Victorian Junior Championship Day 3

I am at Box Hill Chess Club again, and sat in the analysis room. There is total silence here as the draw for round 7 has just been published and all the players have made their way to the draw, and then on to their boards. All the spectators, coaches and parents are all awaiting the start of the next round as well. This is all in contrast to 5 minutes ago when it was bedlam in the analysis room. Transfer chess was being loudly contested, game analysis was being undertaken at rock concert decibel count, child-parent pre round discourses were being broadcast to the whole suburb…. Ok, it was fairly noisy in here.

The tournament has taken some unexpected turns, the main one being the great showing of Nathan Hibberd who is joint first with all 3 top rated players out of the way. He is joint first with top seed Laurence Matheson who is struggling to find his top form, a phenomenon that affects a lot of strong juniors at title events. Visitors to the event include IM James Morris and FM Bill Jordan.

Talking to James, he was impressed by Sasha Parsons in the last round, saying that the 11 year old showed good technique swapping the correct pieces and leaving himself with good pieces. This win was against Karl Zelesco who James feels a bit sorry for. Karl has been put under a lot of pressure recently with his big rating improvements, and James knows only too well the feeling of expectation that people can put on you. James is still impressed with Karl Zelesco’s progress and expects him to bounce back.

It’s great that strong juniors such as James Morris show up for events like this as obviously a number of players in the tournament look up to our top juniors. I have seen many juniors at this event such as Laurence Matheson,Nathan Hibberd, Frank Lekkas, Michael Chan, Ari Dale and Sasha Parson’s twisting the front of their hair while thinking, a trait that James himself has.

An early stroll round the room has shown me some interesting things. Frank Lekkas is playing the white side of the Maroczy Bind that he so often has to play against. On board 5 Nicholas Liu and Jonathan Tang are playing an ultra solid Symmetrical English which will probably go the distance. The most interesting position for me was between Kyle Gibson and Joseph Wong where a very interesting pawn structure exists which took me a while to work out how it had come about.

1 hour into the games:

Lekkas looks good against Tuncer, Liu-Tang is still a stale position, neither have really tried anything yet. But further down the boards there are some interesting positions. For instance, Sasha Parsons has grabbed  a pawn against Michael Chan and is trying desperately to prevent an attack. And the Loh-Addamo position looks good for Michael as black with the 2 bishops and an attack on the b-file.

And then there was this weird position Deverajh-Cannon….anyone care to assess who is better here?

Some interesting developments:

Max Chew Lee-Enoch Fan is an interesting king and pawn ending.

The Lekkas-Tuncer game in unclear, but Morris, Jordan and myself would all rather be white:

Ok, so what does IM Morris, FM Jordan and my good self know? In the above position black played 1..Rae8 and after 2.Qd3 [Perhaps 2.Qf1 was an option] 2..Bxf4 black neutralised white’s initiative and is a pawn up in the ending. White is fighting to draw.

Ok, it is time for me to go now so you’ll have to check out the final results on the CV website.