Churchie International pictures and game against Caesar

I am working from memory so if I have the move order or something else wrong in the game, well nobody is perfect :-)  Next time we will need to have score-sheets with carbon copies. Churchie's senior tournament advisor (moi) forgot to mention it. (oops)

First here are some great photo's taken by a parent. Sorry, but I haven't been told who yet, will credit when I can. After there is my game against the (co)winner IM James Morris.    

There was a delay with the start of the first round, something not uncommon in chess tournaments. It involved crashing computers, software glitches and wi-fi access problems. This caused some consternation for the arbiters the organiser and some parents. The kids just sat down, played some friendly games and didn't seem to care.

Mobile phones are not allowed in the tournament hall in FIDE tournaments. Peter Long here showing what a mobile phone looked like to clear up any misunderstandings.

Raymond Zhuang looking quite relaxed while Michael Dullaway looks like he is doing some kind of Shaolin mind control.

Yi Lui looks very excited to be playing chess at his old school. To his right is Michael Ostopenko, eating his t-shirt.

Erin Dullaway looks warily at the two black knights near her king.

The top seed IM Moulthun Ly and Clint Therakam both deep in thought.

Harry Potter hypnotising his opponent?

Ok, now to my round 4 game against the second seed IM James Morris. The winner of the Doeberl cup is one of Australia's strongest young players. In preparing for him I was impressed by his imagination and tactical ability. I also noticed that he plays a lot of the same rubbish I do and also plays virtually anything so preparing was useless. In fact the last time we played he started with the kings pawn and in this game he played the English.

Already on the second move the "rubbish" (2...Na4) arrived. Move 3. Nf3 is just bad but that was James's last bad move. Black had a slight edge and could have kept it by playing 15....Bc4 followed by Qe6 or a6. Instead I saw a nice way to force a perpetual and couldn't resist.

Another game and more pictures coming. Toodles :-)

James Morris wins the Churchie International 2016

Churchies first internationally rated tournament has just finished with smiles all round. Either Mr Max Condon, Churchies master of chess, likes giving out prizes or he was quite happy with the course of events.

It is always nerve-racking running an event for the first time. Is anyone going to play. Will things run smoothly? Will it run over budget?  Well, despite some gremlins on the first day everything turned out fine. 

Please enjoy this preliminary report with just some pictures from the prizegiving and one game. I need to take an International Arbiter sightseeing tomorrow so need some rest after the gruelling weekend.

Ben Stevens looks pleased with his 2nd unrated prize.

Noah Milbourne won the unrated section. Amazingly this lad has been playing chess for less than a year.

Col De Git was runner up in the next group.

Aaron Fahey, Nudgee's premier board 1 was the winner.

There was another rating group but since the players didn't/couldn't  pick up their prizes I have no pictures of them. Also their prizes will be donated to support struggling viticulturists/ 

In the open section eight players shared 4th and 5th prizes. From left to right we have Ryan Luis, Ross Lam, Moulthun Ly, Gene Nakauchi, Henry Slater-Jones, Clint Therakam and Tom Maguire.

Outright 3rd was taken by Churchie old boy Yi Liu pictured with his dad and brother. I miss our blitz sessions since he has graduated and moved to Sydney.

I managed to deprive James of a few dollars by also scoring 6 points so we shared 1st  and 2nd prizes. The Glory however, is all Caesars. We played an entertaining draw which I will present in the follow up post.

We had a great group of parents volunteering for the tuck shop. They did a brilliant job all weekend.

Let us not forget the Sheriff Peter Long and his deputy Michael D'Arcy. Apart from the normal challenges of running a tournament, they had to cope with half a room of children who were not familiar with FIDE behaviour standards.  

I have not posted like usual during this tournament. The schedule was hectic and the Arbiters were using my laptop to do the draw. I was going to use that excuse if I had had a bad result as well.

I will get to it but for now  present my final round game against the top seed IM Moulthun Ly. Actually Moulthun has been terrorising me since he was a kid. He beat me in our first two encounters when he was many hundreds of points lower rated and nearly made it 3. To be honest my main priority today was to not lose but somehow he drifted in the ending, made a few inaccurate moves and I stumbled into a good rook ending.   

The crosstable can be viewed on the "chess results" link.

Anyway folks, 3 am, I need a few hours. Toodles :-)