News & Weekly Bulletins - September 2006

The fourth round of the OPEN is characterised by pairings between closely matched opponents. The premier board 1 saw the two International Masters, Mirko Rujevic and Guy West paired for the second time in two days (they are also entrants in the main event at the Melbourne Chess Club). The game was very interesting and unbalanced but was marred at the crucial stage by a faulty operation of the digital clock. The ½-½ outcome was probably less than Guy had thought he had earned.

Because of the evenness, of the ratings in the pairings on many boards, there were a large number of marginal upsets. This makes for a very competitive tournament and the rating division prizes will be unclear right through the coming rounds 5, 6, and 7.

Two games are postponed and due to be played later this week. The cross-table, on view at the Club’s web-site, could change after the outcome of these games is known.

Our event is co-sponsored by the local Bendigo Community Bank and Marcus Raine’s bookshop.

The club had a stall at the Whitehorse Festival. Sally and Derek Yu played all comers. Their mother Gladys Yu and David Flude organized things. A group of Liberal Party politicians visited the stall during the afternoon. Some photos:

David Flude coaching a junior

The stall in action

The Liberals visited the Chess Stall, from left: Derek Yu, Robert Clark (Member for Box Hill, Shadow Treasurer), Gladys Liu (Candidate for Upper House Eastern Metropolitan Region, Proud mother of Derek and Sally), Sally Yu, Philip Daw (Candidate for Mitcham), Neil Angus (Candidate for Forest Hill).

Sally playing a visitor

Derek and Sally playing visitors

Round 2:

Zhigen Wilson Lin v Mirko Rujevic was Centre Counter (Portuguese var.); a favourite of Michael Gluzman who has won this event previously. Lin had the advantage of a mobile queen-side majority (2 v 1), together with q-side space. He needed a plan that would cause Rujevic’s pieces to be tied down to some defence. The plan remained undiscovered and Rujevic showed how quickly an IM could move major pieces into threatening positions given a free hand.

Sam Chow v Thai Ly was a passive Queens Indian that developed into a Marozy Bind set-up with Sam having the added advantage of solving the light-squared bishop problem through an exchange. This left Black with a light square weakness on c6 which proved fatal as Sam used this as a transfer square for his knight. The knight exchanged for the black-square bishop on e7, and with this piece missing Thai had no way of defending d6.

Rothlisberger v D Stojic reminded me of one of those Korchnoi games where as Black he will grab a proffered pawn and hang onto it though suffering all sorts of positional concessions. The pawn remained right into the early end game and of course assumed more importance with each exchange. An intriguing tight-rope game.

Rukman v Tony Davis was an odd variation where white did not follow the usual strategy of a3-a4 followed by Ba3. Black seemed unsure of where to proceed to place pressure (g-file or q-side). Eventually Black castled q-side and collapsed rather quickly as he had no answer to the knight that established itself on the black square d6; his white-squared bishop was a passive on-looker.

I often struggle to follow Scot Sharman’s thought patterns and very rarely can I understand Leon Kempen’s intricate moves. So, when it comes to Sharman v Kempen I think we move on.

Round 1:

On board 1 Shane Lawson allowed Sam Chow to proceed with his favourite French defence, and the Advance variation would have been comfortable ground for Sam. Shane jettisoned the pawn on d4 with his 8th move to castle and the compensation was never enough to hold off Sam’s accurate strong play.

The same French Advance was seen on board 2 with the stronger player, Dusan Stojic, on the white side against Zjelko Podvorac. Black’s 5th …h6 was a crucial waste of time and allowed White to castle without having to give a concession while having the e5 pawn nicely established. White’s a-pawn got passed with a nice tactical play and the run-away gave Black more problems than he could solve.

And again a French on board 3 but this time along classical lines instead of Advance. It looked as though Peter Schulzer thought that exchanges were helping him against the stronger player, Chris Wallis, but essentially he was just speeding the development of Chris’ pieces with the inevitable attacking advantage with Chris. The minature was over in 23 moves.

On board 4 Dirk Vielsakaeker v Serif Tuglaci was a symmetrical English that quickly became a Marozy bind. Serif thought he was winning a pawn but instead he just traded the e-pawn leaving his d pawn backward, isolated and on a half-open file. This was enough of a hinderance to cause his position to deteriorate.

On board 6 Rolf Exner started off with ideas of a Slav defence, but soon switched to Queens gambit accepted, but at the cost of a tempo. Rukman Vijayakumar had soon isolated Rolf’s d4 pawn and Rolf’s need to devote pieces to the protection of this pawn allowed Rukman to switch to a mating attack on g2.

Board 7 saw Leon Kempen play the Tarrasch line against the French Defence, and he had all the attacking options as Jason Tang got into a logjam of pieces on the Q side. Inevitable result was a win to Leon.

Well, that is the review of the top boards for round 1. No upsets expected in round 1 and none occurred. Each week, your aisle-side-patzer will give his comments on what the top boards are using to open with at the OPEN.

The field increased from 79 to 82 with the inclusion of Arie Meydan (one of our respected past Presidents), Chris Zuccala (a new member to our Club, but an old friend of many Clubs as he used to arrange our public liability insurance), and Harry Hoholis (a previous OPEN entrant who is returning to chess OTB). A Division is strengthened by the inclusion of these three players.

A few important games in A Division are postponed; one because Guy West is at an international tournament in New Zealand for a few days, and some due to school holiday clashes.

Our Arbiter, Gary Bekker, introduced Jamie Kenmure as guest Arbiter for the evening; Jamie has recent experience at the 2006 VIC OPEN run by Dandenong Chess Club.

Laurence Matheson was visiting the Clubrooms, to take advantage of Chess VICTORIA President Gary Wastell’s attendance to collect entries for the forthcoming VIC Championships, and got roped into a game to fill the no-show of a late absentee. Thanks Laurence, it evened up the field.

Domagoj Dragicevic was in attendance again to advertise the Noble Park ALLEGRO, and I think he persuaded a few strong players to enter.

During the evening the news filtered through from a few internet sites that a major dispute had erupted in the World Championship match between Topalov and Kramnik. This is a great disappointment to all who have an interest in the re-unification match, and was particularly awkward for Gary Wastell who could see himself working into the small hours updating his weekly chess column in a Melbourne newspaper. Personally, I have been finding Susan Polgar’s BLOG the best site to read about the world championship games.

Two players reported to me that they could hear a high pitched ‘buzz’ in the hall; much like the buzz that comes from a PA system left on. I employed someone with ‘younger ears’ to investigate and tracked it down to our gas heaters being the cause. Now to find a solution.

Eugene Schon’s mother was making her photo album available to those who wanted to see the sights of the recent chess tournament in Dubai. The richness of many of the buildings and facilities were an eye-opener.

So, the results started to roll-in, and I eagerly scanned for upsets from upstarts. Sam Elbrish’s draw against Shane Lawson is one out of the box as Shane is a very consistent player. Efrain Tionko’s win against Eugene Schon shows that even the improving juniors need to watch carefully on their march forward up the rating scale. I was very pleased to see George Umber run into form again; George has been on the wrong side of some upsets during 2005/6, but this time he scored well against Zeljko Podvorac. Jean Watson spotted Samin Kosari nearly 200 rating points and was able to get a good draw. And Vladimir Zacharczenko achieved a similar result against Laurie Dalton. On board 36, Kyle Gibson had his best result to date taking a full point from Chris Gillson.

Our event is co-sponsored by the local Bendigo Community Bank and Marcus Raine’s bookshop. Just a reminder, the results of all our events get placed on the Club web-site http://www.boxhillchess.org.au/ And the chatboard http://p067.ezboard.com/baustralianchessclub is frequently used to discuss Club events.