Bob Brooking Round Robins Round 1

Tonight was the first round of the annual Bob Brooking Round Robin event at Melbourne Chess Club, which sees players split into groups of 6 by rating & then playing a round robin against those players. The format of the event makes for a very competitive event, with all games being (at least theoretically) very tough.
The tournament itself is named after Bob Brooking, former judge at the Victorian Supreme Court, as well a former President of Melbourne Chess Club. He has written an interesting history of Melbourne Chess Club in two volumes, Care for a Game & Play On, which you can read about on the MCC website.

As for the event itself, there are 30 players in five groups this year, with the top division being particularly strong, with 2 IMs & all players rated over 2100! I'm on double-duty, playing in division 2, as well as acting as the tournament arbiter, but I will definitely have to be at my best if I plan to win my division, with Sylvester Urban, David Beaumont, Justin Penrose, Omar Khaled & Richard Voon all looking to spoil these plans of mine!
Full results, as well as the draw for future rounds, can be seen on ChessChat.

The best game of the round in the top division was an efficient game by IM James Morris against Karl Zelesco, where James left Karl with a bad black squared bishop & gradually improved his position until an exchange could further increase his positional edge.

Sydney International Open Day 1

I'm back to playing a chess tournament, this time the Sydney International in Parramatta.The tournament has 75 players, including a number of foreigners, with many backing up from the Doeberl Cup in Canberra.
I was paired with IM Kantholi Ratnakaran in the first round & felt like I had a reasonable, though not advantageous position, when the IM sacrificed a piece for an attack & I was unable to stop it. In round 2, I played Melbounre junior Zachary Loh, for the third time in just over a year. Each time the opening has been my favourite 'Broken Arrow' line of the Modern Defense & this time I managed to escape with a win after Zach missed playing the crushing 28.Qe8, when I am unable to stop the threats of Qc6, Qd8 & Bf5. Zach underestimated the counterplay I would later get with my c-pawn & once he had to give up his bishop, the game was practically over.
Full results can be found on the tournament website and there is live coverage of the top 8 boards online, as well as commentary from GM Ian Rogers at the venue.
I get to play FM Tomek Rej this morning as white, which is something I haven't done for a long time, with most of our previous encounters being Benko Gambits where I was playing black, though Tomek has improved quite substantially since those days!