News

FM Alphaeus wins ADW March; the next one in May

FM Alphaeus Ang won the first ACC Double Weekends (ADW) event of March 2025 on 7.5/8, conceding only one draw to Justin Wang. Justin Wang, Markis Tew, and Maximilian Fang finished 2nd= on 5.5/8.

The double weekend model, an add-on to our Monday meets, proved convenient for more than 30 players to play comfortably on normal weekends with a slow time control like in big tournaments. The next event will be held in May (10th, 11th, 17th, 18th of May). If you want to play at ACC but are busy on weekdays, consider playing on weekends. There is currently no limit on the number of “byes” in the ADW, so you don’t have to play all 8 rounds, and yet it’s a great opportunity to get up to 8 rated games in just two weeks inside a calendar month and a FIDE rating period.

Registration details can be found here https://newzealandchess.nz/auckland-double-weekends-2025/

Launching the Adult Improvers Night!

Starting 7pm, Tuesday evenings at Auckland Chess Centre from March 11, we’re hosting the Adult Improvers Night!

We’ll have two groups – one group will be going through the legendary coursebook ‘Build Up Your Chess 1’ by Artur Yusupov, aimed at improving players with a rating between 1400 to 1650.

Build Up Your Chess 1 is a 24-lesson chess book, covering everything from tactics to endgames. As we work through the lessons, you will naturally find yourself thinking about more possibilities over the board.

The other group can help you analyse your over-the-board classical chess games. If there is time, the group will also look at higher-level games and look at themes that can help you improve your chess.

We hope to see you there!

For more information, see our Adult Improvers Night page or email Brogan at BPowlesland@hotmail.com

The ACC I Love Chess Rapid Tournaments starts April 20th

Hi everyone, here’s an update about the junior chess tournaments that we ran last year. We are going to continue with running these this year in 2025.

The ACC I Love Chess Rapid Tournaments 2025 will be running on Apr 20th, Jul 6th, Sep 28th and Nov 16th. All dates are on a Sunday during the school holidays (except Nov 16th, which is during Term 4). If you would like to enter please let me know. Here is the entry form:

Cheers. Alex

Auckland Double Weekends 2025, starting in March

Auckland Chess Centre Double Weekends 2025 are a series of 5 over-the-board (OTB) chess tournaments with 8 rounds played over 4 days on two weekends.

Auckland Chess Centre (ACC) is having a series of OTB tournaments to be run throughout 2025, the Auckland Double Weekends (ADW). These tournaments will fill the gaps between months with long weekends when ACC’s big open tournaments are traditionally run. The main differences are:

  • ADW events take four days over two normal weekends.
  • ADW events are played using time control of 90 minutes plus 30 seconds increment that meets all FIDE requirements.
  • Unrated players in ADW events do not have to play each other, which provides an opportunity for more players to get FIDE-rated quicker.

In 2025, ADW would be run on the following dates:

Players in each month’s ADW can play up to 8 classical games. Those who play in all 5 ADWs in 2025 may have up to 40 classical games at ACC this year. Welcome to play classical chess with us!

Junior Club Fri 7 Feb

Hi everyone, just a reminder that our junior club meets on a Friday this week (Feb 7th at 5pm to 6:15pm) instead of our usual Saturday, due to a chess tournament (Waitangi Weekender) being held at our centre this weekend. If you can’t make it don’t worry, there will be an video recording available later. Alex

Junior Club Term 1 Schedule Published

We have published the (draft) schedule for Term 1. The dates are correct but however not completely confirmed due to the dates of our internal chess events (ABR and ADW chess tournaments held here at the ACC) are yet to be established. Same as last year, when there is a clash between the session and an internal tournament, we will run that session on a Friday (instead of Saturday) for that week.

We are starting on Saturday 1st February. I have opened the sign-ups via Trybooking. The cost is $40 per term.

Schedule: https://www.aucklandchess.nz/junior-club/
Sign-ups via Trybooking: https://www.trybooking.com/nz/VML

ACC starts 2025 with Waitangi Blitz, Waitangi Weekender and Summer Cup

Happy New Year 2025! We reopen the club with a Waitangi Blitz on Monday Feb 3, then the Waitangi Weekender will be run from Feb 6 to Feb 9, on Thursday Feb 6, then Saturday and Sunday Feb 8-9. The Summer Cup starts on Feb 10 and will run for 7 rounds.

The Waitangi Weekender is an open tournament, please register for it on New Zealand Chess News.

The Waitangi Blitz and Summer Cup are Monday club events. Please register at https://www.trybooking.com/nz/events/landing/14420 (bookmark this page for the year, too).  

The blitz event is FIDE-rated, with 9 rounds of 3+2 blitz. The Summer Cup is FIDE- and NZCF-rated, with 7 rounds of classical chess over 7 weeks starting from Feb 10.  The time control is 60+30, we’re trialling out this format to see if parents and schoolchildren will have a better time, going home earlier by at least 30 minutes.

We recommend not registering if you know in advance that exams or travel plans will make you skip more than 1/3 of the rounds, to give space for somebody else.  Summer Cup has 7 rounds, so that’s skipping 3 rounds.  Taking byes due to sickness or emergencies is OK.  The policy is about prior knowledge of plans.  This policy also doesn’t apply to those who represent NZL in international events.  They need practice, and ACC is one of the best places to find it 🙂

If you hold any of these titles – FM/IM/GM, or WFM/WIM/WGM, and want to play, you can play for free without registration via the link above.  Only write us an email so we can reserve a spot for you before all spots run out.  This applies to all club events (except the opens – AklAnniv, Waitangi, ANZAC, Merv).

The full calendar of club events on Mondays and other days, like ABR, ADW (btw, what is ADW, why not ACW?) and other events to be added there soon — https://aucklandchess.nz/calendar

FM Alphaeus Ang gets an IM norm at 2024 Australasian Masters

Congratulations to FM Alphaeus Ang who finished the 2024 Australasian Masters with a 7 out of 9 score, making his second IM norm! This result was achieved in a fighting game against the tournament leader IM James Morris. It was no simple last-round draw, see https://lichess.org/broadcast/2024-australasian-masters/round-9/aKA7Lccm/MQo0wKb8

More tournament info on https://chessnews.asia/2024-australasian-masters/