A Melburnian in Moscow

I work with Michael Pahoff who is one of the millions of hobby chess players worldwide. Michael told me he was off on holiday to Moscow, so I suggested a chess related visit. Michael followed up on that, and sent me this story! Thanks Michael.


Hi Carl,

In early September, I visited Moscow for the primary purpose of witnessing Russia's 200th anniversary celebrations and reenactment of the Battle of Borodino 1812 / 2012. With 3,000 participants and over 100,000 spectators the reenactment was marvellous. Whilst in Moscow, on your suggestion, I visited the Moscow Central Chess Club, near the city centre, which was also a very worthwhile experience.

The building that houses the Moscow Central Chess Club was built around 1820, coincidentally, as part of Moscow's restoration after Napoleon's 1812 Invasion of Russia, where the Muscovites burnt down their own city, rather than giving it up wholly. It is two stories high, with a third currently being constructed as a further restoration to the entire building. The second floor has a central plaza, where the parents wait for their children, with wings / rooms on both sides for tournament play. There are lots of old photographs on the walls of Moscow Central Club Members who have been National and World Champions. While I was there, one of the wings was being used for junior Chess lessons.

I was given a very warm welcome by the Manager, Anton Kuzin, and would recommend the Moscow Central Chess Club to anyone visiting that wonderful city.

Chess in Melbourne 3/9/2012-16/9/2012

My posts about weekly events have previously just been lists, but these can be seen easily on the Calendar so I am changing to more of a commentary based weekly report.

We are coming to the end of a school term and both Chess Victoria and Chesskids are conducting a number of interschool tournaments around the state. School chess in Victoria is flourishing though the clubs are only seeing a small minority of these players going through their doors.

The clubs are active with Melbourne Chess Club's Open tournament about to start on Mondays nights starting on the 10th. Big events at Box Hill and Noble Park are coming to a conclusion. Box Hill Club Championship is arguably the premier event at this moment in Victoria. It is a tournament affected by the Olympiad as top seed, FM Bobby Cheng is representing Australia U-16 in Turkey (he is not the only player from this tournament). I'm not too sure what is happening with the postponements as it seems that Bobby, and Ari Dale, Savithri Narenthran and Jack Puccini will all be absent for 2 rounds. Though not a club championship, Noble Park's Masters and Challengers tournaments bring an elite group in round robin format. This had also been affected by the Olympiad, but the round robin format has allowed the players the flexibility of playing their games in advance. Justin Tan, who is on duty in Turkey currently leads the tournament, though he can be caught and overtaken by Dusan Stojic if he wins his outstanding games. The Challengers event is great as a qualifier for the following year's Masters. This year, Jimmy Ying moved up into the Masters and would have gained invaluable experience. This year's Challenger's is currently being led by a comeback player, Anurag Sannidhanam.

Box Hill Chess Club is also running its Masters round robin event on Tuesdays, with this event also nearing its conclusion. The details of this event are a bit sketchy, but I'm guessing that field was assembled but someone dropped out. Organiser David Flude jumped in to fill up the spots, and is having to play some catch up games. I'm not sure of the exact scores, but it looks as if top seeds FM Bill Jordan, Marcus Raine and Max Chew Lee are fighting it out for top place.

Croydon Chess Club runs a varied and interesting Calendar in the Eastern suburbs. After their Frost tournament which is being led by Franz Oswald, they have a chess 960 allegro. For those of you that have never played this variant of chess, the major pieces are mixed up on the back rank to start a game, bringing a random element into each game. Openings experts don't get their favourite positions in chess 960!

On a Tuesday evening in the Western suburbs, Hobson's Bay Chess Club meet (my first club in Australia!). They are currently coming to the end of their 5 round swiss, the 'Koshnitsky'. Tony Davis won his forst 3 games to take the lead, though I haven't seen the results from last night. The tournament finishes next week, and on September 18th they have an allegro night, which would be a great time for new players, or old players looking for a new venue, to check the club out.

Of course, if it's blitz that you are interested in then probably the MCC is the place to be every Saturday! Or Box Hill on Sunday for their Rookies cup!

Sources of Information

This blog will only ever be as good as the information it presents. At the moment, I am trawling through club websites, the State Association website and other organisations to try to find information to put on the calendar, and to write posts about. But I'm only one person, and this site would be a whole lot better if others contributed information about events, stories, news or anything related to chess in Melbourne and Victoria. Last week I received an email from Nigel Barrow about a school tournament in Bendigo which I immediately put up here. As long as the material is not offensive (there isn't usually much offensive to do with chess tournaments or hangouts) I will happily promote Victorian chess events here.

Today, I met with Chess Victoria President Leonid Sandler for a coffee and a chat. We regularly meet up to talk about the local chess scene, and chess generally. The upcoming Olympiad was the main subject of discussion. Leonid and I are both immigrants to this country and will both be following our countries of birth closely (Latvia and England), but we will of course be hoping for Australian success. While there are no Victorians represented in the men's team, we have Sally Yu representing the women's team and many of our youngsters representing Australia at the youth Olympiad which is being run alongside the main event. We wish good luck to all Australian Olympians!

Leonid and I did have a mild disagreement about this site, and the Chess Victoria website. I have been very critical of the CV website and Leonid explained that their website had been hacked 3 times and they were having difficulty recovering after these attacks. I don't know why anyone would want to attack a chess site or whether it was part of a hack on a wider scale. But at least for the moment, Chess Victoria's website is suffering a little. He assured me that all the necessary information can still be found on website, and that was where the main disagreement occurred! Look, I hope that CV get a good website together, and I would certainly be willing to pass on all the information from this site AND still write a news blog here.

Leonid also pointed out that FM Nick Speck has made a comeback to competitive chess in Malaysia. Nick scored 6.5/9 on board 1 in the Rapid teams event, and will hopefully be another Victorian IM soon. Nick didn't play for the Australian team in the tournament, but played in a team with fellow Victorian resident Wang Sheng Lee (Singapore).

Live Chess at the MCC

The Melbourne Chess Club has been holding a play off match for its Club Championship between IM Guy West and FM Dusan Stojic. These 2 ties for the Championship earlier in the year, and are now playing a 4 game match for the title. Tonight is the last game with the score standing at 2-1 in favour of Dusan Stojic. So a draw will guarantee Dusan the title, while a win for Guy will take the match into faster games play off. The game can be seen here, and I'll post it later.

Great chess poster, courtesy of Jean Watson

Well, it was a tense finale. Guy tried to unbalance the situation, but Dusan was always up to the task of countering Guy's threats. Perhaps there were some chances that Guy missed, but nothing so obvious or seemingly much better. So finally, Dusan came out the victor of the game, and the winner in the match and is the 2012 Melbourne Chess Club Champion.

Local (chess related) film

At the local cinema in Elsternwick, director Clayton Jacobson (director of "Kenny") has put together some excellent short films called 8K radius dealing with people who live within an 8 kilometre radius of Elsternwick. Luckily for us chess fans, one of the people he filmed was local young talent Charlotte Dilnutt. I have had the pleasure of working with Charlotte at chess, and count myself a close friend to all the family. Anyway, here's the film, which is beautifully shot. Enjoy!

Melbourne Chess Week 21/08/2012

Here's a list of what's happening around the state this week, or at least all I could find. If anyone wants to publicise events or activities, then contact me at carl.coffeehousechess@gmail.com.

My aim is to produce a comprehensive weekly round up of upcoming events and activities in Melbourne and Victoria. So far I have the been helped by Melbourne Chess Club, Noble Park Chess Club, Chess Kids, Australian Junior Chess League, Hobson's Bay Chess Club and I have trawled the net to find out information myself, but I've no doubt missed much and for that I'm sorry. Please help to keep this up to date by sending me information that should be here.

Thanks

Carl

These events and future ones can be found on the Calendar while news is available from various organisations which can be found on the links page.


Chess Events 20/08/2012-26/08/2012

Mon Aug 20, 2012
9am - 2pm Chesskids Interschool
Where: Hampton Primary School

12pm - 5pm Chess Victoria Interschool
Where: Scotch College

7.15pm-11.30pm MCC Edwin Malitis Memorial
Where: MCC

Tue Aug 21, 2012

7.30-11.00pm HBCC Koshnitsky Cup
Hobson's Bay Chess Club

7:45pm - 11:45pm Box Hill Masters
Where: Box Hill Chess Club

Wed Aug 22, 2012
9am - 2pm Chesskids Interschool
Where: Kerrimuir Primary

7:30pm - 11:30pm MCC Championship play off
Where: MCC

Thu Aug 23, 2012
9am - 2pm Chesskids Interschool
Where: Ballarat

6pm-7pm Croydon Junior Championship
Croydon Chess Club

7.45pm-11pm The Frost Winter Warmer
Croydon Chess Club

Fri Aug 24, 2012
9am - 2pm Chess Victoria Interschool
Where: Weedon Primary

9am - 2pm Chesskids Interschool
Where: Yinnar, Gippsland

7:45pm - 11:45pm Box Hill Championship
Where: Box Hill Chess Club

Sat Aug 25, 2012

2pm-5pm MCC Allegro
MCC

3pm - 7:30pm Noble Park Masters and Challengers
Where: Noble Park Chess Club

Sun Aug 26, 2012
1pm - 5pm Chesskids RJ Shield
Where: Doncaster

1pm - 5pm Chesskids RJ Shield
Where: Bentleigh

Victoria's top rated players

Chess in Victoria is not just about quantity but quality also. A look through the Australian rating lists shows a number of highly rated players in Victoria.

Top Victorians

1. 2473 D. Johansen (GM)

2. 2412 I. Goldenberg (IM)

3. 2385 M. Baron (FM)

4. 2375 B. Cheng (FM)

5. 2350 E. Teichmann (FM)

6. 2342 G. West (IM)

7. 2339 J. Morris (IM)

8. 2311 C. Wallis (FM)

9. 2311 D. Stojic (FM)

10. 2307 D. Dragicevic (FM)

Also IM Mirko Rujevic heads the lists of Senior players, Sally Yu is 5th in the women's list and 2nd in the girls list, Bobby Cheng is 2nd in U-20, 1st in U-18 and U-16, Karl Zelesco is 2nd in U-14, Enoch Fan is 2nd in U-12 while Ethan Lim is 2nd in U-10.

Features of the site

Check out both the Calendar and the Links. I'll do my best to update these, but I'm only one person so bear with me!

Calendar

You can access this from the tab at the top of the page, and it will eventually give a comprehensive guide to all chess events happening in Melbourne and Victoria. I'll even throw in some Australian and New Zealand tournaments, and some World events that may hold interest for Australians. Sorry if an event isn't on the calendar that you know of or are organising, but just send me the details and I'll put it on.

Links

Again, I'm looking for a comprehensive listing of links to do with chess. I'm starting with clubs and organisations, but I'll add individuals and other chess interest sites that are important to Melbourne and Victoria. If I've missed something, then please feel free to message the link to me and I'll put it on.

Melbourne Chess News

Welcome to my new guide to chess in Melbourne and Victoria. The aim of this project is to provide players old and new with comprehensive details of upcoming events, places to play chess, news and information about chess in Melbourne and Victoria.