Australian Juniors - Day 4

Day 4 of the Australian Juniors in Canberra was officially the 'rest day', however it was far from that in reality! I had the morning off while the Problem Solving competition was held, which had around 60 people participating! While this was happening, I visited Westfield Woden, which unsurprisingly was very similar to Westfield's elsewhere, but I found something to do for the morning.
I turned up to be an arbiter for the Blitz tournament to be held in the afternoon. After a few delays with registrations, the tournament got underway just before 3:30pm & I was running the under 12 event. Although scheduled for 11 rounds, I only managed to get through 9 by 6pm, so stopped the tournament there (this decision was announced to players after round 6). The event ran fairly smoothly once the technical issues were sorted out in the early rounds (there were 14 extra players in the list of players who did not turn up for the tournament, which meant re-pairings & a lot of fiddling on the computer during & after round 1). Surprisingly there were very few disputes to resolve, so the event was played in a friendly atmosphere, although there were multiple occasions where I saw players trying to 'out-blitz' their opponents in level positions & many of these saw the player who started with more time (and on occasion also declined a draw offer) go on to lose the game on time.
In the under 12s, Jason Wang from Queensland was the winner, while playoffs will need to be played later in the week to determine many of the other champions - under 12 girls (Cassandra Lim & Jody Middleton), under 10 open (Christopher Lim & Ruicheng Wang), under 10 & 8 girls (Katherine Pan & Ellie Choemuku-Huang).
Shaun Press looked after the under 18 event, which was won by Yi Liu, completing a good event for the Queenslanders.
The day finished for most with a BBQ, which was well attended, although afterwards Shaun, Alana & myself had to re-arrange & reset the playing halls for the next day's events, which sees another round of the under 18 & 16 open events, as well as the start of the under 12 & 14 open & girls events, as well as the under 16 & 18 girls event. I'm also sure that quite a few kids from the under 10s (and possibly under 8s) will be back for more chess during the under 12s events!