Melbourne Chess Club AGM

Earlier tonight the MCC had its annual AGM which seems to annually clash with the final of the Men’s Singles in the Australian Open Tennis Champs, so perhaps we as the MCC committee could ask Channel 7 and the Australian Tennis Federation to change their scheduling next year.

There seemed to be a generally positive feel to the meeting, with President Grant Szuveges and Treasurer Pano Skiotis both presenting reports that focussed on the clubs improved position compared to years gone by. While Grant’s report was naturally more general in nature, talking about a number of areas in the club he noted that 2010 already looks good as we have more members signed up already this year than we had for 2008, and our major recruiting day is the first round of the club Championships, which is tomorrow. Pano, on the other hand spoke more specifically about the financial position of the club and he stated that “the long term viability [of the club] was greatly improved”. However, both President and Treasurer qualified their reports by urging for the need to be careful and to maintain the effort that is being put into the club so that improvements may be sustained over a long period.

There followed the nomination of office bearers with all positions uncontested, so the 2010 committee is as follows:

President: Grant Szuveges

Vice President: Elizabeth Warren

Treasurer: Pano Skiotis

Secretary: Carl Gorka

Registrar: Tristan Rayson-Hill

Ordinary Committee Members: Jesse Jager, Alex Kaplan, Bob Krstc

Some intersting points were raised during the general business discussion:

Junior Coaching at the MCC will be examined this year with a tendering process likely to be put in place for chess businesses who wish to use our premises.

Our club website http://www.melbournechessclub.org/index.php will be more regularly updated.

Individuals coaching commercially at the club need to regulated, something the committee will be looking into.

Our tournament emphasis has moved away from weekend tournaments. We need to be improving our performance in this area.

And 3 players were nominated for honorary life memberships: GM’s Zong Yuan Zhao, and David Smerdon, and World Under 12 Champion Bobby Cheng. The decision for these life memberships will be made at the next AGM, or any special general meeting convened before then.

All in all, the meeting was upbeat and felt very positive. The biggest round of applause was for long term committee member Malcolm Pyke, who is finally standing down after around 10 years of voluntary committee work with the MCC. Funnily enough, when there was some confusion as to who would be arbiter of tomorrow’s round 1 of the club Championship, Malcolm declared he would come in early, help with setting up and the draw. It would seem that he will find it difficult to keep his hand down when volunteers are called for. But this is what makes any club great, the general members who help the club with little and big things when needed. The more people like Malcolm a club has, in and out of the committee, the stronger it will be. Another member of that ilk is Elie Beranjia who stood to the meeting and talked about the need for exactly this, the club’s need for members to keep it going, from the smallest jobs, like picking up any litter, to the major decisions about finances and policy. Everyone can help! As Elie so eloquently said,

“As I need this club, so this club needs me”

This should be our rallying call to our membership this year. The MCC gives its membership what they want, a place to play the game they love. So the membership should give the MCC what it wants, by treating the building with respect and helping to keep it clean and tidy wherever possible.

Melbourne Chess Club 2010

Although the Melbourne Chess Club has already been up and running for 28 days this year, we had our first committee meeting of 2010 last night. In 2009 we tried to improve the club in a number of ways, and to some extent succeeded. But all the committee are aware that improvement is a constant aim, and that perfection can never be achieved but should always be strived for. We have a lot of things coming up soon. On Sunday our AGM is being held, and then the day after the MCC Club Championship starts. This has traditionally been a flagship event, and this year seems no different with IM Guy West heading a strong field. To play in this event each player must be a member of the MCC. I’m glad to say that my 2010 membership is paid up and I will be playing

Last year we successfully raised funds for our building and maintenance needs and one of the top fundraisers was our raffle with a first prize of an hour of coaching from a number of different top coaches who very generously donated their time. Monday should see an announcement regarding another raffle.

On Wednesday 3rd of February, the MCC Endgame Group starts meeting again, and other tournaments on Tuesday (novices) and Thursday (round robin) nights will be starting within the next 2 weeks.

I look forward to this year at the MCC and will be reporting more about my club here.

IM Mirko Rujevic has been a regular competitor at MCC.

David Hacche is rumoured to be making a welcome return to the MCC this year, firstly as arbiter of the Cliub Championship.

Elie Beranjia and Malcolm Pyke kibitzing during one of our fundraising events last year, a marathon blitz held in the Derby Hotel in Brunswick Street. The members of the MCC have really risen to the call in 2009, and our thanks extend to the wider chess community as well many of whom have helped us in different ways over the past 12 months.

Thanks to Malcolm Pyke for the Photographs

Longest Game of the Week

Longest game of the week

One of the most useful online resources is the weekly chess news magazine ‘The Week In Chess’. The only problem is the sheer amount of material available, several hundred or possibly thousands of games each week. Games can be filtered by various criteria, such as the opening played, the players, the tournament. I have been looking at the longest games played each week for an endgame group at the Melbourne Chess Club. By looking at the ten longest games of the week, a player can develop an idea of which endings are practical to study and practice. How many of the ending scenario’s below would you feel comfortable winning or defending?

TWIC 793

1. Queen Ending
2. Rook and pawn versus Bishop and pawn
3. R + B v R without pawns
4. Q +R v Q + R with pawns
5. R + B v R + N with pawns
6. R + N v R + B with pawns
7. R + B v R without pawns
8. R + R v R + B with pawns
9. R + N v R + N with pawns
10. R + B v B + N with pawns

TWIC 794

1. R + R v R + N with pawns
2. N’s + B’s of opposite colour
3. R + N v R + B with pawns
4. Q v R + B with pawns
5. Q + B v Q + N with pawns
6. N’s + B’s of the same colour
7. R + B + N v R + B + N blocked position
8. Q v 2 R’s with pawns
9. R + B v R + B with pawns
10. Pure Rook ending

There were some interesting endings these past 2 weeks . Once again, the pawnless ending of rook and bishop versus rook featured a couple of times, with one draw and one win.  But the ending I’d like to look at this week is the Rook and pawn versus Bishop and pawn ending. At the recently finished Australian Junior Championships we were looking at this ending, and I was pleasantly surprised by the memory of some of my students who recollected the ending that Kramnik had played late last year in exactly the same sort of position against Ponomariov.

Australian Juniors Some Final Family Images

Well, I’m back in Melbourne after a hectic couple of days. The last round started at 9am on the 25th January which meant all preparation for my students had to be done the night before. Meanwhile, on the penultimate day, the Australian Junior Chess League had their public meeting starting about 30 minutes after the start of the round. The meeting went for about 3 hours which was a bit surprising seeing not a lot seemed to get decided. The one big thing to come from the meeting was a change to the format of the Australian Junior Championship from 11 rounds to 9 rounds which will shorten the event making it more affordable to parents and families.

And on the subject of families this tournament saw quite a few, with siblings playing and family members who play chess watching from the sidelines.

Harrison Briant (left) played in the under 12′s while his brother, James, played in the Under 18. You could see their mother Melissa each day helping with the admin of the event and generally doing whatever needed to be done.

Emma Guo is a previous winner of the Girls Championship and has represented Australia at Junior World Championships. This year she only played in the rapid, while her brother, Jamie Lee played in the Under 12′s.

Anton Smirnov is fast improving….how long will it be before he can beat his dad, Vladimir, who scored an IM norm at the Australian Championships held in Sydney just before the Junior events.

Tom Krasnicki was another ever present volunteer and a decent local club player. His daughter, Maddy, plays chess but didn’t play in the tournament though Sebastian Krasnicki played in the Under 12 Championship.

From left to right: DOP and bulletin editor Kevin Bonham (he undertook a herculean effort to make sure the tournament ran smoothly), Charles Zworestine (chief arbiter, and re-elected President of the Australian Junior Chess League), and Roland Eime (chief arbiter and reader from the Book of FIBE).

Finally, the competitors of all the events came together before the last round for group photos, so here is the Australian Junior Championship family of 2010. Congratulations to all the winners, all the players, all the helpers and all the family and friends who supported the players and the tournament.

Australian Juniors – Big Kids

Ok, I’ve felt a bit tired the past couple of days….probably caught something from one of the kids….and so haven’t written anything, but last night a lot of the adults, including a number of coaches decided to join in the fun with a blitz tournament. The event was arranged to start after the junior’s had finished and was designed to inspire the kids who would hopefully be watching. I know in England, and a number of other countries, the Junior Championships are run simultaneously with the adult events so the kids are actually playing alongside the players who should be the inspirations. In fact in the Brisbane event of 2006 the Junior Championship and the Adult Championships were run in the same venue with the juniors playing in the morning and the adults in the afternoon. Personally I liked this system, though of course, there are a lot of strong players who would be set a hard task of coaching juniors and playing in the championships . In fact, there would be a hard job for the strongest juniors to decise whether to play in the Junior event, the adult event, or both.

Anyway, more of this sort of thing tomorrow as the Aus Junior Chess League has its AGM at 1.30pm at Hutchins School in Hobart. The kids will be 30 minutes into their session so hopefully not too many would have finished by then! Lets get back to the Adult Blitz tournament last night. First drama was when IM Leonid Sandler was absent from the playing hall for the first round, a mysterious thing as the tournament was his suggestion. Anyway, quick phonecall revealed he would miss the first game, and was on his way from that health food place we know as MacDonald’s.

Second drama was when I was paired with GM Darryl Johanson. This wasn’t much of a drama for Darryl but I couldn’t quite work out how I was so low down the pairings….there must be a lot of strong coaches!

Actually the tournament was played in pretty good spirits. And a fair number of kids saw their coaches and chess heroes in action. Zhao was excellent and his game with Darryl drew a pretty good crowd. All in all I would say that this fun event was a great success. But then again, as my rating was given as 1650ish which is my published rapid rating apparently, while my normal rating is 2100ish, I was a good bet for a rating prize.

I can’t say I remember much of the 9 rounds of 5-0 chess that I played. I lost to Darryl, though didn’t get crushed. I was crushed by GM Zhao….he offered something which I took and then he mated me. Solomon did pretty much the same thing to me and that was my 3 losses. Funnily enough that’s more than I remember of my wins. The only one that really sticks in my mind was the start to my game with Axel Stahnke where as white I followed a famous game for a few moves.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Bg4 [anyone know the game yet?] 4.dxe5 Bxf3 5.Qxf3 dxe5 6.Bc4 Nf6 7.Qb3 and now Axel played 7..Qc8 and I don’t remember a whole lot more of this game. However, I can remember the game I was following completely….answers on a postcard please

The adult blitz was played in the right spirit, with everyone from Australian Champions through masters, club players, novices and some parents who had hardly ever played before. I still prefer being on the outside looking into the playing area than being inside the roped off area and being watched. Coincidentally, the chesskids group that I’m here with went to the zoo today…..

Australian Junior Championships: Bits and pieces from the double round.

When a tournament throws in a double round day into a schedule of single round days it seems to throw everyone’s body clock. Some people try to go easy the first game, while some might blame fatigue for a poor result in second round. Well in my opinion all this is just complete rubbish! The conditions are the same for everyone so why any single player should be more fatigued than any other is a mystery to me. And if I ever go easy in a game, then it will be time for me to take up the Caro Kann!!

And if this sounds like the rantings of some miserable old guy, then wait for the punchline. In contradiction to what I just said,  the majority of chess was of a fighting quality all day long, and I didn’t hear any excuses of tiredness to blame for second round losses. In fact, the second started late because the game between Anthony Milton and Sam Dalton went beyond the 5 hours that was the schedule for the rounds. Then, after this 5 hour marathon, Sam won his second game of the day, while Anthony fought out a hard draw with the Black pieces against Yita Choong rated some 250 points higher than him. Fantastic effort from these 2 boys and great attitude all round.

Here are some of my favourites:

1. Not many know much about the talented Chinese Junior who plays at Box Hill CC, but Yilun Ding can be a real danger. Here white (Ding) mates in 4. There’s more than 1 mate, so see if you can get the same as Yilun.

2. Bishop-Encel from round 3. Black to mate in 9, apparently.

3. There was some competition for the most stylish move of the day. Black’s move in this position is a tough one to beat.

4. Black’s move in this game was a close second in the stylish move comp. Unfortunately, this one was less sound, but still a fantastic idea from an under 12.

5. How does White break through here?

6. And the diagram above led to this position. White to move, how would you finish off the game?

Australian Junior: A Melbourne Chess Club perspective

We are lucky at the Melbourne Chess Club this year in that we have a group of keen and dedicated junior players who are making the most of the great opportunities available to them. School chess in Victoria provides the breeding ground, and then the better players are encouraged to go to the clubs. To their credit, the clubs around Melbourne have great child-friendly events, such as the Rookies Cup’s at Box Hill Chess Club,  the Rookies Shield at Ranges Chess Club, and our own Saturday Allegro as well as the RJ Shield tournament’s run by Chess Kids. These fast play tournaments introduce children into the club scene in a gentle and fun way,giving them the chance to compete against their peers, older kids, and adults. And they can then hopefully make the jump to longer time controls.

We at the Melbourne Chess Club have a junior program run by chess education which has produced a string of good players including the 2009 Australian Junior Champion Cedric Antolis. This year at the Australian Junior we have high hopes that a member of the MCC will become a champion again. Top seed, James Morris is a member of our club, as is second seed Bobby Cheng. Both of these great players won have won junior titles already: James is Under 18 Australian Rapid Champion, Bobby is Under 14 Australian Rapid Champion.

But besides these, there are a whole bunch of juniors from the MCC. In the Under 18 Championships, Simon Karumbi (a Saturday regular at the MCC) is taking the step up from 15 minute chess. He will come away a much stronger player from this experience. In the Under 12 Championships, there are 5 MCC players competing: Max Ruan, Nicolaas Schroder, Finlay Dale, Jack Puccini and Ari Dale. Ari Dale is the current Victorian Under 12 champion, and he added the Australian Under 12 Rapid Championship to his titles yesterday.

The Spensley Street Crew….left to right: Nicolaas Schroder, Jack Puccini, Ari Dale, Finlay Dale.

Bobby Cheng with his coach MCC life member GM Darryl Johansen

Australian Junior Round 2 bits and pieces

Round 2 saw some really good chess…..there was some pretty average chess as well, but on the whole the standard seemed a bit higher than the first round so I reckon most players have quickly got over their nerves.

Fedja Zulfic is a big hope for South Australia and a very talented player. See if you can spot the mate in 5 as comfortably as Fedja did. Black to play:

And to do well in events like this, a player needs to spot tactics even in the most unlikely circumstances. Take Marcus Bretag playing as White in the following position. Black played the seemingly obvious 14..Bb4. How was this refuted?

And it wasn’t just the under 18’s on fire. White to mate in 3 as played in Nicholls-Derwent.

In the following position, Black had built up a nice position but became complacent. He played the tempting 22..Nc2 attacking the white rook on e1 which needs to defend the back rank. But what did he miss? Brown-Gregoric Under 12’s

And my first round best game player was at it again, Caitlin O’Rourke came up with another nice finish after an up and down game against Grace Shan. Black to play and mate in 5.

Australian Junior Championships

Today was avery tough double round in the under 18 and under 12 opens, while the girls had a day off. Round 3 started at 9am and round 4 was scheduled to start at 2pm though it had to be delayed as one game was still going, an epic 5 hour marathon between Anthony Milton and Sam Dalton. It was good to see both players able to recover after a short break and get good results in their round 4 games.

After 4 rounds in the Under 18 there is a clear leader in Andrew Brown from ACT who has a maximum 4 points. Just behind him are Bobby Cheng and possibly 2 surprise packages in John Papantoniou from NSW and Anthony Milton from SA, who are all on 3.5. Behind these on 3 points is a big pack with a number of the favourites.

Sitting at board 1 for round 3 Bobby Cheng is focussed on the upcoming struggle, while Fedja Zulfic tries to avoid the annoying guy with the camera!! In the background Yi Yuan settles in for his game against Tasmanian junior Alastair Dyer.

After giant killing on board 1 yesterday Anthony Milton with the white pieces is ready to take on Sam Dalton. At this stage neither probably realised they were in for a 5 hour marathon.

In the under 12′s there are 2 players from NSW leading and both are looking pretty good. Andrew Pan and Joshua Behar have both scored a maximum 4 points and will fight it out against each other in the next round. There is a big pack close behind, with 11 players on 3 or more points.

The top boards in the under 12 with Joshua Deverajh (Vic) looking at the camera on board 2. He was to play Joshua Behar though at the moment seems to be sparring with Max Ruan from Vic. Next to them on board 1, Andrew Pan and Lachlan Cameron prepare for their encounter.

Michael Kethro (ACT) was playing on board 3 in round 3 and is one of a big pack of players just behind the leaders on 3 from 4.

Round 1 bits and pieces

Funnily enough, when you’re coaching you don’t get too much opportunity to go through a lot of the games as you’re working with the specifics of your own students needs. But here are a few things I’ve liked from round 1.

Bishop-Grigg A very speculative bishop sacrifice by bishop (groan) but luck favoured the brave when Sam Grigg couldn’t find the best defence. A very sharp finish by Joshua Bishop.

In this position Joshua tried the dubious 14.Bxh7 and after 14..Kxh7 15.Qh5 Kg8 16.Rf3 g6 17.Rg3 Kg7 18.Rf1 Qd3 18.Nc4 should really have been in trouble after a developing move like 18..b6 or 18..Bd7. However, instead Black played 18..Rh8 leading to this position.

Now Joshua Bishop came up with 20.Rxf7+! and after 20..Kxf7 21.Qxh8 Black’s king is busted. Black played a few checks but the lower rated player was brave enough to avoid the repetition and take the full point. The game finished 21..Qd1+ 22. Kf2 Qc2+ 23. Kf1 Qd1+ 24.Kf2 Qc2+ 25. Ke1 Qc1+ 26. Ke2 Qc2+ 27. Nd2 Bg5 28. Rf3+ Ke7 29. Qg7+ 1-0

It must have been a day for bishop sacrifices, here’s another which turned out well. Michael Kethro was white against one of the many Tasmanian juniors, Owen Dowley.

White played 11.Bxh6!? and won after 11..gxh6? [11..Qh4 is better but after 12.Nf6+ gxf6 13.Bxf8 Kxf8 14.exf6 white is still probably better] 12.Nf6+ Kh8 13.Qh5 and Black resigned maybe a little prematurely because the winning procedure is still quite difficult for an under 12 to work out. It involves zigzagging the white queen down to the third rank threatening h6 and g7 all the time, and then playing Qd3 threatening mate on h7 so forcing black to play Qxf6. eg 13..Kg7 14.Qg4+ Kh8 15.Qh3 Kg7 16.Qg3+ Kh8 17.Qd3.

So just how sharp are these kids? Well here’s a mate in 4 from the under 12′s game Tan-Taminsyah.

19.Nb6+ Kd8 20.Rc8+ Ke7 21.Rc7+ Ke6 22.f5#

And finally, my favourite game from the first round played in the under 12 girls.

O’Rourke, Caitlin-Alvares, Grace 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4
exd4 6. cxd4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 Nxe4 8. O-O Nxc3 9. bxc3 Be7 10. Qc2 O-O 11. Re1 d5
12. Bd3 g6 13. c4 Nb4 14. Qc3 Nxd3 15. Qxd3 Bf6 16. Bh6 Bg7 17. Bxg7 Kxg7 18.
c5 Re8 19. Rxe8 Qxe8 20. Re1 Qc6 21. Qe3 Qe6 22. Qf4 Qc6 23. Ng5 Be6 24. Qe5+
Kh6 25. Re3 Qa4

and now the young girl from NSW finishes off nicely with a mate in 2. 26. Nxf7+ Bxf7 27. Rh3# 1-0