City of Melbourne Open

The City of Melbourne Open at the Melbourne Chess Club is now reaching the climax of the event. There have been 6 of the 9 rounds played and the clear leader on 5.5 is FM Domagoj Dragicevic. Domagoj had won the battle of the titled players when he beat FM Greg Canfell in round 5. I'd like to see the end of this game which was an opposite side castling Sicilian from what I remember. By the end of the round, there were 3 players sharing first place, Domagoj and juniors Vishal Bhat and Ray Yang. It has been really good to see the growth of junior chess at the MCC over the past 5 years. Junior successes such as IM Ari Dale and FM Jack Puccini are now being followed by the likes of Vishal and Ray, as well as Bobby Yu, David Cannon and Tristan Krstevski. With these strong young players around, the MCC appears to have a bright future!

Domagoj took clear first in round 6 when Vishal and Ray drew. Domagoj won against Tom Kalish to take a half point lead with 3 rounds to go. Greg Canfell bounced back to win in round to become the third player half a point behind the leader. A further half a point back are Malcolm Pyke, Tritan Krstevski and Mehmedlija Dizdarevic. Mehmedalija is at the other end of the age spectrum in retirement age. In round 6 he smashed me in the biggest upset of the round and followed that up with another good win against Justin Penrose. It's hard to see the winner of the tournament coming from below this group, though with 3 rounds to go, anyone who scores well can finish in a high position.

Some other results that are worth mentioning over the past couple of rounds. Juniors beating adults: Ray Yang beat Malcolm Pyke, Tristan Krstevski beat Thai Ly, and Christopher Lim scored an excellent win against Tony Davis in round 5, while Jody Middleton held Kanishka Premathilaka to a draw also in round 5. In round 6, MCC Vice President, Simon Dale scored a good win against Roger Beattie.

The sad news from my point of view is that my last game caused me to have a splitting headache, so I took a bye in round 6, but still don't feel fully recovered, so I might not be playing any more games in this event. I'm taking things week by week to see if I'm improving, and then I'll start playing again. I'll keep blogging about it, and wish every one in the tournament good games, and hope that you all get full enjoyment from the competition.

Ponziani at Glen Eira Club Championship

This week at Glen Eira Chess Club I had to play against FM Domagoj Dragicevic. The plan? Well go play, see how it goes and try my best! I guess that for the majority of working adults, this is essentially the way it works even if we would prefer to meticulously prepare for each opponent. More often than not, it's a matter of who plays better on the night.

Actually, I was fairly happy that Domagoj went for a line that I quite like. He gambitted a pawn and after a while seemed to get little, if any compensation for it. The opening was a Ponziani, and for those of you that haven't got the foggiest idea what I'm talking about, the game started 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3.

At this point there are 2 main moves, 3..Nf6 and 3..d5 and I've had to face both of these about the same amount. However, the types of positions are very different, with the knight move being more appealing to me, and less sharp generally. Domagoj chose 3..d5 and I responded 4.Qa4

When white plays 3.c3 there are 2 ideas. One is to play d4 and build a centre, the other is to develop the queen to a4 or b3. This position will certainly favour the player who has studied it the most, as there are lots of complicated lines. That tends to be why I prefer 3..Nf6 as black. Black's immediate worry is the e5 pawn, and Domagoj chose a gambit variation which holds on to it, but loses the d5 pawn. 4..Bd7. With black's queen unable to protect d5 it's a free pawn, 5.exd5.

Domagoj now played 5..Nd4 which to be honest, this would have thrown me if I hadn't recently played a game online in this variation, so had some idea of what was going on. The continuation 6.Qd1 Nxf3+ 7.Qxf3 is pretty standard and leads to an interesting position.

White is a clear pawn ahead, but black has a little compensation. White's queen can become a target to attack, and if black can get f5 in and develop behind these pawns, he will have some exciting pawn breaks in the offing. For some reason, Domagoj didn't play the mainline with ..Bd6 and ..f5, but chose 7..Nf6. Actually, I think that white is close to being just a pawn up, and maybe 8.Bc4 is best, but I played 8.Be2 and managed to work my way slowly into a good position, only to let it slip later. I'll post both my online game and the game against Domagoj.

The tournament is beginning to take shape, with a number of rearranged games having been played. I think the safest way of looking at it is like this. IM James Morris is on 100%, I've dropped half a point, Domagoj and Rebecca Strickland have dropped 1.5, while the rest of the field are further behind, except Sarah Anton who has lots of games to catch up.

The Reserves tournament is also competitive, and sometimes the results don't always reflect that. Max Phillips is leading the tournament though he has struggled in some of his games, and games will often swing to and fro between the players in this event. Saying that, if basic blunders can be made at World Championship level, such as the mutual blindness in game 6, then we really shouldn't be too hard on anybody.

More on Ballarat

A couple of nice moments from the first round. I was looking into the top board "pit" area when Domagoj Dragicevic found a nice tactic to trap his opponent's sidelined knight.

Domagoj now played the odd looking 23..Qg4. However, when you actually think about it, it traps black's knight. Black can't take because that terrible looking isolated h-pawn will become a star and trapped black's knight. Balck tried 24.Qxa2, but the intermediate 24..Ne7+ removes the knight from danger and gains a tempo to win the knight on h5.

While I was looking at this, IM James Morris pulled me aside and asked me if MCC member Anthony Hain was just winning with a central capture. I have to admit, I wasn't looking at the game, but when I went back to the board, it seems James might have had a point:

Here Anthony played 17.a3 to open lines on the queen side for an attack. James suggested 17.Nfxd4 the move favoured by Stockfish! the point is 17..exd4 is impossible as 18.Bf4 wins material.

The top games from Ballarat are being published on Tornelo and I'll add a couple of good wins by MCC members David Beaumont and Angelo Tsegarakis.