Round 2 of the Melbourne Chess Club Open again showed the dominance of the top seeds in the 'back room', but the main tournament room once again provided a few upsets. Garry Lycett seems to have saved his best for the recently finished Malitis Memorial (where he finished in =2nd) & has now started with two losses against lower rated opponents, with Alex Kaplan being the one to finish him off this week. Roger McCart also managed a draw against Thai Ly, kindly offering a draw when he reached a rook & bishop v rook endgame (with no pawns left) just after 11pm, rather than making Thai suffer for another 50 moves while trying to show his defensive technique.
Once again the game of the round from the top boards is Malcolm Pyke's game, this time against Abraham Widjaja, who is playing much better than his 1128 rating would have the chess world believe! Malcolm appears to have everything under control early, with a slight edge as white. This becomes a serious edge around move 20, when he picks up the a-pawn & again appears to have everything under control in terms of stopping the kingside attack launched by Abraham. 30.f3 was the first sign that things may not have been going as smoothly as Malcolm may have hoped, but Abraham's 33...Rf8 being an inaccurate continuation (the silicon beasts preferring 33...bxc5, with various tactical defenses for black involving Nxg5 & e4). Just when it appeared as though Malcolm had weathered the storm, he played 36.Ra4, which allows the neat 36...Rh3+ (with the silicon beasts immediately jumping to a 0.00 conclusion), but unfortunately in playing the poor 36...Qh5, Abraham ran out of time!
As usual, results are on ChessChat.
It also looks as though the DGT board is up & running, so you can follow the board 1 games live on the MCC website.
Entries are also still being accepted, so if you wish to join in the tournament, enter ASAP!
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