Friday 24 July 2015

ANU Chess Festival Day 1

The 2015 ANU Chess Festival began with its now traditional city chess activity at King O'Malley's Pub. While in years past it was a lunchtime simul, it has since been replaced by a teams blitz event. This year 9 teams of 2 players turned up for the 5 round swiss, which turned out to be a close affair. Some of the teams represented the local clubs (ANU Scholars, Belco Blitzers), some were work related (The Budget Busters from Treasury/Finance) while others were made up of players who shared a common interest.
Going into the last round the ANU Scholars lead the next 4 teams by half a point (7 v 6.5), but a 2-0 win by the Scholars over Readings Rebels left them a full point ahead of the Belco Blitzers. This was the second time in 3 years that the ANU Chess Club has provided the winning team, which for this year consisted of Harry Press and Miles Patterson. It was a fun event, and the only regret from the players was that it should have run for longer!
Tomorrow the 2015 ANU Open begins at the ANU School of Art. At this stage there are 76 players entered (once I excluded Magnus Carlsen, Gary Kasparov and Hikaru Nakamura from the entry list), and a few more should enter on the day. The tournament website is as tournaments.streetchess.net/anu2015 and I hope to broadcast the top 2 games from the open each round.


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