Queensland Junior Championship

Emmanuel College hosted the Queensland junior championships this week. Tuesday the under eight's fought it out. All the results with excellent reports from the Arbiter, Charles Zworestine, are on the Gardiner Chess website 

The medalwinners were..

U8

     1  Chan, Jason      11/11 

        2   Durden, Sam         9/11    

        3   Brutnell, Jett        8/11

U10

This event took place on Wednesday and several of my students were playing so I took the afternoon off work to see how they were doing. Not too shabby! Kevin conceded only one draw, winning his third U10 title and David shared 2-3.

        1    Song, Kevin       7.5      

     2-3  Tran, Philip       6        

               Liu, David       6       

(photo Charles Zworestine)

U12

The Song remains the same (sorry Kevin, couldn't resist :-) as Kevin picked up the under twelves as well. It was a little more hard-fought than the under ten's and Kevin did lose one game to Leon Lee but in the end made history by winning both the U10 and U12, a feat never before accomplished according to the organisers...I think. Corrections welcome. The PGN of Kevin's game from round 7 is available on the report.


  1   Song, Kevin            6
 2-3  Lee, Leon               5.5
      McNamara, Elijah    5.5

(photo Flora Song)

U18, 16, 14

At the time of writing no report is available, just the results. I and everybody else expected this tournament to be a race between Gene and Yi. Both players compete successfully at senior level and are amongst Australia's top players. Alex Stahnke raised some eyebrows with his victory against IM Steven Solomon the week before and was seen as a dark horse. Martin Jack's win against Gene was not predicted by anyone! Gene came back into contention by beating Yi who now had to beat Natasha Bortsova to win gold. Watch out for this young lady. If you are on the Women's Olympiad team, look behind you.

(photo Charles Zworestine)

       1   Liu, Yi                    B            2265 2266      7/8        

       2   Nakauchi, Gene (FM)  GC 2294 2287      6.5/8

        3   Jack, Martin                 GC    1649 1675      6/8      

4-7Bortsova, Natasha    T  1589 1511      5/8        

      Stahnke, Alexander   GC 1781 1873      5/8        

      Slater-Jones, Tom    B   1485 1522       5/8       

      Hughes, Harry        B     1408 1405       5/8  

Tom Slater-Jones and Harry Hughes joined Alex and Natasha on 5 points. They all played very maturely concentrating on their games and you might notice that they are all well under 18. The official site has not posted the medals yet (or PGN's) so I can't give any more details. Another name to watch is  Tony Zhong who finished on 4/8 and is only 11 years old. 

Academy News

Many Elite Squad students are going to Melbourne for a week of training so this Sunday we will have an informal training session, combining advanced and elite.

Our Wesite, doubleroo.com.au is ready to launch and will go live tonight. Stand by!