Bobby Cheng Australian Champion

It was an exciting finish to the 2016 Australian Championship at Fitzroy Town Hall. Going into the last round Bobby Cheng held a half point lead from Kanan Izzat and Karl Zelesco. Kanan was ineligible for the title, but both Bobby and Karl were fighting for Australian Champion. Obviously all the rest of us were still playing for places, but the title and tournament were between these 3 players.

The fun and games started when Bobby Cheng blundered against Junta Ikeda losing his last round game, leaving the way open for the others to overtake him. The net game at the top to finish was Kanan Izzat's win over Max Illingworth guaranteeing at least a share of first in the tournament depending on the final game between Justin Tan and Karl Zelesco. The tension mounted as games started finishing and the crowd around the top game increased. By the time I was finished, there were hardly any games left in either tournament, but the Tan-Zelesco game was still in full battle. In fact, the main game proved the last to finish. In the end, Justin Tan completed his comeback from a bad start to spoil Karl Zelesco's championship dream, and hand it to Bobby Cheng!

Full results of the Championship can be seen on the chess results server. Some notable points. Kanan Izzat was the tournament winner, while Bobby Cheng added the title of Australian Champion to the blitz title he won a few days earlier. Two games were forfeited. Sadly, Luke Li turned up late for the last round due to a mechanical car issue, but at least he had already gained an IM norm. More bizarrely was Mirko Rujevic not turning up to play his 10th round game on Monday. Mirko, who is turning 70, this year had a senior moment when he thought the tournament had finished on Sunday, and hadn't realised that the event continued.

The Reserves tournament saw 3 players who were near the top for the whole event take out the top 3 places. First was Patrick Gong with an amazing 9.5/11. This was half a point clear of Michael Kethro on 9 while Kris Chan was third a further half point back on 8.5. The Reserves was hard fought, and this is shown by the fact that another 27 players finished within 1.5 of third place. Of all these, perhaps special mention should go to James Watson who scored 7 points with an ACF rating of only 1633, whereas most of the players in the top 30 were over 1800.

Here's the final win of Kanan Izzat, who was definitely worse against Max Illingworth, beofre Max blundered with 35.Qc5.

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!

Australian Championship: Halfway Mark

The 11 round Australian Championship and Reserves tournament have now had 5 rounds, and will be entering the second half of the tournament tomorrow. Kanan Izzat continues to dominate the Championship field and is the only player on a maximum score in either tournament. Kanan holds a 1 point lead over a somewhat surprising duo of youngsters in second place. Sitting on 4/5 are Luke Li and Karl Zelesco, both still at school! A group of 5 players then sit on 3.5 including giant killer Jason Hu who has drawn with Max Illingworth earlier in the tournament, and today won against Darryl Johansen! Besides that the field is shaping up to about what was expected, with I guess the bad start of Max Illingworth, who regained his winning ways today. Funnily enough, if Max wins again tomorrow, he will probably jump back into the top half of the field.

The biggest disappointment today was probably that of Justin Tan, who apparently lost on time after not pressing his clock correctly. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm guessing he tapped the clock lightly, and the lever didn't go down properly. Anyway, Justin didn't notice that he had mis-hit his clock, and ended up losing the game. Still Justin sits alongside Max and a good run could catapult them back up toward the top.

The Reserves remain tight at the top with no one reaching the maximum 5/5. There are currently 5 leaders on 4.5: Clive Ng, Kris Chan, Alex Jule, Patrick Gong and Michael Kethro. There are then another 32 players within a point of these 5, so it is way too early to tell what is happening here. In the last Reserves tournament in 2014, there were also no players on 5/5, but Doug Hamilton then went on to win his next 5 games and wrap up the tournament with a round to spare. I wonder if we'll see another performance of that type?

There have been a fair few visitors to the venue, and today GM David Smerdon, among others, popped in. There are commentaries happening live while the games are being played. These are being run by a group of strong IM's, Robert Jamieson, Guy West and Leonid Sandler, but as the players finish their games, they will also hang around to watch some commentary, with GM Papin seeming to spend quite a bit of time in the commentary room after his games have finished.

The top games are being broadcast live, and the Championship games can be found at the chess results server not long after they have finished. Arbiter Kerry stead is doubling as data input specialist, as he also did at the Australasian Masters. Along with Peter Tsai and NY Wong, the arbitration team have run things very smoothly, and I don't know of any issues that have arisen during the event. The rules have been explained very clearly, so I guess that helps.

I will be looking at my own blunders later on, but for now, here was the shortest win of the first 4 rounds, and it highlights the issues that plagued defending champion Max Illingworth for the first
part of this event. Even Max himself will probably admit to this game being one of his worst losses for quite some time. But maybe it was the kick he needed as he bounced back to win today! The winner of the game, FM Dusan Stojic is also apparently bouncing back to form I'm happy to say. A few years ago, Dusan was Victorian Champion, 2300+ and seemingly heading towards the IM level. Then he worked his guts out at the 2014 Australian Championship as an organiser, and played at the same time. He had a terrible tournament from a playing perspective, which is no big surprise when taking into account how much work he was doing before and during the event. His poor result seemed to shake his faith a bit, and he was a bit slow to recover his momentum, but results have started to pick up for Dusan again, and hopefully we'll see him jumping back to where his strength really belongs. This is how you beat a 2500+ player who plays a dubious opening system.

Australian Championship: A Clear Leader

I wonder if there is a condition regarding new Grand Masters playing badly after just getting the title. FM Bill Jordan mentioned that Darryl Johansen played a shocker of a game at Doeberl just after gaining his GM title, and currently Max Illingworth is having a tournament to forget. In fact, after gaining his final GM norm in the 7th round of the Australasian Masters, he drew quickly with Vasily Papin, and then lost to GM Neiksans, and hasn't added a win in this tournament either. I'm not sure what the issue is, but hopefully Max can bounce back to his best soon.

The Championship now has a clear leader, with IM Kanan Izzat from Azerbaijan moving to 4/4 with a win against IM James Morris. After winning the Australasian Masters and getting a GM norm, Kanan is following up in impressive style. While Kanan can win the tournament he is ineligible to win the title of Australian Champion, so James finds himself in the leading bunch of players, a point back from Kanan and half a point behind IM Bobby Cheng and FM Karl Zelesco. Bobby hasn't played too much chess in the past couple of years and was a bit rusty at the Australasian Masters, but he seems to be in pretty good form now. Karl has had a great start to the tournament, drawing with Max and now beating GM Papin today. Joining James on 3/4 are Melbourne High School duo, IM Ari Dale and FM Luke Li, and these 2 will play tomorrow.

The field stretches out after that, but as I've said before, with 7 rounds still to go, anybody who has a great second half of the tournament is going to finish highly. To put it in perspective, at the last Championship in 2014, Max won with 8/11, and he can still achieve this if he picket fences from here on in.

In the Reserves, only 2 players remain on a perfect 4/4. The top round pairing tomorrow in round 5 will be Clive Ng - Kris Chan. However, as we get towards the half way mark, there are still 8 players just half a point back, and a further 21 on 3/4. Like in the Championship, those who finish strongly will be in contention at the end, and it is possible to climb through the order with a good second half.

There has been some entertaining chess, but the game that I've liked so far in the event, or at least the endgame I liked best, was played by IM Stephen Solomon. Stephen is notorious for testing his opponent's endgame skill and playing positions out to the bitter end. In the first round, he was playing FM Bill Jordan when the following position arose.

Bill as black decided to trade into the pawn endgame, and seeing his knight is so poor, who can blame him? 43..Nxe5 44.fxe5 g5 [blocking the king side, so although white has a space advantage, he has only one way through, on the queen side] 45.g4 hxg4 46.hxg4

White's only chance here is to break through on the queen side, as black's d5 and g5 pawns effectively block the king side. 46..Ke7 [Bill heads his king to the queen side where it will have to stop white's king from getting through] 47.Kd3 Kd7 48.Kc3 Kc7 49.b4

Breaking through looks an almost impossible task. However, thinking about this, if white's king can now get to a5, then he will have a reserve tempo with his a-pawn to force himself into b6. Then the advance of his a and b-pawns will win him the game. So this means black must prevent this happening, and the only way to do this, is to push his own b-pawn. This would have drawn for black. Unfortunately, Bill missed this line, allowing another Solomon endgame grind. 49..Kb8? 50.Kb3 Ka7 51.Ka3! [Fantastic play by Solomon, as 51.Ka4 only draws] 51..Kb8 52.Ka4 Kc7 53.Ka5 Kc8 54.Kb6 Kb8

This position makes me think of the famous Cohn-Rubinstein endgame Rubinstein's king pushed up the board and then he advanced his pawns so that after exchanges his king was in position to take his opponent's pawns. This is basically what happens at the end of this game! Studying this endgame in detail will help anyone's endgame play!

You can see the Rubinstein endgame in this excellent article by GM Beccara on chess.com.

Results Are What Are Remembered

The 4th round of the Australian Masters saw the GM norm hopefuls moving closer to their targets. Max Illingworth has started with a perfect 4/4. He needs only 2.5 from his remaining 5 games, but what a 5 games he has! He has to play the other 2 GM norm aspirants, Kanan Izzat and James Morris, the top 2 seeds, Neiksans and Papin, and IM norm hopeful Luke Li. It is certainly not out of the question, but Max will need to continue in his strong start.

Kanan Izzat currently has 1 GM norm to his name and has started with 3.5/4 bringing his live rating up to about 2470. His play has been impressive up to now, and his endgame win against top seed Neiksans, yesterday was excellent. Today is the big game, Illingworth-Izzat. Both players have shown excellent preparation, tenacity and technique so it promises to be a cracker.

The third GM norm hopeful is James Morris. James has started with 3/4 which means he has to score a further 3.5/5. But in James favour is that he has played all the GM's already. Saying that, yesterday James had a bit of a scare against Ari Dale. A wild game was played that seemed to fluctuate in evaluations with Ari coming out of the opening much better and for much of the game he seemed to have a big edge. James became active, and Ari slipped turning the position from big advantage, to level, to much worse. But even at the end, when James seemed to be winning, Ari missed some saving possibilities. The result was a victory for James who has moved a little closer to a GM norm.

This game, and some others in the round, got me thinking about the way we perceive chess after the fact. There aren't many people who will see how well Ari played in this game, how strong his opening play, and even how determined he defended in a tight spot once he was worse. Basically, after the tournament is over, the result will be win for James, loss for Ari and nothing more or less. In the IM tournament, another tragedy happened in the game Rujevic-Nguyen. Nam was a pawn up in a queen ending, but Mirko had cornered Nam's king and offered a draw as a perpetual seemed the most likely result. With a fantastic spirit of fighting chess Nam refused and played on trying to get as much out of the position as possible. Unfortunately, he overplayed his hand and ended up losing the position. What won't be remembered, is that for about 40 moves of this game, Nam held his IM opponent, and then gradually started to outplay him eventuating in a endgame which was equal or slightly better for him. No, all that will be remembered is that Mirko won, and Nam lost.

The win puts Mirko into joint third place, and leaves Nam equal last, but it could have been so different! Igor Bjelobrk continues his dominance of the event with another win and a 4/4 start. Chris Wallis is a point behind and still has a chance of a norm, though he will have to score 4/5 to do it. If Chris can find his best chess, then this could be possible because he can certainly play to master strength. In equal thrid is Richard Jones, who has stumbled a bit. In the third Jones, the top seed, lost to bottom seed Alphaeus Ang. Perhaps trying too hard to win, Jones blundered in a minor piece endgame, and the young New Zealander didn't miss his chance. And then in the fourth round, Jones was winning comfortably against me, and probably had a number of ways to win, but in the end he couldn't find them and the game petered out to a draw.

As for my play? Well, the results are what counts, right? If that is the case, then I'm doing a little better than expected on 1.5/2. However, when looking at my play, I was let off the hook in the draw against Jones, which I'd played badly and should have lost. In the first round, Alphaeus Ang got a big position out of the opening, and again I was let off the hook. The result will show a win for me, but I felt fortunate to get to move 20 unscathed! I played really well against Eugene until I lost the plot as my clock started to tick down. And against Igor Bjelobrk, I blundered a pawn in the early middlegame, and then put up an heroic defence which nearly saw me save a draw, until again I missed a tactic in time trouble. Overall, if I was just assessing my play and not the results, I'd say that my game against Bjelobrk was my best, even though I lost it!

The last 2 games I have had to start late (thanks very much to the organisers, and my opponents, Igor and Richard for agreeing to this) because of work commitments (I think I'm the only player in both fields who is working while the tournament is in progress, though I could be wrong), and this has prevented me from looking at much chess over the past few days. This should change from today, and hopefully this blog will have some more chess content from the event soon.

Endgames

The last couple of weeks I've had some interesting endgames including holding an opposite coloured bishop endgame against IM James Morris, and a winning knight endgame that I managed to draw against an excellent defence by Malcolm Pyke. I suppose I can count the draw against James as a half point gained, while the draw versus Malcolm a fair result, so all told I'm doing ok. The endgame has always been the bane of most players any player who puts some effort into studying the endgame will reap the benefits.

One problem about studying the endgame is how to do it.It is possible to study from a book, but that can be a bit dry. Most text books have all the information needed, but present it in a way that is not easy to apply, starting from the most basic of endgames and working towards harder types of positions. However, most of us want to learn general endgame principals, and then look at more specific theoretical endgames after. Finding books that combine these 2 ideas, as well as presenting it to players of all levels is not easy. Some books pitch too high, while some are obviously aimed at those with a very good understanding of endgame principals.

I think for most club players, dabbling in endgames is the best way to start. To be honest, learning a lot of endgame theory that has little practical application in our games is about as useful as learning 30 moves of theory in an opening that will probably not show up in one's games. By dabbling, I mean that I don't see that the average club player needs to study endgames in a scientific way, but rather needs to build up knowledge at a rate that is appropriate to them. Learning a mass of rook and pawn endgame theory is not a bad thing to do, but forgetting it before you can put it into practice is not good.

The MCC runs an endgame group. I used to run this group, and now FM Bill Jordan is in charge. The idea is to look at some endgame each week, and perhaps to get positions that can be practised from. The practical part of the group is as important as the theoretical, and it was great to see players becoming aware of ideas, principals and techniques. I always really enjoyed the pawnless endgames, as the technique is usually fairly simple while the practice can be tough. For example, holding on in a position with a rook and king versus rook, bishop and king can be difficult.

Here's a couple of positions that the MCC Endgame Group might want to look at.

 1. This is the position that perhaps I should have won against Malcolm. Perhaps you can find a winning plan for black, or see if you can hold the position like Malcolm did.

2. Another knight endgame that ended in a draw. This one from one my favourite players, Alexander Beliavsky. Beliavsky as black held this position against English GM Jonathan Speelman at the 1989 Amsterdam OHRA tournament. I was lucky enough to be playing in a lower section of this tournament, so could see these great players in action, as well as Victor Korchnoi, and young versions of Judit Polgar and Boris Gelfand!

So, could you hold this position with the black pieces?

3. This position happened at the recently finished Ballarat Weekender, in the game Fasakin-Milojevic from round 6. It is white to move and mate in 57! Good luck :D

And while I'm on Ballarat, congratulation to IM Kanan Izzat on his 7/7 victory in this strong Victorian Weekender!

Ballarat

I visited the annual Ballarat weekend tournament today, and although I'm tired after the 3 hour round trip with plenty of junior coaching through the day, Downton Abbey is coming on TV so I've got to find something to do.

Top seeds, IM's Kanan Izzat and James Morris

This is the 49th edition of the Ballarat weekender, organised and run by Ballarat Chess Club,, and next year we are due for a big one with lots of plans already in the pipeline apparently. Saying that, the numbers this year are a bit disappointing based on recent figures. There are short of 100 players with 14 players above 2000 rating and 5 IM's. Last year there were 117 players, while there were over 120 players fort he previous 4 years. The strongest I remember was 2012 where with a rating of about 2150 I was seeded 17th out of a field of 131.

The 2015 event has already seen a few upsets, but the tournament hangs in the balance. Top seed is IM James Morris, but he has already conceded 2 draws to Aleks Safarian and 5th seed IM Ari Dale. Second seed IM Kanan Izzat has had no such trouble winning all his first 4 games in fairly short order. The big round 5 game sees Izzat playing against the other IM on maximum points, Chris Wallis. Chris has also looked at ease in his games so this one should be a cracker!

IM Chris Wallis (left) starts with a perfect 4/4, including a win against an old rival, FM Dusan Stojic

The games can be followed on Noble Park's server and there are lots of games stored on Tornelo. The game that everyone was talking about this morning when I walked in was Kevin Sheldrick's escape against Angelo Tsagarakis.

Angelo is black and giving over 300 rating points to his opponent here. Black is 2 exchanges up and while there are probably many ways to win, the move that Angelo tragically played was one of the few to lose. 38..Rb2?? allowing Philidor's legacy after 39.Nf7 when Angelo resigned rather than being subjected to 39..Kg8 40.Nh6 Kh8 41.Qg8 Rxg8 42.Nf7#. I am guessing that being so dominant for so long, Angelo relaxed in the belief that he couldn't lose.

I was coaching local kids for most of the day, as Chess Kids were running a camp. Some of the kids got the chance to play a game in the tournament, but most were not ready for that sort of commitment. There will be a junior tournament run at a rate of 25 minutes + 10 second increment tomorrow alongside the Weekender and we're hoping that a lot of local kids show up to take part in it. The kids I was working with today had great thinking skills, and a huge desire to learn. Given the chance, some of these will become Ballarat Chess Club's future.

Age is no barrier in chess!

Australasian Masters

The Australasian Masters tournaments took place between December 13th-21st. There were 2 events, both 10 player round robin tournaments, one qualifying for GM norms and the other for IM norms. The question was would any of the Aussie hopefuls score the required points for a norm.

Anton Smirnov deep in thought against Vasily Papin

In the GM tournament, things didn't start too well and only 13 year old Anton Smirnov held a realistic chance of scoring a norm. This would have been a remarkable achievement, but saying that, Anton went into the final round joint first with top seed  GM Murtas Kazhgaleyev needing to win his last game against GM Vasily Papin for a GM norm. Unfortunately for Anton and his Australian fans, Papin won the game, thus meaning Anton missed out on a norm and a famous tournament victory. The tournament was won jointly by the 3 visiting Grand Masters, Kazhgaleyev, Papin and Rustam Khusnutdinov. Anton Smirnov finished half a point behind and though he may be disappointed, he has an incredibly bright future ahead of him. The other Australian players were also young with all the home grown players under 25. They all had good moments, but none were firing all the way through.

GM Kazhgaleyev checks out the position of GM Khusnutdinov

The IM event was dominated by Kanan Izzat, who has left his home country of Azerbaijan to study in Australia. For the years he will be here, it will be Australia's gain as besides being a strong player, he is also a very pleasant young man. Kanan finished a point clear of IM Igor Bjelobrk and Yi Liu who had a very good tournament and who will be considered one of the favourites for the Australian Under 18 title in January. Eugene Schon was half a point back on 6/9 and topped the 2300 mark somewhere through the tournament so is now an FM. The rest of the field played averagely, sometimes good and sometimes bad.

Eugene Schon sneaking some refreshment on his way to the FM title

I would just like to point to an experience of mine in the tournament. During the second half of the tournament I had to play the 3 IM's in the event in consecutive rounds. My mind set was not positive going into these games. It was almost as if I gave these players too much respect and made poor choices because of this. I guess we all have a limit as to how well we can perform, and at the present moment I felt that Izzat was out of my league. That is a very defeatist attitude and it caused me to play very badly, make bad choices and play my worst game of the tournament. However, I'd lost this game before I even sat at the board. A similar sort of thing happened against Igor Bjelobrk, though I put up a better fight here. I felt that Igor was right at the limit of my capabilities and gave myself little chance to get a result. Actually, I managed to get an ok position, but then took an eternity trying to come up with plans, and eventually, just played a series of bad moves. I was also apprehensive against Mirko Rujevic and asked for a draw when I was probably a little better.

To be honest, it was a little humbling finding myself so short of confidence, although not to be unexpected after the lack of work or practice I've put into chess. Are there any ways for me to remedy this? Well, actually there are, and quite simple things such as playing a little more, analysing regularly and working on a narrow but solid repertoire. At least then I should be able to maintain my level. So those will be my new year's resolutions, but of course, resolutions are there to be broken, so we'll see how I go with them.