News

A reminder that the Summit Rapid is coming up this weekend. It will be at Alexandra Park on Sunday November 22. The NZ Seniors Champs will be at the Chess Centre starting on Thursday November 26th. More information about both events (and others coming up) is on the NZ Chess Calendar.

Club Champs Round 5

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After taking an early bye Bruce Watson finally caught up to leader Daniel Runcan, but managed only a draw. This leaves Daniel in the joint lead with Nigel Metge with both on 4.5.

Upsets in Round 5.

There were 13 upsets this round. The top were:

Adele Zhou beat William Liu
Sophia Feng beat Jordan Lewis
Eric Mironov drew with Neil Sonnekus
Weitang Yu beat Charles Lu
Stephen Peak beat Anderson Chen
Daniel Runcan drew with Bruce Watson
John McCory drew with Grant Burrows

Most players have now payed their subscription. A reminder to everyone else that $100 will cover 2020 and 2021.

Club Champs Round 4

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A win for Danial Runcan gives him the outright lead with 4/4 . However he’ll likely be rewarded by being paired with Bruce Watson in Round 5. Four players share 2nd place on 3.5 points: Bruce Watson, Don Eade, Tim Ha and Nigel Metge.

Further down the boards there were a large number of draws.

Upsets in Round 4

Eric Mironov beat Virginia Milne
Adele Zhou beat Victor Coen
Annie Yue beat Paul Kane
Lakshmi Ravi drew with Richard Taylor
Stephen Peak drew with Clinton Wells
Baraa Zara drew with Anderson Chen
Eden Oshri beat Ali Karaambayev
Mike Steiner beat David Zhu
Alan Leach drew with Daqi Mao
Yolanda Chang drew with Abraham Deng
Daksh Bhatt beat Eric Fan
Anya Thurner drew with Lewis Jordan
Mantra Bhatt drew with Grayson Po’e-Tofaeono

A reminder that subscriptions are now overdue. Cost is $100 which covers 2020 and 2021. Mike Steadman will be at the Club on Monday the 8th of November to collect fees. People who don’t pay may be unable to continue playing.

Club Champs Round 3

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Once again there were several upsets and the competition is still very open. Only 3 players are still undefeated: Daniel Runcan, Hao Tang and Don Eade. Just behind them on 2.5 are seven players including top seed Bruce Watson.

Upsets in Round 3

Max Wang beat Paul Kane
Weiyang Yu beat beat Lucas Xiao
Ayaan Vasudeva drew with Scott Treanor
Adam Ali drew with Andersen Chen
Stephen Peak drew with Richard Taylor

The 2020 Junior Interclub was played on Sunday the 1st of November.

Results

Thank you to all the players and parents for coming along. We ended up with 5 teams playing among the 21 teams in the competition.

ACC Team A was 3rd
ACC Team C was 5th
ACC Team D with 9th
ACC team B was 12th
ACC Team E with 19th

Information for players

A quick summary of what is happening.

• Start time is 9:30am (please arrive a few minutes earlier)
• Finish time probably around 4pm
• Lunch break around 12:30pm
• Location is Lyell Creek room at Alexandra Park.
• Players must be born on or after January 1st 2006
• 4 players per team (one reserve allowed)
• Time Control 15m + 10s
• 5 rounds (based on last year)

Please let Simon Lyall know via text if you are running late or unable to play and tell Simon once you have arrived. There will probably be close to 80 players involved from all clubs so it’ll be a little busy.

The B-Grade Interclub team had a good 4th round on Sunday the 18th of October with a 5:1 win over Waitakere. Just 1 more round remains against 2nd-place Papatoetoe.

Club Champs Round 2

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Round 2 stirred up the tournament. 2nd ranked Gino Thorndon took a Bye while 3rd Ranked Nathan Goodhue lost an upset to Daqi Mao. There were several other upsets.

There are 10 players on 2 points, but only one (Danial Runcan) is ranked in the top 10. But there are up to (Covid allowing) seven rounds left so plenty of time for the top players to catchup.

Upsets in Round 2

Daqi Mao beat Nathan Goodhue
Ayaan Vasudeva beat David Zhu
Anya Thurner beat Alex Nagorski
Baraa Zara beat Jordan Lewis
Kenny Zhang beat Clinton Wells
Weiyang Yu drew with Bevis Jiang
Daksh Bhatt beat Grayson Po’e-Tofaeono
Stephen Peak drew with Nigel Metge

Chess is back for now. and there are several things coming up

• Monday October 19 is round 2 of the Club Champs
• Saturday October 24 – Monday October 26 is the Merv Morrison tournament being held at the Club during the holiday weekend
• No Chess on Monday evening October 25
• Sunday November 1st is the Junior Interclub, Please sign up if you are interested in playing
• Monday November 2 is round 3 of the Club Champs
• Sunday November 8 will be the last round of the B Grade Interclub
• Interclub Lighting Teams will be held on Sunday November 15th.

Of the above

• The Merv Morrison is accepting entries, enter online or with Mike Steadman
• Junior Interclub is looking for plays, signup or contact Simon Lyall
• The Blitz Interclub is looking for players (Open and Under-1800) to play.

Club Champs Round 1

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A number of players had to withdraw from the tournament (mainly due to exams) while several others did not turn up to round 1. Hopefully things will settle down for round 2.

With the wide gap between players there were only two upsets in the first round. Also Grayson Po’e-Tofaeono had Nathan Goodhue under pressure for some time, but Nathan was able to survive and win.

Upsets were:

Lucas Xiao drew with Richard Taylor
Michael Ma drew with Anderson Chen

Hi everyone, we will restart the weekly Saturday Junior Night Chess at the ACC tomorrow night (Oct 17th) from 6pm to 7pm. We welcome everyone to come along if you want to play some chess!

– Alex

Following the government announcement that Auckland is going back to Level 1 we are planning to restart Monday Night chess on Monday October 12th with the 2020 Club Champs.

The Club Champs will be played as a single-grade Swiss tournament of up to 9 rounds, See that post for more details. The list of current entries for the Club Champs is here. Please let Simon know if you like you name added or removed.

The Auckland Chess Association is also planning to resume Interclub Chess in October. Proposed dates are:

• Sunday 18 October – B Grade Interclub round 4
• Sunday 1 November – Junior Interclub
• Sunday 8 November – B Grade Interclub round 5

The latest announcement from the government has put back our earliest possible return day to Monday the 28th of September since we cannot restart chess till we are back at Level One.

As per the previous announcement we still hope to run the Club Champs as a Single Swiss Grade. See that post for more details.

The list of current entries for the Club Champs is here. Please let Simon know if you like you name added or removed.

Due to the second Covid19 lockdown Monday Night Chess has been cancelled since early August. Since chess involves close contact with many people for long periods we are unable to play unless the alert level is at Level 1.

The latest announcement by the government is that Auckland will not go to Level one till at least Wednesday the 16th of September.

With this in mind out current schedule is to start the Club Champs on Monday the 21st of September. The tournament would be:

• Single Swiss Grade Covering all players
• 80 entries max
• 90 minutes plus 30s/move
• FIDE and NZCF Rated
• Rescheduled/shortened in the event of further lock downs

Unfortunately round-robin events are too vulnerable to disruption by missed nights or missing players. Hence we have decided to stick with a Swiss which gives us some flexibility.