Author: Timothy Ha

There was no surprise in the top group of the now 10-group, 3-round Summer Cup. Four FMs came and won their games against non-FMs. Only FM Daniel Gong confessed that he’s forgotten how to play classical chess after such a long hiatus, and his game vs CM Alex Huang finished very late. All other groups also had tough matches, uncharacteristic for the first round of a Swiss, as the small rating groups placed people closer to their equals.

Special note: if you registered for the Summer Cup and forgot about it due to the four weeks of Covid lockdown, please let Tim Ha know if you’re still going to play, March 22 and 29. Thanks!

Vega: https://www.aucklandchess.nz/vega/2021/wwwACCSummerCup_0/ (links to groups 1-9 are in the main menu)

Tentative round 2 pairings are also online (subject to change depending on people’s presence on the day).

List of groups and player names: https://www.aucklandchess.nz/2021/summer-cup-10-groups-listed/

As announced before, since we have at most 3 rounds remaining for the Summer Cup (we can’t shift the FIDE-rated tournaments), we are dividing the 80 players who have registered into 10 groups, from 0 to 9. Each group will have 8 players, who will compete in a mini-Swiss of 3 rounds. On the night of each round, if an odd number of players are missing in a group, somebody will get a full point bye, without a game. If an even number of players are missing, we’ll attempt to repair the rest.

See you on Mondays, March 15, 22 and 29! Good luck to all, and let’s hope we’ll have more normal length tournaments after this one.

Players can find their group and links to Vega pages below — you can also click “Pairings” to see the tentative pairing for round 1 of each group. All Vega pages of all groups are interlinked, use the main menu to navigate them.

Group 0

1 Ang, Alphaeus Wei Ern
2 Gong, Daniel Hanwen
3 Fan, Allen Chi Zhou
4 Steadman, Michael V R
5 Xie, Felix
6 Huang, Alex
7 Zhang, Jasmine Haomo
8 Runcan, Daniel-Ioan

Group 1

1 Macdonald, Paul
2 Wells, Clinton A.
3 Zhang, Kendrick Botong
4 Ning, Isabelle Yixuan
5 Nagorski, Alex
6 Metge, J. Nigel
7 McDougall, Euan
8 Tang, Hao

Group 2

1 Mao, Daqi
2 Ha, Huy Minh (Timothy)
3 Weng, Xintong (Winston)
4 Lyall, Simon
5 Park-Tamati, Philli
6 Wang, Aaron Ziwen
7 Lewis, Jordan
8 Khawaja, Ahmad

Group 3

1 Liu, Zikun Kenneth
2 Wang, Justin Zhide
3 Michael, Andrew
4 Sriram, A
5 Thurner, Anya
6 Jones, Stephen K
7 Sonnekus, Neil
8 Deng, Abraham

Group 4

1 Peak, Stephen
2 Po’e-Tofaeono, Hunter
3 Burrows, Grant L
4 Zara, Baraa
5 Ravi, Narasimhan Lakshmi
6 Fan, Eric
7 Chang, Yolanda
8 Bhatt, Daksh

Group 5

1 Chen, David
2 Somaraju, Sai Vivan Karthikeya
3 Bhatt, Mantra
4 Treanor, Scott
5 Lu, Charles
6 Wang, Joe
7 Zhu, David Junyang
8 Tang, Tracy

Group 6

1 Wang, Ying
2 Leach, Alan
3 Vasudeva, Ayaan
4 Feng, Sophia
5 Po’e-Tofaeono, Grayson
6 McClory, John
7 Shenoy, Pranav
8 Ray, Charlotte

Group 7

1 Xiao, Lucas
2 Yu, Weiyang
3 Milne, Virginia
4 Brooker, William
5 Ma, Michael
6 Wang, Xipeng (max)
7 Steiner, Michael
8 Mironov, Eric

Group 8

1 Hughes, Mike
2 Oshri, Eden
3 Xiao, Maxwell
4 Liu, Lanjun
5 Nimmakayala, Srirama Vikhyath
6 Kane, Paul
7 Yue, Annie
8 Zhou, Adele

Group 9

1 Sheng, Ethan
2 Ellis, Roderick
3 Liu, William Rui
4 Tao, Junqing Jerome
5 Newman, Nicholas
6 Zhang, Franklyn

We are back to Level 1 and can play chess in our club on Monday, March 15! Congratulations!

The Summer Cup was initially planned to run in 7 rounds, but we lost four weeks due to Covid lockdown levels, and three remaining weeks won’t be enough to compete and determine a winner in the Swiss format. Therefore, our club will divide the 80 registered players into 10 groups, each will compete in a 3-round, 8-player Swiss.

If you can’t come on any of these days, March 15, 22 or 29, please let us know and you’ll get a half-point bye. That also means somebody might be left without a game from their group, but that’s currently the reality of what we have.

Hopefully, life will get back to normal for the FIDE-rated rapid tournament and the Autumn Cup after this. Thanks for your understanding!

Auckland will still be on Level 2 next Monday, so we’ll meet online for another tournament. This time it’ll be a Swiss tournament with the rapid 10m+5s time control. Since March 8 is International Women’s Day, there’ll also be a small celebration. At the end of the tournament, a random player (but not the top 3 finishers) will get a prize in form of a ForwardChess e-book or a Chessable course, either written by Judit Polgar or about her games and chess career.

Please register in the NZCF team on Lichess to play, and here’s the tournament link – https://lichess.org/swiss/MBwaXphe

The tournament starts at 7:30 pm on March 8, 2021. Please register and come at about 7:15-20 pm, as it’s Swiss and, unlike Lichess arenas, you’ll forfeit several games if you’re late.

GM Gawain Jones from the UK is giving a simul to ACC players on March 25 (Auckland will hopefully be on Covid level 1 by then). There are 25 seats only, so please notify Timothy Ha and we’ll put your name on the registration list below. Thanks.

If you want to prepare against Gawain, check his games in the Trusts Open 2010 in Auckland, where he won 6 out of 6, or his win of Tata Steel Challengers 2017 in Wijk aan Zee (and participation in the Tata Steel Masters 2018), or his games on chessgames.com

The current list of players (max 25) participating in the Simul – tentative start time 6:30 pm on Mar 25. Ratings are provided to help GM Gawain 🙂

1. Po’e-Tofaeono, Hunter (1490)
2. Po’e-Tofaeono, Grayson (1212)
3. Zhu, David (1346)
4. Lewis, Jordan (1623)
5. Zhang, Kenny (1809)
6. Ning, Isabelle (1808)
7. Xie, Felix (2082)
8. Yu, Weiyang (1150)
9. Thurner, Anya (1553)
10. Mao, Daqi (1729)
11. Park-Tamati, Philli (1639)
12. Holdo, Karl (1613)
13. Treanor, Scott (1362)
14. Willoughby-Ansell, Xxavier (1367)
15. Deng, Abraham (1531)
16. Sonnekus, Neil (1536)
17. Wang, Justin (1605)
18. Vasudeva, Ayaan (1235)
19. Somaraju, Sai Vivan Karthikeya (1377)
20. Lakshmi, Narasimhan Ravi (1458)
21. Zara, Baraa (1470)
22. Taha, Shereif (1183)
23. McClory, John (1204)
24. Patdu, Ariel (1422)
25. Yu, Zachary

ALL seats taken.

We’re on lockdown again, so no chess club meeting on Monday, Friday or Saturday next week. But there will be chess online.

We’re inviting all NZ players to play in a match between Auckland, Wellington and other places on Monday, March 1, 7:30 pm. Please join the team you want, Auckland, Wellington or NZCF, https://lichess.org/tournament/RpyKGCiU

If your city/region wants to be represented with your own team and you have at least 5 players, please let us know and we’ll edit the match details.

With Auckland on COVID Level 1, we’ll resume our Monday club nights and start the Summer Cup on March 1 (we hope level 1 will stay). The tournament will be shortened to only 5 rounds, after we lost Feb 15 and 22 to lockdowns.

Please double-check your name in the list of players, https://www.aucklandchess.nz/vega/2021/wwwACCSummerCup/playersname.html

If you want to withdraw from the tournament, please let us know as soon as possible. If you will miss just the first round, please let us know before Monday 6:45pm so we can give you a half-point bye. Thanks!

Auckland will switch to Level 1 today, Feb 22, at midnight, so we can resume chess only next week, on March 1 (fingers crossed that nothing else happens). The Summer Cup will be reduced to 5 rounds because of this.

Let’s meet at 7:30 pm on Lichess, https://lichess.org/tournament/QR1cpl8f for two hours of 3+2 blitz arena when you can join and leave any time.

Our club will reopen on Monday, Feb 22, if (and only if) the country goes down to Level 1 on Sunday night. Please follow the Government’s announcements, and if we’re not on Level 1 yet on Monday, please don’t come.

If the club won’t reopen on Monday, we’ll do online blitz again. Please join the NZCF team on Lichess for that. Thanks!

Our club is closed tomorrow due to the mini-lockdown for Auckland at Level 3 and the rest of NZ at Level 2.

Let’s play online chess on Monday, Feb 15, 07:30 PM on Lichess, https://lichess.org/tournament/bnZ6hjBz — you need to join the NZCF team on Lichess to play, please provide the real name in Lichess profile or the join request. Thanks!

The start of the Summer Cup will be delayed. Please follow updates on AucklandChess.nz or https://facebook.com/AKLChess