2010 Victorian Teams Championship

This new event has one round a month from May through to November and I am involved with numerous teams. I am the general manager of the Melbourne Chess Club which has entered 5 teams into the event, 2 in the first division and 3 in the second division. I am also team manger of the first division team MCC 2 that I am playing for, and I am teeam manager for the Chesskids team in Division 2. I will be reporting about these teams here as well as some other results and standings.

MCC 2 in the Victorian Team Championship

Round 1

In the first round we were paired against the other MCC team in the division. We were the underdogs being out-rated on every board, and I think this will be the norm for the entire season. But we showed that we are a team to be taken seriously, and not one that will merely make up the numbers. An amazing performance across the boards saw us win the match by 2.5-1.5.

Results MCC 1-MCC 2 1.5-2.5

Bd 1 C. Gorka 2113 (MCC 2) – J. Morris 2174 (MCC 1)              1-0

Bd 2 M. Pyke 2073 (MCC 1) – T. Ly 1913 (MCC 2)                    0-1

Bd 3 S. Urban 1874 (MCC 2) – I. Sutton 2100 (MCC 1)               1/2

Bd 4 P. Skiotis 2029 (MCC 1) – V. Kildisas 1851 (MCC 2)         1-0

We were out rated by over 100 points per board, but everyone played their hardest making us difficult to beat, which may be a good tactic for the season as stronger teams may underestimate us, or try to hard to win. This particular match saw the first team out of sorts with James Morris and Malcolm Pyke both playing far below their best. I was able to win against James and Thai Ly took full advantage of Malcolm’s poor form, a great result for Thai. Sylvester Urban played very solidly taking the game to the endgame early and comfortably holding the half point which earned us the full match points. Victor put up a great fight against Pano Skiotis but eventually lost the game.

As captain, it is my aim to make sure that as many of my players get as many games as possible, so I will be looking for Ascaro Pecori, David Beaumont and Bob Krstic to play in the next match if possible. Of course, if players are unavailable, we have back up as both Sylvester and Victor have expressed their interest in playing as many games as possible.

The full results of the first round for our division are:

MCC2-MCC1 2.5-1.5

BHCC-CJCC 2-2

Elwood-NPCC 1-3

Yarra Bye

This leaves standings with 3 points for a match win and 1 point for a draw as:

Noble Park 3

MCC2 3

Canterbury 1

Box Hill 1

MCC1 0

Elwood 0

Yarra 0 (bye)