail.

There is a large bunching of players just behind first, led by top seed FM Domogoj Dragicevic who won comfortably. The game that most interested me from an early stage was Canfell-Dissanayake which started as Caro but soon turned into a crazy opposite side castling position. Black's king looked ominously placed at times, but he held on and in the end Greg Canfell had to take a repetition draw.

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It is early days in the tournament and a 3 week break before the next round means that the event will really only start properly from round 3, when the games will be played each week, and most of the players will be playing rather than taking byes.

Playing on

It's a really difficult skill to move from defence to offence in chess. Imagine you've been soaking up pressure for a good while, and then your opponent makes an inaccurate move, or a few inaccuracies. Suddenly you have the chance to take the initiative and go for it. But this psychological shift is difficult to put into practice.

For a lot of players, when the pressure comes off, they are first and foremost relieved that they have survived. This doesn't lend itself to picking up the gauntlet, and going for the win. There can also be a lack of objective assessment. For instance, if I feel my position has been difficult, then I might be looking at the negative sides in my game rather than objectively assessing who is in the better position. Finally, there is an energy factor. It is generally tougher to defend than attack, and after a tough defence it might be that a player just doesn't have the energy to turn things around and start playing for a win.

My game is generally based on stodging positions and especially with Black, holding on to some fairly ugly positions int he hope that I'll be able to equalise and then take my opponent on in the endgame, where I feel confident. In the Box Hill Chess Club Championship which is coming to a close, I have had 2 positions where my opponents have offered me draws that I'd like to look at.

Here I was Black against young FM Luis Chan who had just played 17.Re1 and offered a draw. For the previous 15 moves I had basically grovelled, trying to cover any weaknesses I might have and develop some pieces. White has some difficulties with having over extended on the queen side, and I declined the draw offer and played on. The game should have ended a draw, but after some adventures from both sides, I managed to win this game.

This position is from last night, where White, FM Eugene Schon, has just captured my rook on c8. He offered a draw here, and after some contemplation I agreed. Again, I had been trying to equalise in this game for about 15 moves and I have probably just done it. I feel that I could have played on in an attempt to get something from this position, but my fighting spirit just wasn't at the same level. In this position, White is a pawn up and has the bishop pair, but Black will regain the pawn on d6, and Black's knight will probably be at least as good as either of White's bishops. White's pawn weaknesses are an issue.

So how to explain why I decided to play on in one game, but not in the other? To be honest, I can't explain it, it is totally inconsistent, and that has been a factor that has plagued my play this year. So for the rest of the year, I intend to play on whether I want to or not! I will force myself to keep playing moves, and to seek chances while there is still something in the position, a la Carlsen!

Perhaps I can also inspire others to not give in too easily to the temptation of taking a draw. After all, the logical conclusion to this is that eventually, our fighting spirit will wear down, and we won't put up the best defence in positions. So taking draws early, may lead to us losing defensible positions, because we can't put up enough of a fight.

Victorian Chess Championship 2018

Yesterday, the 2018 Victorian Chess Championship started at Box Hill Chess Club. The tournament is a 24 player Swiss event, open to the highest rated players entering. The field is wide open, as none of Victoria's top 10 players entered, leaving the title open to a new name this year. I must admit, I was surprised by the absence of some players, especially those who haven't won the title before, like some of our younger IM and FM players. But the winner can only come from the names of those who enter!

The field that has entered is quite interesting. If this field had been assembled this time last year, I'd have fancied my chances, as I was in excellent form, but my play this year has been pretty bad so far. The players in form this year are FM Domagoj Dragicevic, and John Nemeth, and I'd see these 2 as real challengers for the title. However, multiple NSW Champion, FM Greg Canfell would be considered the favourite if he hadn't had such a bad year last year. However, this year he seems to be coming back to some good form. Brothers Kris and FM Luis Chan have risen to the top of the ranks of players at Box Hill Chess Club, but only Luis is playing. He also has a good chance at the title.

But looking down the field, there are lots of dangerous players, and almost anyone could win this title if they can string a few results together and build confidence. And scoring results against these players for the top ranked will be difficult and could spell the difference between a high result and a mediocre one. In the first round, top seed FM Dragicevic was held to a draw by Bill Jiang (1900) and while all the other games went to the higher rated player, there were some pretty tough games being played.

Organiser, IM Leonid Sandler said that he thought this was the first time a brother and sister have played in the tournament, with Christopher and Cassandra Lim both playing. And he also feels it's the first time that 2 women have played in the Championship, as Sarah Anton joins Cassandra in the field. These are unconfirmed, but say a lot for diversity in the game which must be a good thing.

If you're a Facebook user, Chess Victoria's page has photo's of the event and will no doubt be posting more. And Box Hill Chess Club is showing the top games live on their live games webpage if you want to watch some chess on Sunday afternoons. I'll be giving a personal view of the tournament as I see it!

Start of Season Rust

The summer holidays give a well deserved rest to many people. Taking a break, a step back from normality, getting away and recharging are all worthwhile endeavours. The summer break comes to an end and we all have to get back to reality. Schools start back, holidays finish and it's back to work, and for chess players, the close season is over and we start our year.

Of course not all players take a summer break from chess. The summer can be a busy time with national championships and junior championships taking place. What that means, is when the new season of club chess begins, some players are decidedly rusty, while others are hotter than ever. There have been a few poor results by pretty good players in the past week, but I'll stick to myself!

I have changed clubs and now play at Box Hill Chess Club. For my sins I was the top seed at the Box Hill Autumn Cup (though I think I should have been second seed to Luis Chan as his FIDE rating is higher than mine) and had to play a junior about 600-700 points below me. Unfortunately, Shawn Zillmann is going to rise over 100 points from his excellent performance in the Australian Junior Championship, bringing him closer to 1700, and his rise is probably not stopping there, so he might be closer to 1800-1900 in real terms. While I'm close to 2200, and should still put players like this away most of the time, in real terms I was playing more like 1700 for this game, and really should have lost.

Shawn played excellently, though a little passively, but he defended and maneuvered well and the game was pretty much equal for much of it.Then towards the endgame, I blundered allowing Shawn a winning advantage of the chance to make an outside passed pawn which had to be dealt with, and while I was doing that, he cleaned up my pawns and went into a same coloured bishop ending with 2 connected pawns while I had none. We finally came to the following position.

Obviously, Black can't play 65..g1=Q as White plays 66.Bxg1 and after 66..Bxg1 Kf4 winning the final pawn. The easiest win (in my opinion) is simply to play 65..Bd6 (dropping it back to a safe square anywhere along the diagonal works) 66.Bg1 (to stop black playing Kh2)

Now Black can simply lose a move with his bishop when White will be in Zugzwang having to give way with either bishop or king. Ok, so I saw this over the bard, and was relieved when Shawn played 65..f4.

I played 66.Bf2 and 66..Bg3 is forced after which I played 67.Bg1 preventing his king from coming to h2.

At this point Shawn's head fell a bit and I could see he was resigned to a draw. I even felt a little sorry for him, as he truly deserved to win. But at this point he offered a draw, and I accepted thinking I'd make a miraculous save. Much to my surprise, this position is still winning for black, and I'm sure Shawn's IM coach will have told him how.

The question is, can you work out how to win this position for black, without using a tablebase or engine (as you're not allowed to use them in the game? I'll post the answer next time!

My Chess in 2018

A move anywhere usually means some changes to a person's lifestyle. I have moved to Drouin which is about an hour from my work in eastern Melbourne, and another 20-30 minutes from the centre of Melbourne. Chess is a big part of my life and I still want to play my one game a week schedule that I've been doing.

The club which I have been a part of for a long time is the Melbourne Chess Club. However, MCC meet on a Monday night for long play games with a finish time sometimes in excess of 11:00, it means I won't be getting home until the early hours of the morning. Not good if I want to work on Tuesday! The alternative I am considering is Box Hill Chess Club which meets on a Friday night. This is better for work as Saturday is generally a day off, but usually worse for chess as Friday night most workers are exhausted. There are weekend chess clubs, but I'm not prepared to give up that valuable time which I spend with Caroline and relax.

So I have some time to think about it and decide as both clubs are on shutdown until the end of summer with both clubs starting their first 2018 long play events just after Australia Day on 26th January. In the meantime there is the Australian Championship to look forward to, running from 2-12 January. Unfortunately I'll be away on holiday in New Zealand then, but I'll follow the results and catch up on some games after. The Championship is followed by the Junior Championship which is being held in Melbourne. I'll be dropping into this so I'll see some live action.

And I always follow the games of Hastings which is in its 93rd edition and Wijk (80th edition) which is running at the same time as our Junior Champs. So it looks to be a good summer of chess for me as a follower of events which will hopefully give me the inspiration to take my chess back to the 2200 level and beyond next year, whichever club I choose to play at.

In the meantime, have a look at this amazing game from London 2017 where Ian Nepomniachtchi plays the amazing novelty 7.g4 against ex-World Champion Anand. The game erupts into a crazy unbalanced affair with White's king stuck in the centre but feeling safer than Black's castled king. I know there were some great games played in 2018, but this was one of my favourites.

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Melbourne's Big Summer of Chess

There's going to be a mass of good quality chess in Melbourne, both to play in, or to spectate or follow this summer.

The fun starts this weekend, when Chess Kids, the company I work for hosts their National Interschool Finals. Actually, it's a huge junior chess festival starting on Sunday 29th November with a set of individual 7-round 15-0 allegro events. Then on the Monday and Tuesday the Chess Kids National Interschool Championship will take place. It is a 7-round 25-10 format with close to 300 players expected over both primary and secondary divisions.

All these junior events are being held at Queen's College, Melbourne University near the centre of Melbourne.

The weekend after this (5th-6th December) sees Melbourne Chess Club's amazing summer schedule start with the traditional Christmas Swiss. Perhaps the publicity for this has been overshadowed by other events coming to the club, but make no mistake that this tournament looks likely to be a good one. Visiting GM Arturs Neiksans from Latvia will be playing in the weekender. He is currently rated 2602, but might be even higher after his performance at the European Team Championship where he scored 4.5/7 including a draw with Arkadij Naiditsch. There are currently over 20 players entered, and this is a good opportunity to get some practice for the Australian Championships.

The MCC then hosts the Australasian Masters which will consist of two 10-player round robins. Chess Victoria President, Leonid Sandler has worked hard to get a GM norm event, and an IM norm event happening, and according to Leonid, this GM tournament might be the strongest ever in Australia. It certainly looks to be one of the strongest, with foreign GM's Neiksans, and Papin competing, and a strong local field including Melbourne based GM Darryl Johansen. I'll be playing in the IM event, so I should be able to bring some first hand reports of the goings on. The tournament runs from 12th-20th December

The Masters then goes out with a bang as it is immediately followed by the Victorian Blitz Championship which will also be hosted by the MCC. In recent years this tournament has proved very strong as players from the Masters join in with the best local players. I don't have details of this event, but it will probably be held Monday 21st December, a good lead in to Christmas.

The Christmas break will bring only a short relief to the summer of chess, as Box Hill Chess Club hold their traditional Australian Championship warm up event, the Canterbury Summer Swiss. After their move to Waverley/Essex Hills last year, Box Hill Chess Club have had to reinvent themselves a bit. One issue is that the club cannot hold weekend events at their current venue, but thanks to their strong organisational background, they have managed to find a venue for their summer event, the German Club in Windsor. For anyone who is short on practice before the Australian Championships, this is a must! It runs from the 27th December through to 30th December, and you can follow details here.

Then comes the big one, the Australian Championships and Reserves. Hosted by the Melbourne Chess Club in their 150th anniversary year, this is already shaping up to be an amazing tournament. Defending Champion, IM Max Illingworth entered early making it clear he intends to defend his title. But with 2 GM's and another 5 IM's already entered, Max will have to work hard to take the title again. I also intend to play in this event, running from January 2nd-January 12th 2016 at Fitzroy Town Hall. There is a rest day on 8th January when the Australian Blitz Championship will be held.

Phew...that's an unbelievable amount of chess this summer. But that's not all!!! (I've always wanted to say that, like in the adverts on the shopping channels). The MCC continues as Australia's premier chess venue to host the Australian Women's Masters event. Starting on 14th January, this will be 10-player round robin event and is shaping up to be the strongest ever women's event in Australia.

The Women's Masters finishes on the 22nd January, which leads nicely into the last event of the summer, Melbourne Chess Club's Australia Day Weekender. The Australia Day Weekender is, and has traditionally been, the first weekender of the year, even though it will seem like the last in a long line of chess events. Another great field is promised by the very first entry, hanging around after the Women's Masters, WGM Julis Ryjanova of Russia rated currently 2387!

That is an amazing amount of quality chess in Melbourne for players of all standards of players, and at various time limits. Long play chess fanatics have a dream summer coming up. And with the Victorian and Australian Blitz Championships being held here, the fast players should also be satisfied. And even if you are not a fan of long chess, nor the very fast chess, the MCC holds it weekly allegro 15-0 chess tournaments, and these will continue over the summer of chess! I'll be trying to follow as many of these as possible, so stay tuned :)

2016 Australian Championships

It has come to my attention that the 2016 Australian Chess Championship will be held in Melbourne and run by the Melbourne Chess Club. This is, of course, waiting for the official rubber seal, but I believe this to be a done deal!

It seems that the Melbourne Chess Club is taking on a bigger role in the Victorian chess scene this year, especially with Box Hill Chess Club having to take a back seat for a while. To be fair to Box Hill CC, they have made a pretty good job of moving locations. I'm not sure what the expectations were, but I'd have thought that they would have expected to lose a number of players initially, and then to build back up over time. The Box hill Club Championship started on Friday night with a field of about 40 players which is somewhat smaller than in previous years where they've had 60+ players, but is not such a bad effort.

A bigger problem for Victorian Chess is that Box Hill Chess Club can't host weekend events this year. Luckily, the MCC has stepped in to hold the Victorian Open which is held over the Queen's Birthday weekend near the start of June, a tournament that Box Hill has successfully hosted for a number of years. The tournament is limited to 92 players which I'm guessing will start filling up pretty quickly.

Before that the Melbourne Chess Club is holding an ANZAC Day Weekend tournament from 24th-26th April. I'd really like to play this tournament if I can somehow make some time off other commitments. Without having played in Doeberl and Ballarat, I feel a weekender is due, and a 6-round event including a Friday night is a format that I am used to playing from my English chess playing times.

The one tournament that I haven't heard anything about is the Victorian Championship which I would have thought would have been promoted already. This tournament has no fixed time, but it has been held over autumn/winter the past few years. I doubt I'd be able to play, but as it is the flagship event of Victorian Chess, it would be good to know something about it!

Chess Victoria AGM

I was a bit surprised to hear that Chess Victoria had their AGM last week. I mean, I know that my new club, Glen Eira Chess Club, is only provisionally affiliated to Chess Victoria, and with no voting rights, but I'd have thought that we'd have heard something about an AGM, and possibly even have been invited along to it. But hey ho, it doesn't really bother me too much, and we're a club that doesn't really have any intention of getting into state chess politics at the moment. The members of our club are interested in the playing and social side of belonging to a chess club, and we've joined Chess Victoria to add extra legitimacy to the club, and so that we can officially rate our games in the Australian ratings list.

To be honest, I usually loathe AGM's and go only when I have to. Personally I am totally opposed to the voting procedure that takes place during a Chess Victoria election. Chess Victoria is made up of a number of clubs which are allocated votes depending on how many members they have, the more members, the more votes, up to a maximum of 5 votes. This is all well and good except that each member of the Chess Victoria committee also gets a vote. As there are 6 Chess Victoria committee places, this makes up quite a big block which can make it difficult to unseat an incumbent committee. Add to this that unelected life members also get a vote and clubs can begin to feel that their votes aren't worth that much.

Now these aren't new arguments that I'm spouting here, and they have caused some contentious debates in the recent past. However, the most recent AGM saw a very sad set of actions where stalwart chess administrator Trevor Stanning was nominated for an honorary life membership position but this nomination was rejected. The reason for this was apparently because of the voting process of Chess Victoria and Trevor's nomination was voted against by a block from Melbourne And Noble Park Chess Clubs. You can read about it in the latest issue of Box Hill Chess Club's newsletter, Box Hill being Trevor's club.

It is sad for Trevor as I'm sure that if there was a reasonable voting process in Chess Victoria, where all clubs felt they had a fair chance at getting a say or a go, then Trevor would have been made a life member without any qualms. His service to both Box Hill Chess Club and Chess Victoria are both to be highly commended. Maybe the committee of Chess Victoria need to look at the way that the organisation is conducted if we're going to honour any more long servers with life membership. And if Chess Victoria is interested in attracting more clubs to move from provisional status to full membership, like Glen Eira or Hobson's Bay, and to stop clubs like Frankston from leaving the organisation, then maybe these are issues that need to be addressed. Then perhaps when somebody renominates Trevor for a life membership, the AGM will give a resounding yes.

Chess Catch Up

It's been a while since I wrote about chess so it's time for a catch up. This is all going to be local gossip, so Im not getting into how badly Kramnik played last night, and it would be fairly ridiculous of me and this little blog to criticise the play of one of the all time greats of the game. Especially the way I've been playing! The tournaments I was playing in have both finished. At the MCC, the City of Melbourne Open finished with Malcolm Pyke as clear winner on an impressive 8/9. This was a whole point clear of Dean Hogg while Jack Puccini finished outright third on 6.5. However, the most impressive performance for me was that of Roger McCart who finished in the pack on 5.5 in equal 6th from a starting ranking of 26th. I finished in the same group on 5.5 which was somewhat disappointing, though there were some good moments.

There was a brilliancy prize contest which was somewhat surprisingly won by a long positional game. The game was a pretty good game, but it was hardly what I'd call brilliant. I'd have preferred the second place winner which was won by a nice game culminating in a sacrificial attack. Anyway, the games are posted here and you can decide for yourself which was more brilliant.

At Glen Eira Chess Club I came equal first in the tournament with Jerzy Krysiak after missing the last round. This was good enough to qualify both of us to the end of year Championship where we'll be joined by WCM Sarah Anton who finished on 4/7 and went through on tiebreak from David Cordover. The field for the end of year Championship now has 6 of the 9 players, IM James Morris, Carl Gorka, Rad Chmiel, WCM Sarah Anton, Rebecca Strickland and Jerzy Krysiak. There is one more qualifier which starts next Friday 18th July and runs for 7 consecutive weeks. The final 3 qualifiers will come from this tournament which promises to be the strongest of all, as 2 2000+ players have expressed an interest in joining the event. As it is the last chance to qualify for the $1000 Championship final, there may yet be more strong players induced to join the field.

Apart from tournament chess, there are some other interesting things that I've seen. I've heard rumour that one of Melbourne's biggest chess club's, Box Hill, are going to have to move premises. Box Hill are a powerhouse of chess administration and their tournaments generate good numbers of players. They have organized many tournaments on behalf of Chess Victoria including the Victorian Open and Victorian Junior Championships for a number of years. When I first came to Melbourne Box Hill Chess Club was located in Box Hill, but they moved closer to the city a few years later. They have been at Canterbury for a number of years and hopefully they will be able to continue on at their current location, or they will find a new home. Melbourne needs as many clubs as possible and the loss of even one club will be hard felt in the chess community.

And while we're on the subject of the Victorian Junior Championships which has just recently concluded, I'm wondering why there is no under 18 title any more? The under-18 Championship has to be the state's most prestigious junior title and it is disappointing that Chess Victoria feel the need to dispense with this event. I can understand the reasoning. Fewer players seem to be willing to take part in the event making it unprofitable to run, but that hardly justifies axing it. Really, in the worse case scenario, why not merge the under 18's with under 16's and 14's and give the titles to the highest finisher in each age group? That's what has happened with the girls championships for as long as I've been in Australia. To finish this rant on a positive note, congratulations to all the age group winners from last week and especially to under 16 Champion, Max Chew Lee who could consider himself this year's Victorian Junior Champion.

Finally, it was sad that the Australian Chess Magazine folded last year. To be honest, I would not like to be a chess magazine editor at the moment as I know most are having a hard time making ends meet. A combination of free online resources and cheap chess programs have made it difficult for chess magazines to survive, and some of the most respected chess periodicals, including Informator and British Chess Magazine have had to revamp their products. Well into this comes a new Australian publication, 50 Moves. The online magazine boasts an impressive array of Australian talent in its contributors but will it survive? How will the magazine brand itself? Will it appeal to a niche Australian market where subscriber numbers will be low, the problem the Australian Chess Magazine had. Or will it push into the global market where competition is so hot that even 2700 led publications, such as Chess Evolution, have struggled to push into the market.

Young South Australian talent, Fedja Zulfic, seems to be the driving force behind 50 Moves Magazine, and I wish him and the team all the best in making something that works. I urge all readers to get behind this because Australian chess is in need of some promotion, and analysis and comment from the top players needs a forum. I get paid in a couple of days and $40 will be going straight to this enterprise for an annual subscription. I just hope enough people get behind it to make it worthwhile!

Support Your Local Chess Club

There are a number of ways that people can get something out of chess, but to me, the best way is still the good old fashioned Chess Club. It's a place where you can meet people with a shared interest, watch and emulate more experienced players and learn to compete, and generally gain more information about the game. I believe that the advent of internet chess caused chess clubs to suffer as players found it easier and more convenient to play at home. This is unfortunate, as dwindling numbers of players at clubs, and less clubs, means that it is harder to find a social outlet for chess players to interact and express themselves.

In Melbourne, it appears to me that the trend is beginning to shift back in favour of clubs a little. The 2 main clubs, Box Hill and Melbourne have retained reasonable numbers for their events, and seem to be providing their members exactly what they want. The newer Noble Park Chess Club has grown to a reasonable size and seems to be attracting members of all ages and levels of experience, and the club must now be considered approaching the 2 biggest clubs in size and quality. There are also a number of clubs that are less central which are also providing a good service to the nearby communities, but there is always room for more.

Young and not so young, all are welcome at Glen Eira Chess Club

Over the past year, I've been working hard alongside my friend and work colleague, David Cordover to establish a chess club in our own neighbourhood. I live about 5 km from David and we set up a chess club near to our homes in nearby Carnegie. We'd found that many of the kids we'd taught were ready to join an adult chess club, but many weren't prepared to travel too far to do so. So while we have pushed kids towards the 3 clubs already mentioned, as well as others nearest to their homes, the kids near where we lived needed a place to play. As such we established Glen Eira Chess Club which started small, and has remained essentially a friendly, local, chess hang out. We meet on Friday evenings and for an hour the club is open to juniors and perhaps some adults who are just beginning the game, and then from 7 pm we run the adult club. So far, this has entailed a mixture of long play events and some less competitive evenings where we've played blitz, or just social games. As a founding member I might be biased, but I really enjoy the vibe of the club. While we encourage people to participate in events, there is no pressure to do so.

Tonight we started our second tournament of the year, a 7 round swiss with 3 qualifying places for our end of year club championship which promises a $1000 first prize. With 1 International Master already qualified from the first event, we expect the 9 player championship round robin to be a great event at the end of the year. For me, it is great just to play, and possibly to give something back to the chess community. I can remember as a kid going to local chess clubs and getting beaten by the adults who would then help me improve my game through analysis of the game. That was how I improved, taking those lessons on board. And I feel it my obligation, and in fact the obligation of all players to give back to the game to the next generation what we got out of it.

Tonight I was playing a young student of mine, Aaron, who is probably way better than I was at his age. However, the game turned on something that I remember learning about when I was quite young, an absolute pin.

I was black and a just a pawn up. Aaron had skilfully worked his way through the tricks that I put to him and could have thought about setting up drawing chances if it weren't for the fact that his rook is pinned. My next move was to add more pressure to the pinned piece with 1..Rd8. While white is currently stuck, black has the chance to improve his endgame chances by creating a passed pawn on the king side, and/or improving his king. In the meantime, should white eventually get out of the pin by playing e4 and Ke3 for example (that was what Aaron chose to do to remove the pin) then black always has the choice of exchanging all the pieces and leaving a pawn endgame where he is a pawn ahead which should be a win. This was the way the game went.

I have to say that for the first round of a swiss tournament there were a number of close fought games, including mine! A number of players took byes, including some of the higher rated players, so next week's second round should be interesting.

City of Melbourne Open

The Melbourne Chess Club started its second Monday night FIDE rated tournament of the year last week. Unfortunately, I had to miss the first round due to work commitments and took a half point bye. My work is pretty full on at the moment so this may not be the last bye I have to take. The tournament has a reasonable size of field of about 35 players, with some pretty decent players at the top, though no master level players. Including myself, there are 6 players over 2000 in the event and it looks a very open event.

There have already been a number of upset results. In the first round Geoff Cook (who more often plays a Box Hill Chess Club so it's good to see him at the MCC), Alex Kaplan, Tanya Krstevski and Ben Frayle all picked up draws against much higher rated opposition. The second round last night saw even more upsets. Marko Grabovac (who plays more often at Noble Park Chess Club) and Simon Dale (after Ari and Finley Dale have completed the "How to Beat your Dad at Chess" course, the Dad now starts to make up ground again!) scored draws against higher rated opposition, but there were upset wins as well. Not to be outdone by his Dad, Finley Dale beat an opponent rated 200 points higher than him, as did stalwarts Richard Voon and Felix Wyss. But perhaps the biggest upset of the night was again by Geoff Cook who overcame a 300 point rating deficit to beat Justin Penrose.

The tournament is beginning to shape up, with 6 players on 2/2 Puccini (perhaps favourite for the event), Dean Hogg (from Hobson's Bay Chess Club), Richard Voon, Felix Wyss, Paul Kovacevic and Finley Dale. I managed to win my game last night which puts me on the group half a point behind the leaders, but in these early days it really is open to anyone who makes a good run.

I thought I had a tough draw as black against Tom Kalisch. When in form, and with the initiative, Tom is a pretty scary player to be against, and apart from that he can play almost any weird and wonderful opening. As it happens, he played a c3 Sicilian, but got things a bit wrong allowing me to get a monster knight on d5. That was after an interesting move choice early on.

In this fairly standard position the main moves are:
7.Nc3
7.Bd3
7.Bc4

Tom chose a move that has only been played once before, and it confused me. 7.Na3. Now I was thinking this can't be good, and why can't I just take that knight with 7..Bxa3? I then started getting worried about my lack of defence on the dark squares, especially d6, so I rejected the immediate capture, though it must surely be the critical response. Instead I played 7..d6 which is a novelty in the position!

I was looking at moves like 8.Nb5, 8.Nc4, 8.Bg5, 8.Bd3, 8.ed6 when eventually Tom played a move that I had half considered but thought little about which was 8.Bb5+. After 8..Bd7 Tom played passively with 9.Qe2, but after the game he showed his flair for invention.

Something I had considered was 9.Bg5 when I was ready to block with 9..Be7. We looked at this position and Tom said he was considering playing 10.Rc1!? in this position which was certainly nothing I'd looked at.

He showed this and I was amazed. What a beautiful move which works against 10..Bxg5 11.Nxg5 Qxg5 where black doesn't win a piece as white has the fantastic 12.Rc8+

Of course, black has other moves instead of 10..Bxg5, such as simply 10..O-O, but it was a joy analysing positions like this. Certainly one major attraction to club chess, compared to online chess, is the joy of post game analysis which both educates and entertains using the ideas of a chess game as the basis for the conversation.

Anyway, I've plenty to work on before the next game, which is next Monday, in this most open of tournaments.

Melbourne Clubs Round Up

As this blog is essentially a personal thing, I tend to focus mainly on local chess which I am familiar with and which means much to me. So here's a brief round up of what's happening around Melbourne at the moment.

Frankston Allegro on July 20th

Sorry to plug my own club first, but hey that's life! Melbourne's newest chess club, Glen Eira Chess Club has been closed for a couple of weeks but will reopen on this Friday, 19th July with a social night and some blitz. Soon after that we want to start with some long play round robin events and our aim is to build our membership. To help with this we have a brand new venue, the excellent Carnegie Library. Like before, we will run a junior club from 6 pm - 7 pm and then an adult club after that. We welcome all comers to our friendly little club! (Coffee rating of the neighbourhood is 4/5 with some really good cafes in Koornang Road)

The club that has been my home for the past 5 or so years, the Melbourne Chess Club, has started a new Monday night FIDE rated tournament, the 7-round Malitis Memorial. Congratulations go out to IM Mirko Rujevic for dominating the last event, the City of Melbourne Open, and he is playing in this event as well. The MCC is the only club open 7 days a week in Melbourne, so there is plenty for everyone whether you are a Grand Master or a beginner. The allegro tournaments on Saturday afternoons maintain their popularity. Going back to the Malitis Memorial, the first round happened last night and the top 2 seeds, Rujevic, and Malcolm Pyke overcame tricky juniors (Finley Dale and Jason Chew) to start their tournaments off with wins. However, there were plenty of upsets on the night, though as players improve rapidly it is almost harsh to call their victories upsets when their rating may be well below their actual playing strength. I don't really want to get too much into the first round, but I would like to wish Tom Kalisch a good tournament return to the MCC :) (Coffee rating of the neighbourhood 5/5 with some of the best cafes around Melbourne)

Downies Auctions recently sold these for $75. Was it an MCC member who bought them?

Box Hill Chess Club have their Tuesday night tournament starting tonight. In fact it should be underway as I write this. The Winter Cup is a 7-round swiss and is supposed to be run at the same time as the Box Hill Masters which is a usually a 10 player round robin event. However, I haven't seem anything about this which is a shame as I have fond memories playing in it, and I truly believe that there aren't enough round robin events at the moment. Box hill Chess Club do have 'Grades' tournaments starting this Friday, and possibly this is taking over from their Masters event, though I don't know. (Coffee rating of 4.5/5 though Maling Road's Post Office Cafe is a 10/10 by itself)

Noble Park Chess Club is gradually taking centre stage in Victorian Chess as their tournaments keep attracting large and strong fields. Noble Park are currently running their Masters event which is a 10 player round robin which is pretty strong. Top seeds are FM Chris Wallis and FM Dusan Stojic but these guys will have their work cut out to win this very tough event. Alongside this a challengers event is being run, with the winner guaranteed a spot in the following year's Masters. This promotion based system is really good for chess development, and Noble Park should be applauded for using it. (Coffee rating hmmm...no comment :D)

Further from the centre of Melbourne, this Saturday sees an impressive looking allegro being held at Frankston Chess Club. Like other suburban clubs such as Croydon and Hobson's Bay, Frankston is quietly doing the right things by their members, which is basically listening to what the people want and growing in stature because of it. All these clubs have a friendly atmosphere, and while all the players are fiercely competitive during the games, the clubs definitely cater more for people who prefer a social atmosphere. Although I won't be able to go to the allegro this Saturday, it already looks to be shaping up to be an excellent event. Meanwhile Croydon Chess Club have just run their annual weekender and what an amazing success it was! Croydon Chess Club have decided to run 1 weekender a year and run it well. The tournament had a capacity of about 50 players and the number was reached with an IM and 4 FMs in the field. In the end, John Nemeth and FM Dusan Stojic, both of Noble Park CC, shared first placed on 4.5/5. On the other side of town, Hobson's Bay Chess Club have now announced their annual weekender, the Best in the West tournament. This has always been a popular event, and it is good to see it happening again this year. Hobson's Bay CC have had to deal with the recent death of their influential member and organiser, Peter Caissa who will be sadly missed by the whole Victorian chess community. I'm sure that this year's Best in the West will be a fitting tribute to Peter.
(Coffee ratings: Frankston/Croydon no data available; Hobson's Bay 3/5 Altona has some ok coffee, though when the tournament was in Yarraville I'd have pushed things up to 4/5)

The Melbourne Chess Scene

Melbourne is a big, sprawling city of around 4 million people. It is situated around Port Phillip Bay and has various mountains surrounding it to the east and north making it a picturesque area to live. Chess in Melbourne is vibrant with a number of clubs situated around the town, as well as less intense venues to play. There is a healthy tournament scene and the city is lucky to be resident to a number of strong players including a Grand Master and a number of International Masters. At the other end of the scale, coaching organisations work throughout the schools network in Melbourne ensuring that a new crop of club players start to come through.

The flagship event of the year is the Victorian Championship, which is traditionally a round robin event. This year the tournament is pretty strong with top seed being 2400+ FM Bobby Cheng. Bobby is so far on 2/2 and is leading the event along with new IM Ari Dale. Of course there is a long way to go, but Bobby is certainly the player to beat. The tournament is held over a number of venues across the city in order to bring the top players to the chess playing public, and in order to not favour one club too much. While this can be inconvenient involving a deal of travelling around the city, and playing at different times of various weeks (clubs are open on different days) it is also an interesting format that doesn't seem to detract from the general strength of the field. One strange development is that one of the players in this tournament has recently been banned from one of the venue clubs and I'm not sure how that will be accommodated. The Melbourne Chess Club have banned David Beaumont at a rather inconvenient time as he is to play at the venue tomorrow night. If David is not allowed on the premises then that will throw the Victorian Championship into disarray and I don't know if the MCC have made allowance for David playing in this tournament or not. Of course, David could play at another venue, though this seems to me to detract from the Premier Victorian chess tournament. Hopefully, someone from MCC or Chess Victoria can clear up exactly what will be happening here.


***Addenda***: Apparently David Beaumont is not banned from the MCC yet. MCC Secretary, Sylvester Urban, informs me that David is still welcome to play at the MCC and therefore the Victorian Championship can go ahead as planned, at least for now.


Meanwhile, the MCC is running the City of Melbourne Open on Monday nights, a 9 round FIDE rated event which has attracted a mere 23 players. Rating favourites IM Mirko Rujevic nd Malcolm Pyke share the lead on 2.5/3 and the half point they dropped was against each other. If these 2 start winning against lower rated opposition then it could be a high winning score for the tournament, and a gap between 1st-2nd and the pack. But again, there is a long way to go, and a group of players will fancy their chances of halting the progress of the two top seeds. Box Hill/Canterbury Chess Club is currently about half way through its Club Championship. FM Chris Wallis is leading this event with 5/5 with a decent sized field of about 50 players. The other major chess club in Melbourne, Noble Park is also mid way through an event. The Noble Park Open currently has 3 leaders on 3/3, FM Dusan Stojic, Eugene Schon, and Michael Chan. One of Melbourne's newer clubs, Noble Park has consistently grown its numbers till now we see a good sized field of about 50 player with players of all strengths represented. Noble Park are to be congratulated on their growth, starting small with a definite aim at providing quality chess, developing slowly but surely so as to encourage new members and to eventually create a weekend tournament held in September (this year will be their second weekender), and now taking on the role of hosts of the next Australian Championship. Noble Park Chess Club can certainly be seen to be the new success of chess in Melbourne.

However, all clubs are doing a great job of providing local (and sometimes not so local) players with a venue to play their beloved game. Melbourne has a number of events coming up:

Victorian Open: Canterbury Chess Club will be hosting this one over the Queen's Birthday long weekend of June 7-10.

Victorian Junior Championships: Canterbury Chess Club are again hosting this over the school holiday period of June 28-July 12.

Croydon Chess Classic: Croydon Chess Club will be holding their annual weekender on July 13-14, and with only 52 places available, I'd hurry to enter this excellently run tournament, run by an extremely friendly suburban chess club.

Frankston Allegro: Frankston Chess Club is one of Melbourne's biggest in terms of membership, but not in terms of tournaments. So it is good to see them putting on events that may attract others down to their Southern venue. The tournament is being held on 20th July.

Best in the West: this is Hobson's Bay Chess Club's annual weekender, but I have heard nothing about it this year so far. It is usually held around August/September and is another tournament with a friendly atmosphere, held last year in the Western suburb of Altona.

Melbourne Chess Club Championship

It was good to see a few more players enter the Melbourne Chess Club (MCC) championship bringing the number up to 39. This is still a bit disappointing compared to last year's total of 46, let alone the heady numbers of 2011 when we had around 60. Compared to other clubs it is also not a good sign. Currently Box Hill Chess Club and Noble Park Chess Club have FIDE rated tournaments running. Box Hill have a very respectable 64 players in their Autumn Cup, while Noble Park have 47 players for their Club Championship which is about a 10 player increase over last year. Should this be a worry for the MCC committee? I certainly think they should be asking why numbers are dropping for the club's flagship event. It may be unrealistic to maintain numbers in the 60's (though it may not), but I would have thought a field of at least 40 should be the yearly target.

The committee should not be too concerned over the quality of the field. 13 of the 39 players are rated above 2000 FIDE which means it is going to be a strong performance by anyone to win the championship. There is a live game being transmitted each week and yesterday was a great fight between IM Guy West and  David Beaumont. David played a Sicilian but Guy didn't go into the Open systems. Guy had to use all his strategic skill to aim at weaknesses in David's position. In the end David couldn't hold out, and Guy took the full point. Guy is joined on 2/2 by FM Chris Wallis, FM Dusan Stojic, Ari Dale, and Justin Penrose who took the scalp of IM Mirko Rujevic. Justin played the Centre Game and he and Mirko played an absolutely wild game which can be found on arbiter Kerry Stead's blog.

Paul Kovacevic followed up on his excellent win last week with a draw with ex club champion Malcolm Pyke. These 2 are half  point behind the leaders where they are joined by FM Dragicevic, Urban, Michaille, and Drew. Of course there is a long way to go, but it is always good to have points in the bag. Next week is teh last chance for late entries, so hopefully someone will enter and bring the total to 40 which would seem the minimum for respectability. I had intended to go to the club this week but events were against me. I will do my best to visit the champs next week.

Local Chess News

I haven't played at my local club for a few weeks and I feel a bit out of the loop as to what has been happening around Melbourne in chess terms. So it's time to have a look! The best place for general news is the forums Chesschat and Ozchess which both act as places where clubs can publicise and report on their events. Of course, most of the clubs and organisations have their own websites, but the forums have all conveniently blocked in one place. As an aside, I have to admit that I used to spend far too much time looking at these sites which can become addictive, but I've overcome it and hardly go to the forums at all.

MCC. This is my chess club, and there is currently a couple of interesting events happening (actually, the reason I thought about local news was a call to arms yesterday for people wanting to learn to operate DGT boards at our club, which I put my hand up to). The regular Monday night FIDE rated event is the Malitis Memorial, a seven round swiss tournement. Time flies, because this event has just crossed the half way mark and is being led by Gary Lycett on a perfect 4/4. However he will have a tough game against Sylvester Urban in the next round. Sylvester is half a point behind along with David Beaumont, Richard Voon and David Lacey (who again is having a big tournament). Top seed is Ari Dale who is a further half point back along with 4 other players. There is good coverage of this event on Kerry Stead's blog.

But perhaps the biggest event is the play off match for the Club Championship between IM Guy West and FM Dusan Stojic. These 2 dominated the MCC Championship earlier this year scoring 8/9. It is a 4 game match that has already started with a draw. The next game is tomorrow night and there will be games on the following 2 Wednesdays. I might have to make an effort to get along to one of these sessions, and I encourage anyone else to do so, both to support these 2 great players, and to learn from the first hand experience of watching and kibitzing.

Other clubs. While all the clubs in Melbourne seem active, there are some events that really stick out in my mind. Box Hill Chess Club are holding a 15 minute tournament this Sunday to raise funds for some talented juniors who are going to the Youth Olympiad. The tournament has attracted a number of strong players including GM Darryl Johansen and much corporate sponsorship, including from clubs and coaching organisations. Anyway, the tournament will be rated in FIDE's rapid rating list and all proceeds go to the players, so great work by Box Hill Chess Club! (ps, I like the new look website as well).

A couple of weekend tournaments are coming up, with Hobson's Bay Chess Club hosting the 'Best in the West' in Altona. This tournament seems to be getting bigger each year, and with Sydney's FM Greg Canfell a starter, the big names from Melbourne are likely to show up. In fact FM's Stojic and Dragicevic have already entered. These 2 young FM's are part of the success story behind Noble Park Chess Club, a club I have a great fondness for as I was a member around the time of it's inception. I remember the hard work of Mehmedalija Dizdarevic and Domagoj Dragicevic in creating a venue for 'serious' chess events. Well, a few years have passed and Noble Park Chess Club are holding their first weekend event in September and I intend to show my support to this great club by playing (and no doubt passing a few rating points on to their talented juniors!).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I can honestly say that chess in Melbourne is flourishing and it is an exciting time to be involved in the game.

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Yesterday's answers:

 1.Rd8+! [a typical distraction] 1..Nf8 [1..Rxd8 loses the queen] 2.Qxc5 Rxc5 3.Rxb8 winning a rook

 1.Qf8 [1.Qd8 leads to the same thing] 1..Ng8 2.Qxg8+! [a typical sacrifice removing the defender] 2..Kxg8 3.Rd8#

 1..Qe5! [threatening mate on b2 and e1, and the queen cannot be taken as then Rd1 would be mate]

1.Qxd8+! Nxd8 [1..Kh7 2.Qh8#] 2.Re8+ Kh7 3.Rh8# This mate with a bishop on the long diagonal is important to understand and adds another theme to the back rank mate