2024 St George QuickPlay rounds 1-3
Fifty-three players, including many new faces, turned up for the start of our three-week, Swiss-format QuickPlay tournament. A warm welcome to all our new – and returning – members!
In the tournament, players each have 25 minutes for their game and get a 10 second bonus after each move. In a rather cool example of the general reliability of both the ratings and pairing systems, all of the players rated above 2000, and only those players, scored three out of three: Mario Falchoni, Arthur Huynh, John-Stuart Plant, Sarwat Rewais and CM Daniel Melamed. See the crosstable after Round 3 here.
There were surprisingly few upsets across the night. The following players had victories against players at least 10 positions above them on the initial ranking list or a draw against a player 20 positions or more above (the number in parentheses shows the difference): Wins: Ralph Shaw (R1: 26; R2: 25); Nihal Scammell (R1:26); Emmanuel Vardakis (R3: 16); Christian Lagarez (R2: 15); Alex Freitas (R2: 14). Draws: Stephen Elliott (R1: 26); Alex Freitas (R3: 23).
2024 St George Summer Lightning: JSP and the Perfect Score
Reprising his shared 2023 victory, but this time with an even better result, John-Stuart Plant scored a win in each of the 9 games of the 2024 Summer Lightning tournament. Second on 7.5 points was Mario Falchoni, and third place was shared between Sarwat Rewais and Changhao Yu. Thirty-one players took part.
The U1700 and U1500 divisions saw great winning performances by two continuing improvers: Sait Buzgan (5/9) and Samuel Slingo (4/9). Samuel shared the first prize in his division with one of his his practise partners, Ralph Shaw, twice winner of the NSW State Junior Blitz Championships, back in the ’60s.
Final Crosstable
| 2023-24 Summer Lightning Prizes | ||
|---|---|---|
| Open | U1700 | U1500 |
| 1st $80: John-Stuart Plant (9/9) | 1st $45 Sait Buzgan (5.5/9) | Eq 1st $37.50 each Ralph Shaw; Samuel Slingo (4.5/9) |
| 2nd $50 Mario Falchoni(7.5/9) | Eq 2nd $6 each: Srijan Badam; Ghassan Beydoun; Christian Lagarez; Ashton Li; Kevin Liu. (5/9) | |
| Eq 3rd $15 each: Sarwat Rewais; Changhao Yu (6.5/9) | ||
2023-24 St George Summer Open: The Results!
Congratulations to Changhao Yu and John-Stuart Plant, the co-winners of the tournament’s Open division! Third place went to the previously unrated Dominic Ou – his performance rating for the tournament was over 1950. The full list of place-getters in the four divisions are shown below:
| 2023-24 Summer Open Results | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Open | U1700 | U1500 | U1300 |
| Eq 1st $300 each: Changhao Yu; John-Stuart Plant (6/7) | 1st $360: Nikola Vujasin (5/7) | Eq 1st $300 each: Eric Shen; Ralph Shaw (4/7) | Eq 1st $300 each: Emmanuel Vardakis; Scott Zhou (4/7) |
| 2nd $240: Anthony Karnaout (4.5/7) | |||
| 3rd $150: Dominic Ou (5.5/7) | Eq 3rd $50 each: Sait Buzgan; Srijan Badam; Andrew He (4/7) | Eq 3rd $37.50 each: Marcel Lima; Alex Vardakis; James Bullen; Ludwig Wolf (3.5/7) | Eq 3rd $75 each: Ashton Li; Geoff Hyde (3.5/7) |
Prizes will also be announced at the club next Tuesday night (Jan 30). If we don’t have your bank account details already, please send them to boanmark@bigpond.net.au
The following players had victories against players at least 10 positions above them on the initial ranking list or a draw against a player 20 positions or more above (the number in parentheses shows the difference): Wins: Dominic Ou (unrated; 46); Stephen Elliott (unrated; 43); Jason Koh (21); Angela He (10); Draws: Ralph Shaw (23); Peter Swinton (21).
2023-24 St George Summer Open: Round 6 Report
Round 7 Pairings (provisional) Updated Jan 22, 3.57 pm
Update: To help people determine their strategy for the final round, there will be four prize categories: Open; U1700; U1500; and U1300. Unrated players will be sorted to one of these categories based on their performance rating (as determined after round 7), and will then be eligible for a prize in that category. Three prizes will be awarded in each category: 1st: $360; 2nd:$240; 3rd: $150.
It was the calm before the storm last night, with double the number of draws (8) of any previous round. In terms of the leaderboard, a Board 1 draw between John-Stuart Plant and Changhao Yu meant that Arthur Huynh and Pertti Sirkka joined them, on 5/6, in a four-way tie for the top spot. It makes for an especially exciting final round, with another three players on 4.5 (Dominic Ou, Ted Power, and Sarwat Rewais) also in contention to come in equal first.
The following players had victories against players at least 10 positions above them on the initial ranking list or a draw against a player 20 positions or more above (the number in parentheses shows the difference): Wins: Dominic Ou (unrated; 56); Scott Zhou (22); Ralph Shaw (11); Draws: Ashton Li (46); Marcel Lima (29); Ethan Currie (23); Geoff Hyde (22); Christian Lagarez (22).
NB: The organiser for the final round is not Charles, but Geoff Hyde. Contact me, not Charles, for all matters:
geoffjhyde@gmail.com
Ph: 0466 904 941
I will also be one of the arbiters alongside Anthony Karnaout.
Daniel Melamed does well at 2024 Australian Chess Championships
The Australian Open Championships has now finished, and Club Champion Daniel Melamed (FIDE 1988) ended in equal seventh place, on 6.5/11. He scored the surprise win of round 7, beating WGM Julia Ryjanova, rated nearly 300 points higher. GM Ian Rogers covered the exciting parts of Daniel’s game in his round-up of the Round 7 games on YouTube. In Round 8, Daniel scored a solid draw against Samuel Asaka (2125) but lost to Frederick Litchfield (2346), in round 9. In his 10th round match versus WGM Jiling Zhang (2170), he had another strong win.
His final game was the toughest yet, on board 1 as black against tournament winner, IM Rishi Sardana (2470; 9.5/11) from the ACT. The game can be followed here on Lichess, and is partly analysed by GM Ian Rogers on Youtube. Ian points out an interesting but difficult-to-spot resource by which Daniel could have saved the game. Second and third place in the main division went to equal-scoring Yi Liu and Samuel Asaka. In the Australian Blitz Championship, held during the main tourney, Daniel scored 6.5/11. That tourney was won by Tri Kien Le, with Hong Anh Nguyen second. St George was not represented in the other divisions of the Championships, although former club regular Brendan Anderson played in the Australian Reserves division, scoring 6.5/11.
Geoff Hyde
2023-24 St George Summer Open: Round 5 Report
Round 6 Pairings (provisional) Updated Jan 16, 3.05 pm
Round 5 saw two players edge ahead, Chaghao Yu and John-Stuart Plant lead with 4.5/5. But fibe others sit just a half-point behind: Nikola Vujasin, Pertti Sirkka, Gordon Yang (now withdrawn from the tournament), Arthur Huynh and Sait Buzgan
There were fewer upsets on the night. The following players had victories against players at least 10 positions above them on the initial ranking list or a draw against a player 20 positions or more above: (the number in parentheses shows the difference): Wins: Dominic Ou (unrated; 35); Scott Zhou (31); Boris Paceskoski (30); Eric Shen (25). Draws: Ashton Li (39).
NB: For the remainder of the tournament, the organiser will not be Charles, but Geoff Hyde. Contact me, not Charles, for all matters:
geoffjhyde@gmail.com
Ph: 0466 904 941
I will also be one of the arbiters for the rest of the tournament, alongside Anthony Karnaout.
For news from 2023: click here.