The cream is slowly rising to the top in the current Monday night tournament at the Melbourne Chess Club, the City of Melbourne Open. There are now three outright leaders in the event & they are three of the more fancied players to win - top seed Carl Gorka, MCC 'hero' David Beaumont & the rapidly improving Ari Dale - who are all on 3/3. Immediately behind them are tournament second seed Malcolm Pyke & talented Frenchman Laurent Michaille, who are both on 2.5/3. This makes the next few rounds crucial in deciding the final placing for the event, as these top players now begin to play one another.
The battle of the Gar(r)y's finished in a draw, when Gary Bekker's passed pawns were neutralised by Garry Lycett's bishop & the players repeated the position when Bekker's knight was under constant pressure. Richard Voon showed that the older generation still have a few tricks left in them with a nice win over Jack Puccini, while Finley Dale held Bill Reid to a draw. Most of the other games went according to rating, although with many games having a rating difference of less than one hundred points, many of the games were very hard fought.
As usual, results are available on ChessChat.
This week's game shows the difference between the top players & those in the middle of the field, with Carl Gorka putting Jim Papadinis to the sword in convincing fashion!
You're cruel, Kerry. Jim was not playing his best and I wasn't going to post this game on my blog!!
ReplyDeleteWell it really was the best of the top board games. The only other one worth posting might have been the Dale-Dowling game, but its not often that you see a queen trapped so early!
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