|
The Box Hill Chess Club’s 2003 Autumn Cup has been won by Sam Chow for the
first time.
114 players participated in a seven round Swiss played at 60 minutes plus 30
seconds per move each Friday evening since 31/1/2003.
Sam Chow won with a score of 6.5/7 and the event featured two IMs (Peter Froehlich,
and Michael Gluzman), as well 14 players rated over 1900.
The field is essentially divided into an A and B division; achieved by the
administrators permanently accelerating the top 50% of players with a two point bonus.
This has proven to be a very beneficial innovation at Box Hill as it avoids
the wide rating gap differences usually seen in Swiss pairings, but still
allows B division players to obtain a pairing against an A division player,
which usually
occurs from round three onwards.
B division players are not eligible for A division prizes.
The event proceeded with Gerrit Hartland as DOP, but having to handle no
disputes, and Phillip O’Connor as the computer pairings officer.
The full results are here.
We resumed games in round six after a long week-end where 39 BHCC players
took the opportunity to go to the Ballarat Begonia tournament. The placegetters
at Ballarat are printed on a notice elsewhere on this noticeboard (or, if you
are web-enabled, at
http://www.auschess.org.au/ballarat/Begonia2003.htm).
So you find yourself in contention for a prize in the Box Hill Autumn Cup
tournament. Or even a chance at the title, eh!
Now is the time you start to look at the trophy and imagine your name there.
Or look at the prize-list and count the chickens that are hatching.
Well, to save you the trouble, here is a list of previous Autumn Cup winners:
- David Flude
- Rolf Exner
- David Flude
- Bill Collins
- Tuan Le
- Michael Woodhams
- Bill Collins
- Michael Gluzman
- Michael Gluzman
- Michael Gluzman
And to the left of the notice-board is the prize-list.
Round six upsets were like hens teeth. They were few and far between
on the top boards. On board 11 Rados Zivanovic scored a good half against
Milenko Lojanica, and on 16 Norm Wilson collected a draw against Jo Azuolas
that could easily have been a win. Patience required Norm. Gunars
Priede drew well versus Rad Chmiel as did Rukman Vijayakumar from David Flude.
So there you have it !!! Not an upset win in the first 38 boards.
On board 39 Jerome Lugo beat the higher ranked James Cocks, but even this does
not rate as an upset because we all saw what Jerome could do at Ballarat.
And finally, on board 41 Andrew O’Connor had a meritorious draw against Tony
Petrou.
In the end there were NO UPSETS in round 6 !!! That is, the news is
that …there is no news.
Last Friday we were a bit short–handed due to absence of our regulars Gerrit
Hartland and Marieke van Dijk; thank you to Anton Nincevic and some of the early
juniors (John Nemeth and Domagoij Dragicevic) for the work done. Also,
it was good to see many pitch in at the clean-up to put away equipment.
Gary Wastell was our Arbiter for the evening and the games proceeded like
clockwork.
On board one Leon Kempen gained an early advantage over Sam Chow but was
unable to make his advantage pay. Eventually Sam was able to wriggle free
and prevail. On board two we had IMs Michael Gluzman versus Peter Froehlich
in a game unbalanced by a queen for two rooks swap. Peter ended up with
an extra minor piece; a bishop that was worse than bad. On the other hand
Michael had passed pawns as an advantage and this was winning in the final count.
This is our featured game of the week... link here.
Upsets we had a few (sound like a good title for a song). These included
Miralem Campara's defeat of Denis Bourmistrov, Garry Lycett defeated Janusz
Dutka, Arie Meydan accounted for Tom Tharmaratnam and Martin Johns defeated
Zdravko Lojanica in a rook and pawn end-game. A great game was the draw
by Andjelija Zivanovic with Szevotar Stojic, while her father Rados beat David
Flude who had excuses. Bruce Simpson did not lose to a lower ranked junior
this week; he lost to Phil Papa instead. Two other notable wins were Robert
Chan over Tony Petrou and Christopher Tham over Udit Thakur.
But probably the most interesting game I saw was Sally Yu versus Brigitte
Papa. In a rook and pawn ending Brigitte got the upper hand with a passed
pawn and a rook that cut the opposing king out of the action. But Sally
took advantage of passive play by her opponent to get back into the contest.
Brigitte’s advantage was reduced to a one square lead in a pawn race, but her
calculation time was down to 3 seconds. Fortunately Brigitte made the
correct choice and her father, Phil Papa, who was watching intently, breathed
easily as the collywobbles were banished.
Just a reminder... for the 7th of March... the Club will be holding an Allegro
on this evening, and a catch-up for postponed games. This has been arranged
to allow Box Hill members to attend the Begonia Festival held annually at Ballarat.
There is no full round of Autumn Cup games on 7/3/2003.
February the 21st will be remembered as the round the drought broke.
And then we had a flood of upsets as the lower ranked players started to make
their mark on the tournament.
But first, it was good to see John Butler back at the Club after a long absence.
John is a life member and has been a contender for many events in 50 years.
Our captain, Gerrit Hartland advised players that the recent newsletter contained
a players’ code of conduct statement that should be read by all. We all
heard this and then it was down to the business of playing chess.
On board one Peter Froehlich (fresh from winning a title event in New Zealand,
and an IM) was defeated by junior member, Sam Chow. On the first four
boards Black was successful and this must rate as a bit remarkable. The
sequence was broken by another Junior win as Michelle Lee accounted for Jan
de Gier.
Continuing the junior upsets, Sunilson Suderson rolled Howard Liston, Andjelija
Zivanovic drew with Marcel Rothlisberger, Richard Martin beat Peter Carey, and
Kingsley Feng defeated Fred Tischman. All of these were pairings of substantial
rating differences and if this trend continues much longer then the oldies will
have transfered a huge number of points to the up-and-comers.
A couple attempts to halt the tide came from Anton Nincevic’s draw with Rukman
Vijayakumar, and Martin Johns win over Joe Azuolas.
Just before the strong juniors get too smug I offer up a couple of observations
where juniors have been beaten by micro-juniors. (Oh yes, there is another
wave of these upstarts coming from the coaching classes. And seniors as
well as juniors need to watch out). Jerome Lugo defeated Johnathan Loo,
Indran Shan had his colours lowered by Andrew O’Connor (perhaps he was flushed
with success from being the featured game last week), and Sally Yu took points
from Christopher Tham.
Feature game of the week is Froehlich-v-Chow: 0-1.
It was hard to judge which caused the most excitement amongst the early arrivers
to the Chess Club on Friday night…
- the win by the Socceroos over England or
- the BHCC newsletter #3, put together by Gerrit Hartland.
In the end the Newsletter created the most interest, probably because it
contained details of prizes won in recent events.
Our friendly Secretary, Marieke van Dijk is laid up with a strained shoulder.
Get well soon Marieke. Marieke does a lot of work in the set-up and clearance
of equipment, and her contribution was missed.
Arthur Goudy was one of the first to seek assistance in the new facility
to enter the score of games directly into Chessbase. David Flude can be
a good computer-buddy if you are having trouble with the software.
Last week a senior club member took me to task for featuring his upset losses
against lower-ranked juniors. My apologies to him for the repeated mentions
of this. He shall remain an un-named and a respected player. On
Sunday, the 16th, Bruce Simpson was the second-best performed senior at the
Rookies Cup fast play. (Gunars Priede took out the $30 best prize).
And now to the games themselves. It was a huge week for upsets, although
the top boards seemed to be immune. Ruperto Lugo signalled a generational
change by defeating John Nemeth; Anton Nincevic showed fine form by holding
Phil Wheelwright to a draw; and Eric Neymanis had a super win over Keith Jenkins.
In B Division, Rocheleh Ziffer’s win over James Papa stood out, as did Rengan
Vijayakumar’s win against Renishka Sellayah. Bruce Simpson (oops, I have
done it again) was held to a draw by Derek Yu; and Jerome Lugo beat Johnathan
Yap. Finally let me mention Andrew O’Connor’s win against Paul Qian; it
is the featured game of the week, link here.
The late entries to our event just keep rolling, well late! The field
involves 111 players, including a small number of welcome visitors. You
may be interested to know that we have 170 paid-up financial members.
Fingers are crossed that they do not all turn up for one tournament; where would
we all park our cars for a start. Talking about parking cars, ask Peter
Schultzer for directions on how he got from the round-about to his car-space.
My reminder that play starts at 7:45pm in this tournament worked well for
round two with most players ready at that time. Well done.
I guess quite a few were surprised by the request to e-mail the score-sheet
of round two games to our web-master. This will certainly assist in the
collection of games and you will be able to look back with fond memories in
years to come at our Archived games. If this e-mail of score-sheets is
a bit of a mystery to you just ask around the Club and I am sure that a computer-buddy
can help you. It was thought that we could download ChessBase Light from
a web-site but this has been an incorrect assumption. David Flude is investigating
and will advise.
Talking about fond memories from round two games, a few oldies struck back
with upsets of their own making. David Flude extracted a draw from the
higher rated Janusz Dutka , Trevor Stanning (334 rating-point difference) defeated
Tom Narenthran and Les Berry scored points from Brigitte Papa.
Other notable upsets included Edward Rice’s great win over John Nemeth, Johnathan
Schlossberg’s win over Bruce Simpson, Rengan Vijayakumar success over Ted Glennie-Infield,
and Sunil Suderson’s success over Phillip Wheelwright. Young ones over
oldies, but praiseworthy nonetheless.
Here is the game of the week.
Nearly all of us gathered on Friday the 31st of January to start the 2003
Autumn Cup. The rest of the field seemed to be walking up and down Carrington
Road enjoying the Chinese New Year celebrations, or were testing the organisers
out to see how late they could leave their entry to the tournament. By
late Tuesday 4/2 the entries had increased significantly to 103 thanks to the
efforts of Gerrit Hartland and Phillip O’Connor.
Usually in round one there are few surprise results due to the Swiss pairings
setting up games with sizeable rating differences. But the following should
be noted: Dusan Stojic drew with IM Michael Gluzman, Vikram Palit toppled Miralem
Campara, Edward Rice accounted for Howard Liston, Arthur Goudy lost out to Derek
Yu, Natasha Lauder scored against Casey Hickman, and Cathy Farrelly had a great
draw against John Foster. Do you see the trend here in the upsets?
In each case the lower rated player was much younger than their opponent.
Just a reminder, play starts at 7:45pm for all rounds in this tournament.
And here is the link to how a 1690 rated player, Dusan
Stojic, earns a draw against IM Michael Gluzman, rated 2371.
|
