AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS' TEAMS' FINALS WEEKEND

These championships once again were a huge success. Many congratulations to

the organisers. The standard appeared to be higher than the first year in

1998 and this was possibly brought about by teams preparing themselves

better and increased coaching. We certainly hope that the success of the

event will encourage increased participation all around Australia. It was

good to get an opportunity to talk with Senator Kate Lundy, the Shadow

Minister of Sport and Senator Margaret Reid, the Leader of the Senate.

The winners were:

Open Secondary: Sydney Grammar (NSW)

Open Primary: Somerset College (Qld) and Essex Heights (Vic) shared.

Girls Secondary: Saint Stephens College (Qld)

Girls Primary: Worongary (Qld)

An informal meeting with representatives of all states was held on Sunday

morning to discuss the rules, format, and venue for next year and to make

recommendations to the ACF. The meeting unanimously agreed to recommend to

the ACF that the event be held in Adelaide in December 2000.

Andrew Allen will be putting up a great deal of information on the ACF

webpage including final rankings of all teams, games and photos.

http://www.somerset.qld.edu.au/chess

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SPORTS 2000 TASK FORCE

Sports Minister Jackie Kelly's Sports 2000 Task Force have produced their

report. The ACF is acknowledged as having made a submission but was not

asked to meet personally with the Task Force. Tim Fischer and Margaret May

made supporting representations.

The Task Force made 28 recommendations. Recommendation number one gives

some encouragement to Australian chess although I'm trying to get some

clarification of the thought process behind it.

"The Task Force recommends that a body called Sport and Recreation

Australia be established and its charter include recreation as well as

sport and that legislation be amended or enacted to reflect these changes".

It was interesting that in recommendation number three "the Task Force

recommends that statistical collections in sport and recreation be improved

so that there is the capacity to better understand the industry and

facilitate trend analysis" the message for Australian chess is that we must

put in place now systems to track statistics as these are likely to be key

criteria upon which Sport and Recreation Australia will base funding

decisions.

Part of recommendation number 15 "The Task Force recommends that the

criteria for access to funds or services for participation or development

assistance be related to transparent, public criteria that take account of

management competency, participation levels and the contribution made to

the community".

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AUSTRALIAN CHAMPIONSHIPS

The deadline for entries to the Australian Championships has been extended.

There are also likely to be some (at least temporary) changes made to the

entry criteria to facilitate some extra entries to the Championship event.

**********

ASIAN MEN'S AND WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIPS, January 2000

Australia's nominations are: Vladimir Feldman and Narelle Szuveges. Irina

Feldman has been nominated by the Asian Continental President as his

personal representative.

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AUSTRALIAN MASTERS, 20 July - 31 July, 2000, Reserve Bank building, cnr

Collins St & Exhibition St, Melbourne.

IA GARY BEKKER<gbekker@mira.net>, Australian Masters Director:

A high profile tournament in Melbourne's CBD, this year's event is expected

to be a category 5 IM-norm event, and will be run as a 12 player round robin.

Free entry for GMs, men's IMs and foreigners. $150 entry for others.

Prizes: 1st-$1500, 2nd-$800, 3rd-$500

International entries would be appreciated and should be registered with

the tournament organiser and arbiter, IA Gary Bekker as soon as possible.

Please note that this year's event will be held as part of Australia's

"International Chess Festival" including the Gold Coast International and

QVB International in Sydney just prior to the Australian Masters in Melbourne.

The likely participants so far are:

1. GM Darryl Johansen (2496)

2. IM Aleks Wohl (2440)

3. IM Stephen Solomon (2435)

4. IM Guy West (2381)

5. FM Zhao, Zong-Yuan (2350p)

6. IM Smerdon, David (2173)

7. FM Mirko Rujevic (2306)

8. FM Eddy Levi (2263)

Res: Nick Speck (2287)

Res: FM Tim Reilly (2258)

Res: FM Brett Tindall (2250)

plus four foreign players

It would be appreciated if anybody willing to billet a foreign player could

contact Gary Bekker, gbekker@mira.net as soon as possible.

(The Australian Masters is the final leg of the Australian Chess Festival

which starts with a major event at the Parkroyal Surfers Paradise from 7-17

June, continues with some heavy duty junior coaching between 19-30 June and

leads into the QVB GM event from 5-17 July. Also in this period will be the

Gold Coast and Noosa Opens).

**********

DENIS DAY DECEASED

NORMAN GREENWOOD:

Dennis Day has had a long association with Chatswood Chess Club [now North

Sydney Leagues Club Chess Club] but did not play in "outside" tournaments.

Until recently he was a regular participant in the Club Championships, The

Ford Memorial Tournament, the Big Board Matches against St. George and

Interclub Grade Matches during the winter months and was a very strong

player rated 1,850 to 1.900+.

With a few health problems in recent years he had scaled down his

chess-playing activities but remained in full-time employment as an

executive with the Avco Finance Group and remained the Editor of the Club

Newsletter and the NSLCCC Vice-President.

Dennis, who was aged 62 at the time of his untimely death, would have had

contact with many people within the Sydney Chess Fraternity but was

probably relatively unknown to chess people in other states and the ACT.

Dennis was originally from England and had settled in Australia many years

ago.

**********

NSW COUNTRY TEAMS

GEORGE LITHGOW:

This is a report on the Country District Championship run at Newcastle on

Saturday and Sunday, 4 & 5 December.

Twelve teams of four players competed for the Champion's Cup, individual

trophies for the first and second placed teams and also a shield for first

placed in the lower half of the draw.

Newcastle University ran out the eventual winners in what proved to be a

very close and exciting contest.

After round three Newcastle University were leading Wollongong by 10 points

to 9. They met Wollongong in round four and Wollongong defeated Newcastle

University by 2.5 to 1.5 . This left the scores level on 11.5 going into

the last round.

Newcastle University played the fourth placed Gosford team and defeated

Gosford 3/1. Wollongong played the third placed Cardiff number one team and

the Cardiff Team held Wollongong to a 2 all draw.

The result hung on the last game to finish. This was between Slavica Sarai

and Theo Rippis on the top board. This game was won by Slavica in a nice

finish.

Slavica was one of the only two women in the contest and was the highest

rated player in the contest.

In a way Newcastle University owe their win not only to their own efforts

but also to the fine display by the Cardiff number one team.

It is interesting to note that both Taree No1 and Dubbo, two teams from

the lower seeded half of the draw, finished level in 4th and 5th place only

3.5 points behind the winning team.

The shield was awarded to Taree by use of the "Modified Buchholz" system.

Team scores Country Teams Championship

Standings

Place Name Feder Rtg Score M-Buch. Buch. Progr.

1 University, 14.5 34.0 52.5 48.0

2 Wollongong, 13.5 34.0 58.0 42.0

3 Cardiff No 1, 13 35.0 59.5 41.5

4-5 Taree No 1, 11 31.5 49.5 31.5

Dubbo, 11 27.5 45.5 27.5

6-7 Gosford, 10.5 34.5 56.0 33.0

Mingara No 1, 10.5 25.5 44.5 30.5

8 Newcastle, 10 34.5 57.5 33.5

9 Cardiff No 2, 9.5 28.0 46.0 27.0

10 Mingara No 2, 7 25.0 40.5 18.0

11 Toukley, 5 28.5 47.5 15.0

12 Taree No 2, 4.5 27.0 43.0 12.5

**********

ELWOOD CHRISTMAS SWISS

STEPHAN TAYLOR:

Ian Rogers GM has confirmed by email his entry to the Xmas Swiss to be held

at Elwood on December 18/19.

Conditions of entry are as per the flyer. Copies are available from Stephan

Taylor via e-mail at stephant@hotmail.com.

Numbers for this tournament are capped provisionally to 64, owing to

possible space limitations. First 64 in have a guaranteed place, so let me

know, and get you entries to me. There will be a waiting list for any

names beyond that. It may be possible to fit more in, but only 64 have

guarantees.

**********

SWISS PERFECT

STEWART REUBEN:

Concerning Stephen Solomon's opinions on Swiss Pairings by Computer. The

worries he expresses concerning the FIDE Pairing system are very minor. It

is just a matter of opinion how to deal with floats. The BCF prefers to

float median to median, but again that is just a Pom taste. Thus, if Swiss

Perfect follows the FIDE Rules, that is fine. Protos and Petunia are

available from Europe and they do the same job.

However the Seeded System is deeply flawed. It is strongly biased against

players at the top of the second half of the draw. There are several

examples where the system has proven to be extremely vindictive. e.g. Adam

Hunt in the European U-20 met absurdly strong opposition.

It would be better to use a Dubov, Burstein or Accelerated System. Only the

first named has been computerised though.

SIMON FITZPATRICK:

I agree that the current swiss pairing rules are inadequate. But you have

to live with the rules you are given, or change them. I quite liked the NZ

swiss pairing rules in the 1980s: they were reasonably fair and completely

deterministic, so you could prove whether the TD or computer had made a

mistake.

The current FIDE swiss pairing rules are often ambiguous, or at least not

as clear as they should be. Taking colours into account so strongly has

been a real nuisance, and quite silly. But then, I don't care so much

whether I have White or Black. At least in correspondence chess we don't

have the problem!

GUY WEST:

I don't think Stephen Solomon should be apologising for his comments about

the Swiss pairing system. He merely articulated what a lot of experienced

tournament players believe, that the current FIDE rules are actually

considerably inferior to the rules that used to apply. Peter Parr, John

Frew and others used to do pairings that in my opinion made far more sense

in terms of producing a satisfactory result.

I remember the year that Kevin Perrin introduced the new FIDE pairing rules

to the Ballarat tournament. He interpreted them in a way that was

consistent with what was written, but in practice the seemingly illogical

pairings nearly caused a riot!

The important thing about Swiss Perfect or any other pan-Australian

computerised pairing system, is that it must be easily reprogrammeable if

the rules change again, and there must be a practical plan for implementing

such a change in all programmes, otherwise we may as well go back to

letting individual arbiters interpret the rules and save the clubs money.

GRAEME GARDINER:

The main reason for the ACF providing Swiss Perfect site licences around

Australia is to encourage mass participation tournaments, to get everyone

onto the same system for ease of communication and to facilitate transfer

of information for ratings and webpages. If the restructure is approved we

also propose to use it to build up the membership scheme automatically

through the recording of rated games.

I think Robert Rozycki has clearly shown that his system meets FIDE rules

(even though in some cases the rules are open to human interpretation).

However, his system is flexible enough to allow other pairing rules as well

as allowing the arbiter to do manual pairings. Most importantly, he has

demonstrated that he is prepared to make additions/changes to the programme

at relatively short notice and that he is committed to developing the

programme for the benefit of Australian chess.

Finally, I'd like to promote the fact that every school in Australia can

have a free copy of the state licence as long as Robert Rozycki is advised.

So far we have issued 58 licences to state associations and clubs and many

schools have already obtained free copies.

**********

RESTRUCTURE

DAVID WATERHOUSE, Suncoast Chess Club

The following assessment of my understanding of your Australian Chess

restructuring proposals was put to the recent AGM of the Suncoast Chess

Club. Included with the assessment is an appreciation of how the Club

could cope with the new structure financially. At the AGM itself the

assessment was well received. Subsequently it has been circulated to

committee members for their reactions. It appears that, if I have got it

about right, everybody is in favour. Australian Chess is certainly in need

of major restructuring for its future health and growth.

If you agree with my interpretation of your intentions and wish to publish

this letter in your weekly newssheet on the Internet I would look forward

to any comments it brings forth. I would also welcome any comments you

would like to make yourself.

"My understanding of the restructuring process being developed by Graeme

Gardiner is as follows:-

1. Payment of membership fees to State Associations etc, is to be abolished.

2. Income for Australian Chess in the future to be derived from a levy of

$1 on each rated tournament game played by an adult with a reduced levy for

Juniors. All paid to the ACF.

3. The proceeds of this levy to be divided between the ACF and the State

Associations on the basis of 50% of the proceeds being retained by the ACF

and 50% going to the States. (Presumably in proportion to moneys received

from each State.)

4. An Australian Chess Magazine , with guaranteed financial backing from

the ACF, will be available free of charge on the Internet. Hard copies of

the Magazine will also be available to all players by means of an optional

subscription.

Results:-

1. Everybody playing in rated games will be counted as a registered Chess

player. This will greatly increase the number of players registered in

Australia over the previous figure based on adding up all State Association

members. The main advantage of this will be an enhanced count of Chess

Players when talking to Government or major potential sponsors regarding

funding.

2. No Players will be compelled to buy a Chess magazine because they wish

to be State Association Members.

Impact on the Suncoast Chess Club:-

1. Members would no longer need to pay a subscription to the CAQ,

currently $35 for an adult.

2. Members would need to pay $1 per adult rated game played ($7 per seven

round event etc.), both for Tournaments and for rated games played 'in

club' throughout the year.

Comment:-

Some members feel that though the levy for Tournament games is OK it would

not be well received for 'in club' games.

Solution:-

As members would no longer be required to pay the CAQ membership fee the

Club could introduce a modest Club membership fee such as $20 to $25 for an

adult, $15 to $20 for a pensioner and $10 to $15 for a Junior. This fee

would cover all 'in club' rated game levies.

A night, or meeting, fee would still be levied to cover the free canteen

drinks, room rentals, and, over the year, the running costs of the club

such as, postage, insurance, equipment maintenance, etc.

**********

MAKE PEACE BY CHESS

Have we anyone in the military field? The first world tournament of

military chess players will be held in Zakopane, Poland from May 4-14,

2000. Teams of four plus two reserves will play a nine round swiss with

time controls of 40 moves in 1.5 hours with 30 mins to finish. Please

contact Robert Jamieson or myself if interested.

**********

Best wishes

Graeme Gardiner

--------------

Wendy Gardiner

Hinterland of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Phone/fax +61 7 5530 5794; Mobile 0407 114427;

Email w.gardiner@mailbox.uq.edu.au;

E-fax - via the US (603) 947-8543