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What a great round of competitive chess we saw last Friday night. Board
2 was an exception where a short draw was agreed early. But on the 3rd
board Svetozar Stojic had a good draw against Denis Bourmistrov.
Good wins to Peter Frost over Scot Sharman, and Marcel Rothlisberger over
Leon Kempen. Before the round started our President quizzed me on how
to beat Christopher Wallis; I didn’t know and apparently neither did the President;
result 0-1.
A great win by Jusef Omeragic over junior-member Andrew Fitzpatrick, and
similarly Rolf Exner over Michelle Lee. Trevor Chong accounted for Garry
Lycett, whereas Peter Schultzer struggled for half a point against Zhigen Wilson
Lin.
Rob McCulloch ended John Butler’s revival abruptly.
Finally, on board 31, we saw perhaps the contestants in the 2024 Victorian
final; Chloe Lauder v Jerome Lugo, and shared point the result.
Entries are rolling in for our hosting of the
VICTORIAN OPEN. We have confirmed
entries from Grandmaster Darrly Johansen, IMs Stephen Solomon, and Peter Froehlich,
and many others you can see on the web-site. Enter early and receive the
large early-bird discount.
Some of the notable results against higher-rated opponents included Peter
Frost’s good win against Leon Kempen, Chris Wallis draw against Marcel Rothlisberger,
Artem Nikolayevsky draw against Ruperto Lugo and Trevor Chong’s draw against
Rolf Exner.
In the bottom half of the pairings there were good results too. Shaun
Fielder took a full point from Ion Klprogge, Udit Thakur took the point against
David Creedon, and Michael Collins upstaged Richard Martin.
Our two oldest members were paired and John Butler won over Robert Chan.
And on board 43 Alan Gray won a long hard fought game against Marieke van Dijk.
The Victorian OPEN will be played at our Club this year and you get read
the details in brochures available each Friday.
This was an amazing round for results. Usually by round 3 the SWISS pairings
have settled down to very competitive games for the whole field. And this
was the case for round 3. In fact, the mean absolute deviation of pairing differences
was 230; a rather low figure compared with round 1. Competitive pairings
usually produce upsets by the upstarts. But, what was amazing is that
there were so few upsets.
I could only find Artem Nikolayevsky’s draw against Andrew Fitzpatrick, Vladimir
Zacharczenko’s draw against David Creedon, Vanja Roazenblat’s draw against Casey
Hickman, Eugene Schon’s draw against Udit Thakur. And then finally, one
upset of note, Farn Ling Khung defeated Fred Tischman.
Round 2 saw the arrival of WINTER in Melbourne. This season is not
known to Northern and Western States, but is very conducive to chess enjoyment.
Even the Melbourne folk were not expecting WINTER late in this week given that
we had had two days of total fire-ban recently. Again board 1 produced
a surprise result when Denis Boumistrov drew against Tom Narenthran.
Chris Wallis pulled out a big result against Zdravko Lojanica. Two
notable draws were Zhigen Wilson Lin and Rowan Fell against Leon Kempen and
Edward Rice respectively. Elena Galiabovitch drew with Peter Braham.
And there were fine wins to Rengan Vijayakumar over David Creedon, Rob McCulloch
over Anton Nincevic, and unrated Patrick Tan over John Butler.
The Box Hill Championship for 2004 has 96 entrants.
Round 1 was notable for the number of upsets. On top board, Garry Lycett
held #1 seed Milenko Lojanica to a draw, as did Reubban Muthusamy on board 4
against Leon Kempen. Newcomer Vin Mugunthan scored a full point againt
Marcus Raine, as did Jusuf Omeragic against Peter Frost, Artem Nickolayevsky
against Howard Liston, and Trevor Chong against David Flude. In a catch-up
game Zhigen Wilson Lin showed he had learned a few things in Canberra by holding
Ruperto Lugo to a draw.
In the bottom half of the table games went according to seeding except for
a nice draw by Thomas Feng against Fred Tischman, and Rob McCulloch’s good win
against Casey Hickman.
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