News & Weekly Bulletins - February 2006

Round 2 of the 2006 Box Hill Autumn Cup

We were pleasantly surprised to see some familiar visitors at the Club’s new premises. Michelle Lee and her Mother returned after quite an absence. Denis Bourmistrov and David Smerdon took quite an interest in proceedings of various games.

On board 1, Sam Chow (a little out of practice) was held to a draw by Nur Yachou who has played all the key national tournaments over the Xmas break. But that was not the excuse that Domagoj Dragicevic could use in dropping half a point to our Vice-President Howard Liston.

Board 11 was a forfeit without prior warning. Players are reminded that the Arbiter will more than likely withdraw you from the next round if you are a no-show for a round. A forfeit also occurred on board 24 without prior advice.

It was good to see the return of popular Elliott Renzies to the Club. He played a hard fought draw against Phil Wheelwright (also making a welcome return to chess).

Dmitri Dyson has had his provisional rating adjusted and is now in division A for the tournament.

On Tuesday 21/2/2006 the New Season Swiss started with a good field of players. The coaching has been running for a few weeks at our new venue, but the senior players have had to be patient for their particular tournament to start.

Junior coaching is led at the moment by Darryl Johansen, David Hacche, and Rukman Vijayakumar. It starts at 6pm on Tuesday and finishes at 7.30pm.

Victoria won their first round of the Internet Teams Challenge. Their first round opponents were South Australia. Games are hosted on ICC. If you are interested in further technical detail, ask some-one younger than me! Box Hill has quite a few representatives in the Victorian team.
 

Round 1 of the 2006 Box Hill Autumn Cup

The first three boards were won by the high seeds, as expected, and on board 4 the last-minute entry of Ascaro Pecori resulted in an unfortunate forfeit by the no-show of his opponent. Ascaro is a reluctant bride-groom of Cassia when it comes to chess; I think the gods were at play on this pairing.

Afshin Afshar v Svetozar Stojic was notable for:

1. The clever draw by Afshin, and

2. For the harmony their names present to the entry-fee taker.

The first real upset was on board 15 where Rengan’s form was aided by a lot of chess over the school-holidays. And on the same table, Anton Nincevic had a grinding win over Roger Croft who returns to chess after quite a break.

On board 21 Shaun Fielder showed that he had learnt not to press from an even position; this time he settled for the draw. On board 25 Elena was sporting a new hair-style after her holiday, but it did not have a Sampson-effect as she could still account for Fred Hodge (now playing under a name that eases entry-taking).

With 75 entries we seem to be off to a reasonable start in our new premises.