News & Weekly Bulletins - September 2006

The field settled on 79 for pairing considerations, of which 71 had entered before 22 Sept 2006, and 8 entered on the night of the tournament. The organisers welcome so many entries before hand as this assists in getting round 1 started at a reasonable time. The Arbiter, Gary Bekker performed a roll-call, a first for the Box Hill Chess Club and there were a few startled players experiencing the ‘limelight’ in such a way. The roll-call found one player who was a no-show, and this reduced the field to the happy even number of 78.

The President Rolf Exner welcomed visitors and members, and Domagoj Dragicevic gave an advert. for the newly formed Noble Park Chess Club and their first event intention.

With the speeches over it was down to play. The field was split into two divisions at the rating level 1400. This meant that Trevor Chong as the top seed in division B. I checked with to see if he was disappointed about not being graded division A and he assured me he was looking for some easy games due to an absence of 3 months from chess. I smiled when I saw the pairing sheet, board 20.

Due to school holiday clashes with 22/9, a few games were scheduled early to cater for the clashes. The most significant was Guy West v Eugene Schon, which has been played a fortnight previous. Guy has kindly analysed the game at some length and you can see his analysis at the bulletin board chesschat.org (see me if this is not an internet site whose address is known to you). Three other games also have been re-scheduled. Players are advised that postponements are possible but need to be discussed with either Gary Bekker or Trevor Stanning first.

So, the results started to roll-in, and I eagerly scanned for upsets from upstarts. It took a while for a good upset to emerge but I gained joy from Jenny Fan’s excellent draw against Grayson O’Connor. These were soon joined by those perennial upsetters Rengan Vijayakumar (a draw against David Flude), and Sally Yu (a draw against Douglas Stones).

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