2009 Anzac Day Weekender

The 2009 Anzac Day Weekender was held at Melbourne Chess Club on the Anzac weekend (25-26 of April). There was a strong tournament of 22 players. The top seed was GM Gawain Jones (2551). Here are the results:

1st-2nd GM Gawain Jones, IM David Smerdon (2520) 4.5/5
3rd Eugene Schön (2094)

Latest Chess Promo for the NBA on TNT

The NBA has recently come out with an interesting chess video. What has this got to do with Australian chess? Not much, sorry.

2009 Sydney International Open Chess Tournament

The 2009 Sydney International Open chess tournament was held from the 15-19th of April at the Parramatta Town Hall in Sydney, NSW. The turnout was good and the field included 8 GMs. The top seed was Australian's own GM Zong-Yuan Zhao (2583), who was an IM (!) at this time last year and actually came equal 1st in the 2008 SIO. Victorian GM Darryl Johansen had a marvellous performance in this tournament, leading it all the way to the finish.

Here are the results for the Sydney International Open:
1st-4th GM Darryl Johansen (2452, highest countback), IM George Xie (2402), GM Abhijit Kunte (2513) and GM Gawain Jones (2550), all with 7/9.

Click here to see the final crosstable for the 2009 Sydney International Open.

The Sydney International Open has a sister tournament, the Sydney International Challengers for under 2000 players. It was won by Victorian player Colin B Savage (1999) with 8.5/9.

Click here to see the final crosstable for the 2009 Sydney International Challengers.

Click here to download the PGN from the 2009 Sydney International Open and Sydney International Challengers.

O2C 47th Doeberl Cup

The O2C 47th Doeberl Cup was held in the Hellenic Club in Canberra, ACT. There was a strong turnout of 7 GMs and a plethora of other titled players. The Doeberl Cup consists of four "sections" - Premier, Major, Minor and "Mind Games U1200s", each with their own tournament. There was also a Chess960 tournament, replacing the traditional Lightning tournament.

Ian Rogers also gave video commentary on all of the rounds. You can find them under "DoeberlCup" on YouTube. Scroll down to the "Videos" heading.

My favourite video was the one from round 6. Annoyingly, the YouTube video doesn't fit within the width of this blog, but here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9SlEcC0Sw

The highest ranked players going into the Premier tournament were GMs Dimitri Reinderman (2560), Gawain C B Jones (2550) and Das Neelotpal (2514). These players are from The Netherlands, England and India respectively.

Here are the final standings for the Premier tournament:
1st-3rd IM Deep Sengupta (2466), and GMs Gawain C B Jones and Chakkravarthy J Deepan (2482), all with 7/9. IM Deep Sengupta had the highest countback and achieved a GM norm with one round to spare.

The Doeberl Cup Major was won by Colin Cloudsdale and Brendon Norman with 6/7.
The Doeberl Cup Minor was won by Alana Chibnall with 6/7.
Awaiting results on the Doeberl Cup Mind Games Under 1200.
The Doeberl Cup Chess960 tournament was won by IM Swayangsu Satyapragyan with 7.5/9.

Click here to see the final crosstable of the Doeberl Cup Premier. Click here to see the final round results for the Doeberl Cup Premier.

Click here to see the final crosstable of the Doeberl Cup Major. Click here to see the final round results for the Doeberl Cup Major.

Click here to see the final crosstable of the Doeberl Cup Minor.

Click here to download a PGN file of the 2009 Doeberl Cup.