Australian Chess Federation Newsletter 30 April 2016

auschessnews@gmail.com

Submissions are always welcome. Please send as text without formatting. No attachments please but send links to downloads if you wish. Next issue 31 May 2016.

Englsh GM Gawain Jones has won the 2016 Dubai Open (10-20 April, 46 GMs!) on countback from Armenian GM Vladimir Akopian on 7.5 out of 9 winning $13,000 to Akopian's $7,000 as the prizes were not shared.The venue was the Dubai Chess and Culture Club which is shaped like a rook, calling to mind that the young Bobby Fischer wanted such a house.

Indian GM Surya Ganguly won the strongest Bangkok Open (10-17 April, 13 GMs) to date with 7.5 out of 9 on tie-break from Spanish GM Francisco Vallejo. The result was determined only in the last round as commonly happens with large Swisses. Playing well, IM Anton Smirnov lost his last round game with GM Jan Gustafsson to fall into a large group of players with 6 points tying for 16th place out of 198 players, including last year’s winner GM Nigel Short shown above shaping up at one of his games. The 12 strong Australian contingent included FM Tim Reilly and WA junior Patrick Gong both on 5 points. Alana Chibnall obtained her qualification for the International Arbiter title.

The ACF is conducting selections to send one male, one female and one senior (above 60) representative to the Commonwealth Chess Championship 2016. Players potentially interested in being selected to represent Australia, receiving free board and lodging, must contact Selections Director Tom Saltmarsh at catowi@internode.on.net by 21 May 2016. Please also copy all applications to ACF Vice-President Kevin Bonham at k_bonham@tassie.net.au. The quick selections method (average of May 2016 ACF and FIDE ratings) will be used. Players who have not recently applied must supply all relevant information in Section 5.4 of the ACF Selections By-Laws. Players who have applied for other events recently will be asked to confirm their details.

All applicants must retain a copy of all emails they send and are responsible for ensuring that their email has been sent and received by the 21 May 2016 deadline. If an application has not been acknowledged within two days, please call Tom on (03) 6223 5518.

Each Commonwealth country is eligible to field one man, one woman, one senior (above-60), one junior girl (under-20), one junior boy (under-20) player and one boy and girl each in under-8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 as official entrants. Their boarding and lodging will be provided free in five star hotel. All players must pay the relevant entry fee.

The Australian Junior Chess League will conduct separate selections for the underage representatives.

Applicants are also requested to advise whether they wish to participate regardless of whether selected.

All players participating in the Championship must be registered with the organisers by 15 July 2016. A late fee is payable for entries after that date, but no entries will be permitted after 29 July 2016.

FIDE announced on 6 April that this tournament will be held under the supervision of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Almaty from June 17 (arrival date) till June 20 (departure date), 2016. Applications with that Federation close on 17 May (see Regulations). Interested parties seeking endorsement should apply to the ACF immediately.

The ACF Council has approved a bid by the Chess Association of Queensland for the Australian Open 2017 to be held at Anglican Church Grammar School (“Churchie”), Oaklands Parade, East Brisbane. The event will run from 2 to 12 January 2017 with a double round day on 3 January and the Lightning and ACF meetings on 7 January.

Dr Rebecca Stones nominated and was appointed unopposed for the Asian Continental Women’s Chess Championships 2016 to be held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 25 May to 5 June 2016. She is presently a postdoctoral scholar at Nankai University in China.

Applications are open for financial support under the ACF Funding Support Program. Financial support in the form of a guarantee against loss or sponsorship may be available for tournaments or other events (eg simuls) that benefit Australian chess. The current round of applications covers activities starting between 1 September 2016 and 31 March 2017, and applications must be received by 1 July 2016. Contact ACF President Gary Wastell (gwastell@netspace.net.au) for a copy of the application form. The form is somewhat detailed and applicants should allow themselves time to complete it. A maximum of $3000 funding is available but this could be divided between multiple applications and the ACF will not necessarily fund any applications or the full amount.

The ACF has made some changes to its policies on the payment of FIDE title fees, mainly in order to reduce the risk of the ACF being charged for unsuccessful applications. Most applications that the ACF pays for will not be affected by the changes, which affect applications considered uncertain of success, repeat applications and late applications. Details:
http://www.chesschat.org/showthread.php?16408-ACF-FIDE-Title-Application-Fee-Policy-Changes

Among other matters discussed at the most recent ACF Council meeting were the following:

When an arbiter is seeking a norm for the titles of FIDE Arbiter or International Arbiter for an event, it is vital that they be registered as an arbiter for that tournament as part of the tournament registration process. This applies even if they are not the Chief Arbiter. It is the joint responsibility of the arbiter seeking the norm and the event organiser to ensure that this is done.

Note that events for FIDE ratings that are completed in the last seven days of the month need to be submitted to ACF FIDE Ratings Officer Bill Gletsos for ratings immediately so that any issues with them can be resolved in time for events to be rated in that month. Also note that intended changes of names or dates of FIDE-rated events need to be notified immediately as they may affect the event's rating status. Note also that all FIDE rated events must be submitted for ACF ratings – no exceptions.

Australian tournaments to be FIDE rated must be advised to the ACF FIDE Ratings Officer at least 40 days prior to the start of the tournament for tournaments where norms are available and at least 14 days prior to the start of the tournament for all other tournaments. Where these conditions are not met, the decision whether to register it or not is solely at the discretion of the ACF FIDE Ratings Officer.

FIDE have issued a warning that they will not accept tournaments for FIDE rating where those tournaments contain players who do not have FIDE ID numbers. Although new Australian players can be registered by the ACF national ratings officer, this does not apply to new players from overseas. Therefore, organisers should not immediately accept the entries of overseas players who lack FIDE ID numbers to FIDE rated tournaments; instead, those players should be required to first obtain a FIDE ID from their own national federation.

Tournaments submitted that include foreign players who do not have ID numbers may be rejected. Players without ID numbers should only be submitted as Australian if they are citizens or long-term residents; if a player is registered under the wrong country they may incur transfer costs later. For further information/clarification contact the ACF FIDE Ratings Officer Bill Gletsos <bgletsos@optusnet.com.au>.

Please ensure the ACF is sent full details of upcoming events a minimum of two months prior to the event. If you want your event details included in the Newsletter please send a specific request to that effect with no more than five lines of details (links welcome) and no attachments.

The Australian Junior Chess League (AusJCL) publishes a comprehensive calendar (compiled by Simon Dale) of Australian weekenders & major tournaments as well as Australian and international junior events. Australian Grand Prix events updated to 21 April are listed on Chess Chat.

14-15 May 51st Peninsula Open Rothwell, Qld. Mark Stokes, 0431419136, markcstokes@hotmail.com

4-5 June Cairns Open Cairns, Qld. Details not yet announced.

11-12 June Wendy Terry Memorial Rothwell, Qld. Gail Young, 0411 704 815, gwcl@hotmail.com

11-12 June Queen’s Birthday Weekend Tournament Adelaide, SA. Details not yet announced.

11-13 June NSW Open Chatswood, NSW. NSWCA, tournaments@nswca.org.au

18-19 June South-West Open, Bridgetown, WA. Norbert Muller, 0419950619, norbert.muller@iinet.net.au [see under Calendar of Events in link]

24-26 June Gold Coast Open Nerang, Qld. Andrew FitzPatrick, 0438 348 995
afitzpatrick@gardinerchess.com.au [Note change of venue]

CRESTBOOK VS CHESS CHAT 1 April
- Kevin Bonham Administrator chesschat.org

On 20 March a member of the Russian Crestbook forum invited the Australian Chesschat forum to play an online blitz match. After much discussion a Crestbook team headed by GM (and noted commentator) Sergei Shipov and a Chesschat team largely organised by IM Vladimir Smirnov (who was a non-playing reserve) played an eight-player all-play-all-match at 3 minutes + 2 seconds per game on the night of 1 April.

Chesschat fielded a very strong team: new GM Max Illingworth, IMs Igor Bjelobrk, Anton Smirnov, Moulthun Ly, Justin Tan, James Morris and Junta Ikeda, plus FM Chris Wallis with Laurence Matheson filling in for Tan for a few games. The Crestbook team was also very strong including GMs Shipov and Grigoriy Oparin and IMs Nikita Petrov, Vladimir Seliverstov and Mikhail Zaitsev.

Two of the scheduled 64 games never got played for technical reasons but when the dust settled and results were tallied Chesschat had narrowly won the match +26=22-14 (33-29).

Full details including a link to games are here. Thanks very much to Crestbook for the challenge and especially to IM Vladimir Smirnov for his great work on organizing and coordinating the event at our end, and Mikhail Arealov for even more organizing work from the Russian side.

Held at Leeming Primary School the winner was the state’s strongest player Patrick Gong with a score of 5.5 from 6.0 after starting with a half point bye. Lorenzo Escalante tied for second place with Ihsan Ferozkohi, both on 4.0. In the under 1800, Ignatius Yap, Gary Donaldson and David Spatar tied on 3 points.

Eight keen chess players took part in the 2016 April Open at Grace Lutheran College in Rothwell on Saturday April 9 and Sunday April 10. The number one seed was IM Brodie McClymont, with an ACF rating of 2472. But with players like the talented Yi Liu, rated 2316, the tactical Gene Nakauchi, rated 2289 and the very consistent Tony Dowden, rated 2067 in the field, Brodie would have some work to do. The tournament had 13 players rated above 1700 as well.

But Brodie rose to every challenge and with 6 straight wins over Mark Stokes, Tony Weller, Tony Zhong, Yi Liu, Tony Dowden and Hughston Parle he convincingly won the event and the $700 first prize cheque was all his. Gene Nakauchi took outright second place with 5 points and Yi Liu and Edwin Onilongo shared third place with 4.5 points from their 6 games.

Brodie has a very impressive record in Queensland week-enders and in 2016 has now won both The Mackay Open and The April Open with picket fences! You can view Brodie's convincing win in Round 1 over CAQ President Mark C Stokes and Tony Dowden's fine win over Ross Lam on ChessChat.

This Melbourne Chess Club event was already won by FM Eugene Schon after Round 6 from a field of 68 but he unexpectedly lost to Leo Nguyen in the last Round 7 allowing Leo to tie for the first prize with 6/7. Pre-tournament favourite FM Greg Canfell (now resident in Melbourne) tied with Pano Skiotis for third place on 5.5/7.

TONY STURGES THEMATIC MEMORIAL & BLITZ 25 April Hobart Tas
-Kevin Bonham

Hobart chess players hold the annual fundraising rapid (15/0) tournament in honour of local chess character Tony (Thelston) Sturges, who died of lymphoma on Anzac Day, 2013. All entry fees are donated to the TCA and used to fund website hosting costs and other ventures.

As Tony had a great love of highly unusual openings, the tournament is a theme tournament in which players play from a different set opening position every round. Most positions are pre-advertised so players can prepare if they wish. The first two editions focused especially on the kinds of wacky and often unsound openings Tony loved, but this year’s edition was more respectable with the Noteboom, Two Knights, Benko, Exchange Spanish and Reversed Accelerated Dragon all on the set-course menu.

The sixth round was the subject of an open online vote (with the Scandinavian winning after someone voted for it 15 times in a few minutes) and in the final round the opening to be played (a mainline King’s Indian) was randomly drawn just before play in that round commenced.

Unfortunately, turnout was low this year with only seven entries because the timing of school holidays interfered with promotion of the event to juniors, but this did not stop some exciting games. In the most crucial, Kevin Bonham (6/6) found a forced mate against second-placed Eric Rayner (4/6) in a rook ending with both players down to about 15 seconds, which was handy since Rayner was a pawn up at the time.

Bullet and blitz tournaments were also played on the same day, with Bonham (7/8) winning the decisive bullet game against Rayner ( 6 ) and organiser Ian Little (5/6) tying with Bonham for the blitz.

On April 10 in London, IM Justin Tan (born 1997) attained his first GM norm at the strong First Colin Crouch Celebration Chess Congress (Masters), coming second only to winner GM Jahongir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan.

This success followed the second GM norm of IM Moulthun Ly (born 1991) at the Gibraltar Masters which finished in February. His first was the outright win at the Sydney International Open in 2014 with 7/9 ahead of GMs Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu, Loek van Wely and Levente Vajda. Moulthun has prepared himself through a number of recent overseas tournaments.

The third outstanding result of the last few months is of course that of GM Max Illingworth (born 1992) himself, who last December obtained his final GM norm at the Australasian Masters in Melbourne, following norms at the September 2011 and September 2014 First Saturday GM tournament series in Budapest.

Before Max, our last two GMs have been Zhao Zong-Yuan (born 1986) in 2007 and David Smerdon (born 1984) in 2008. Meanwhile, still very much active is Darryl Johansen who became Australia's second Grandmaster in 1995 after Ian Rogers (now retired) in 1985.

That is, if we exclude Walter Shawn Browne who was born in Australia of an Australian mother and an American father but whose career was American based (although he did represent Australia on Board 1 at the Skopje Olympiad in 1972) and who died last June.

And many will remember the revered Lajos Steiner who migrated to Australia from Hungary in 1939 who Purdy maintained should have received the GM title for his pre-war successes instead of the IM conferred on him by the early FIDE in 1950.

Following a decision of the FIDE Presidential Board at its meeting in Moscow, 28-29 March, services to the Ukrainian Chess Federation were temporarily suspended on16 April as the full amount in respect of the Women’s World Championship match in Lviv had not been paid within the set deadline.

Lviv local online edition Gal-info said tournament participants were promised EUR120,000 for a win and EUR80,000 for participation. But the players have not yet received their money because Ukraine had failed to pay EUR60,000 to the FIDE. Of the planned budget for the match for the world chess crown, FIDE received EUR 345,000 out of EUR405,000. The Ukrainian Chess Federation said that the remaining EUR60,000 should have been paid by Lviv City Council rather than by the Federation.

World Women's Champion Hou Yifan however blames FIDE rather than the Ukraine Chess Federation in her blog.

“On April 19 the world seems to be alright again for our Ukrainian friends. FIDE has removed the Ukrainian Chess Federation from their list of arrears, the players are rated again. We don’t know what has happened. Most likely they have simply got cold feet facing the general indignation in the media”.

“From a statement of the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, we learn that the problems with the payment of the players are thankfully solved. Mariya Muzychuk has now also received the contractually agreed prize money. Andriy Sadovy mentions that the problems between FIDE and the Ukrainian Chess Federation have been smoothed out on April 18”.

“So, all’s well that ends well? After all it’s peasant theatre, shameful and unworthy of a game that was formerly called royal. With the omnipresent influence of Russian politics we really start to lose all interest in this dirty business. FIDE is not a governing body for world chess, it’s an extended arm of the Kremlin and the Russian chess federation. It’s disgusting to see the game in the hands of these bandits”.

GM Fabiano Caruana won the U.S. Championship (St Louis, 13-29 April) with 8.5/11 and $50,000 by a clear point from GMs Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura. WGM Nazi Paikidze won the Women’s Championship.

AUSTRALIAN STORY

Murtas Kazhgaleyev (born 1973) is a Kazakhstani grandmaster who toured Australia for a month, sharing first place in the Australasian Masters December 2014 with Russian GMs Rustam Khusnutdinov and Vasily Papin in Melbourne, and second place with GM (as he now is) Max Illingworth in the Australian Open January 2015 in Castle Hill (a suburb of Sydney). In May of the same year, and in middle age, he won the Kazakhstani Championship.

Of late, GM Murtas Kazhgaleyev has taken to writing about his life, revealing a sense of humour and a curiosity about the human condition. In an interview with Kema Goryaeva published earlier this month (5 April) in Chessdom he said:

His Australian story is about the Australian Open in January 2015 and was published 17 April last year three months after the tournament finished as Diary of an Open on the Russian website chess-news.ru. He talks about the personal trials of the 1,000 to 2,000 (he estimates) professional chess players who are outside the top elite 20 or 30 grandmasters in the world. His canvas is “the chess underground, with its unspoken rules, heroes, tragedies, dreams, virtually unknown to the public”.

On open tournaments: 95% of all tournaments, these are the lifeblood of the non-elite professional. There is a somewhat self-effacing quality about his putting himself among the 95% unwashed, that he does not take himself too seriously less he err. Features which never seem to change include Spartan accommodation, reduced prize-money when entrepreneurs run into difficulties (“they were good people”), and the constraints of husbanding resources. We unashamedly help ourselves to some juicy extracts:

On GM Rustam Khusnutdinov: He “loves chess much more than me. We had shared hotel rooms for a month at this point - and so far we had managed not to drive each other crazy. We’re different, but this isn’t a problem really. Rus consumes an incredible amount of information - chess, football, social networks, Skype, TV shows, music. The Internet is basically his umbilical cord”.

On drink: “Chess players are no different from other people when it comes to alcohol consumption. Even among the top players in an era of athletic teetotalers, many still drink... I love red wine, a glass or two in the evening, every evening. Vodka and whisky...less. Beer, no”.

On food: “That evening we had cheese and pita-bread with red wine. Chess during the day. Lunch, dinner, Internet. That’s how we live”.

On GM Ni Hua (the winner by an astonishing 2.5 point margin in an 11 round open tournament) : “Without a doubt, he was favorite to win, but our previous games had been double-edged - in 2010 in Guangzhou I beat him in a rapid, but lost in Macau in 2007. Playing Black, I managed to surprise my opponent in the opening, he spent a lot of time, and at some point I had forty minutes more on the clock. But Ni Hua came up with a devious plan and the position became dangerous. The tension increased, White seized the initiative. Then it was necessary to think hard in order to try to solve my problems, but I fell into a trap. I put up as much resistance as I could, but all in vain..He did not leave me any second chances”.

On Sydney: ‘’ the beauty of the ocean that ran through the famous Harbour Bridge. I was happy to be reincarnated as a child, a carefree tourist walking around in circles, Sydney Opera House, the [Harbour], the beach, boat trips, souvenir shops and merciless photographing”.

On FM Christopher Wallis:” My young, educated opponent spent the entire tournament on the rise and deservedly fulfilled the International Master norm. I knew that to win by conventional means will not be easy, but I decided to take no risks and play classical chess. Unfortunately, the opening didn’t go as well as planned. Christopher avoided my preparation and seized the initiative. Trying to keep some winning chances, I took a risk, and a terrible struggle ensued. He pressed, I defended. At some point, the Australian made a mistake, lost control for just a moment, and I equalised. But then he pulled himself together and found several best moves in a row. We passed the first time control and found that no one could claim victory. Draw.I had been sucked into the tournament swamp.. less infamous rivals weren’t inferior in any of the aspect[s] of the game. Moreover – they were showing superior opening preparation, accuracy and speed. I had to grin, bear with it and wait for better times to come”.

On GM Darryl Johansen: “Johansen is the ultimate cool dude – a real hippie. Every morning, he drove our trio to the venue, with an accompanying soundtrack from the unforgettable '70s..Darryl is a little over fifty. His generation of Grandmasters listen to rock, read clever books and enjoy a strategic game. This is pre-computer era chess. They are great at understanding the position, able to think, but to play move by move is boring and uninteresting to them”.

On Round 9: He took a bye for the first time in his life. Meets Dasha. “Happiness filled my heart to the very limit..”. The Chessdom interviewer asked: “One quick question about the Australian story: all the characters are true or fake?” Murtas: “They are all true. Of course I keep some secrets..”.

On GM Zhong-Yuan Zhao: “the best Australian player and a strong grandmaster. However, recently he has been more busy studying medicine than chess. It increased my chances. It was necessary to win with black – he was ahead of me by half a point [in last round]. My opponent plays every opening in the book, so I limited myself to a ten-minute preparation. The game lasted for more than five hours, the last mistake was my opponent's, his knight was lost, and the game was soon over. The future doctor congratulated me on my victory,and we went off to analyze the game. I was happy”.

Postscript: After the last round, Murtas received a message from Dasha. However, his bus to Melbourne was due to leave at 5 pm.

Many enjoy reading blogs and bloggers. Some after a sustained period of work, disappear into the far horizon, Some are partisans for their pet theories or causes. And some are born teachers like Carl Gorka whose graceful style of writing alone is worth the read, even if you are beyond redemption as a student.

But the well informed must read Shaun Press’ Chess Express before going to bed: he is always accurate and first with the news both at home and abroad. He unfailingly publishes just on midnight even if it’s a bit grim to keep it up day in day out. (Actually, he has in the last couple of days taken to publishing at 6 in the morning after reading that successful people wake up 3 hours before they get to work).

However, one reads GM David Smerdon to travel the highways and by-ways of chess and other places. He is good at explaining both the complex and the obvious to a heterogenous audience in a discursive manner which makes his occasional blogs (but then you don’t have to wait too long) eagerly anticipated.

He is often asked about what he does when he is not playing chess, implying that that is what he mainly does. But he is actually a research economist completing a Ph.D in Holland where his current project is about finding the best ways to resettle refugees smoothly and efficiently into the community.

His presentation on YouTube is about the town of Nhill in country Victoria, which like many country towns with a declining population were short of labour until the relocation of 200 Karen refugees from Burma. We learn about employment, social inclusiveness and the economic goods that can be identified by a social scientist that enable policy makers arrive at evidence based judgments.

Visit OzProblems.com for an introduction to chess compositions and more problem examples.

Tries: 1.Qf8? Kh4 2.Qh6, but 1…Kf4!; 1.Qh3? Kf4 2.Qe3, but 1…Kf6!; 1.Qe5? Kh6 2.Qf6, but 1…Kh4!; 1.Qh7? Kf6 2.Qe7, but 1…Kf4!