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 :-)