Victorian Olympians Part 1

The current chess Olympiad sees only one current Victorian representative, Sally Yu, board 3 for the women's team. Sally started off with a good win in the first round playing black Rivera Borg of Malta. The game was an Exchange Queen's Gambit where Sally was able to nullify any threats that her opponent came up with, while creating her own threats which won her an exchange. Sally is the fist Victorian representative in the women's team since Anastasia Sorokina played in 2004 and that was the only Victorian appearnace this century in the women's squad!

In the men's team, there has been more Victorian representation:

2010 D. Johansen

2008 D. Johansen

2006 N. Speck

2004 D. Johansen

2002 D. Johansen, N. Speck, M. Gluzman

2000 D. Johansen, G. West, L. Sandler

To be fair, GM Darryl Johansen could have played this time, but he ruled himself out of contention. I'll have a look further back into the twentieth century later on during this Olympiad!

Anyway, here's Sally's first game from the 2012 Istanbul Olympiad.

Victorian Women's Championship

The revamp of the Victorian Women's Championship has been a success story for Chess Victoria and Box Hill Chess Club. The tournament has an interesting format with games taking place over 2 consecutive weekends, 29/30 September and 6/7 October. Sponsorship for the tournament has been found and at the time of writing this there are already 14 entrants.

While Victoria's top female player will be absent (Sally Yu will be at University in America when the tournament is being held) there will be plenty to play for. The top seed is currently Sri Lankan born Vineetha Wijesuriya who has played a number of times for Sri Lanka at Olympiads and currently lives in Ballarat. A large part of the field is made up of young players, pointing to the potential for a great future for women's chess in the state.

I am unable to find any history of this event, so if anyone has any information such as who the last champion was, how long the championship has been established, and any details of previous winners, that would be greatly appreciated.

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).

Melbourne's Chess Week 27/08/2012-2/09/2012

Winter is a great time to be playing chess, and there is a lot of chess happening around the Melbourne area at the moment. The clubs are all active, junior chess is flourishing, and some of our players are representing Australia at the Olympiad in Turkey starting Monday 27th.

Find links to where you can play chess in Victoria here, and check out the calendar to see if there are upcoming events near you. I will be trying to update these regularly, but please tell me if there are things missing or wrong by email on carl.coffeehousechess@gmail.com.

Thanks

Carl

Mon 27 Aug 2012 
19:00 - 23:30 E. Malitis Memorial
Where: 66 Leicester St, Fitzroy

Tue 28 Aug 2012 
09:00 - 14:00 chesskids interschool Pakenham

09:00 - 14:30 chesskids interschool, Bacchus Marsh

19:30 - 23:00 HBCC Koshnitsky Cup
Where: Hobson's Bay Chess Club

19:45 - 23:45 Box Hill Masters
Where: Box Hill Chess Club

Wed 29 Aug 2012
09:00 - 14:00 chesskids interschool, Melton

Thu 30 Aug 2012 
09:00 - 14:00 chesskids interschool, Williamstown

18:00 - 19:00 Croydon Junior Club Cahmpionship
Where: Croydon Chess Club

19:30 - 23:00 Frost, Croydon Chess Club
Where: Croydon Chess Club

Fri 31 Aug 2012 
09:00 - 14:00 chesskids interschool, Cheltenham

19:45 - 23:45 Box Hill Club Championship
Where: Box Hill Chess Club

Sat 1 Sep 2012 
10:00 - 12:00 Junior Coaching
Where: 66 Leicester St, Fitzroy 

14:00 - 17:45 Allegro
Where: 66 Leicester St, Fitzroy 

15:00 - 19:00 Noble Park Masters and Challengers
Where: Noble Park Chess Club

19:00 - 20:30 Blitz!
Where: 66 Leicester St, Fitzroy

Sun 2 Sep 2012
Fitzroy Skittles
Where: 66 Leicester St, Fitzroy

Warrnambool Weekender announced

President of Chess Victoria, Leonid Sandler has just announced the Warrnambool Weekender will be run on the weekend of 17-18 November in partnership between Warrnambool Chess Club and Chess Victoria. Details of the event and online registration can be found on Warrnambool Chess Club's website.

Chess Victoria President Leonid Sandler, as seen on his website

More country chess

Yesterday saw an Interschool tournament in Bendigo, today was Ballarat's turn. The Secondary competition saw 44 players competing from 3 schools with Thumula Gamage winning 7/7 for the top performance of the day. Full results can be seen here.

A nice group shot of Kerang Technical High School Team, courtesy of chesskids

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.