SA Chess Results

[Oepty]

The State Junior Championships were played over the last two days and Prakash Thiyagarajah won the championship with 7.5/8 with Ashwin Utturkar finishing second. Syam Heitmann won the 16 title, Fedja Zulfic the under 15, Surabhi Heitmann the Under 13 and Calvin Fong the Under 12.
Scott

[antichrist]

The State Junior Championships were played over the last two days and Prakash Thiyagarajah won the championship with 7.5/8 with Ashwin Utturkar finishing second. Syam Heitmann won the 16 title, Fedja Zulfic the under 15, Surabhi Heitmann the Under 13 and Calvin Fong the Under 12.
Scott

All good Aussie names.

[Oepty]

The City of Adelaide is currently underway and after 4 rounds the top 2 seeds , Srbo Zaric and Bob Cowley are on 4/4 and play tommorrow night. Junior Sophie Eustace is displaying some excellent form beating Pavel Turcaj (1503) and Steven Hill (1475) and drawing in the last round with Andrew Short (1620) and is 2.5/4.
Scott

[Oepty]

The fifth round of the City of Adelaide was complated last night with Zaric and Cowley drawing on the top board to be equal leaders in 4.5/5. Gavin Haydn won on board 2 to take him to outright 3rd on 4/5. Haydn's only loss was against Zaric in round 1. 12 year old Sophie Eustace again caused an upset by defeating Goran Dakovic(1712), despite losing a pawn in the opening.

In other news SACA are planning a chess week from the 20th of August which will feature 4 1 hour simuls and lighting tournament in Rundle Mall on the Saturday. More details later.
Scott

[WhiteElephant]

The fifth round of the City of Adelaide was complated last night with Zaric and Cowley drawing on the top board to be equal leaders in 4.5/5. Gavin Haydn won on board 2 to take him to outright 3rd on 4/5. Haydn's only loss was against Zaric in round 1. 12 year old Sophie Eustace again caused an upset by defeating Goran Dakovic(1712), despite losing a pawn in the opening.

In other news SACA are planning a chess week from the 20th of August which will feature 4 1 hour simuls and lighting tournament in Rundle Mall on the Saturday. More details later.
Scott

Thanks for the update. What about James Obst and Tristan Stevens...are they playing? Not sure of the scheduling but I would guess Obst did not play due to the World Juniors?

[Oepty]

James Obst and Tristan Stevens are not playing. Obst was at the World Juniors which rules him out. Tristan does not play heaps and I think would be fairly busy with his uni studies. Third seed is Alex Sykes who is returning from a break in competitive chess and is very, very rusty and having a shocker. The 4th seed was given to unrated Edgar Mdinaradze when he was allocated a rating of 1800 for pairing purposes, but he lost in the first round when his mobile phone rang. Mdinaradze is from Georgia, and arrived in Australia only a few months ago.
Scott

[Oepty]

Srbo Zaric and Bob Cowley jointly won the City of Adelaide title on Tuesday night after both won there final round games to finish of 6.5/7.

The Modbury Chess Club Championship was won by Bill Anderson-Smith after he won the three way play-off.

Chess Week an innovation of Tristom Cooke has been going reasonable well, although there does not seem to have been much interest from new players. The Rundle Mall display went well considering the inclement weather on the Saturday. When it was not raining there was a reasonable number of spectators watching. There was a small blitz tournament which was dominated by Edgar Mdinaradze who finished with 10/10.

SACA is planning a farewell for Evelyn Koshnitsky who is moving to the brighter city lights of Sydney. It will be sad to see her leave after all of the work she has done for chess in past years. I will post more details of the farewell when they become available.

Scott

[Oepty]

The SACA interclub has started and the second round was played on Tuesday. I had opportunity to drop into the Chess Center on Tuesday night and was asked to be a last minute replacement for a player who did not turn up. I played board 4 for a Norwood team in A grade and managed to cause a slight upset by drawing with Mato Jelic (1701). I will post the game in the next couple of days. In other results, BB posters Peter Ballard and Aaron Guthrie won there games. Bob Cowley beat Alan Goldsmith and David Wynne and Alex Sykes drew there game in Board 1 encounters.
There are 8 teams in both A and B Grade, which I think is won team down on interclub earlier in the year. Thanks to the organisers of the various teams which include George Howard (Norwood), Bill Anderson-Smith (Modbury), Roland Eime(Adelaide), Alan Goldsmith(Knights and Bytes), Matthew J (Chess Kids) and I am sure a few others.

Also the fairwell to Evelyn Koshnitsky will be held on the afternoon of Sunday October the 16th.
Scott

[Oepty]

The SACA website has been updated for the first time in a while and contains the games from the Ctiy of Adelaide Open and the games of the first two rounds of the Pennant A grade.

The Labour Day weekender will be played on the 1st and 2nd of October.
$25 standard entry, $20 concession, $30 late entry after 11pm Friday 1st October.
First prize $120.

The farewell to Evelyn Koshnitsky will be held on the 16th of October between 2 and 5pm.
Afternoon tea will be provided and a gold coin donation is expected.

[Oepty]

It was a week for newcomers in SA chess with the Labour Day weekender and the SA Girls Championships both won by players new to chess in SA this year.
Firstly last weekend Edgar Mdinaradze dominated the Labour Day weekender finishing with 7/7. It was a very diappointing field with only 13 players competing.
Secondly the SA girls title was decided on Thursday in what was more of a mini tournamanet . The tournament that was almost not held this year until I insisted it go ahead attracted only 5 girls. The winner was Zhi Lin Oh a recent arrival to study in SA. The former Malaysian girl beat Sohpie Eustace and Surabhi Heitmann her closest rivals, but stuggled to a draw against fellow Pembroke College student Tijana Gajic. Sophie and Surabhi drew their game to finish =2nd and be joint state U16 girls champion.

St Peters College have secured positions in the ATSC in both secondary and primary open sections. They secondary team which contained State Champion James Obst, State Junior Champion Prakash Thiyagarajah, former state junior champion Ashwin Utturkar and former state U16 champion Anthony Khoo and Nick Chia dominated the competition with the team finishing with 34/35.
The Girls secondary team will either be Pemborke with a team including Zhi Lin Oh, Tijana Gajic and Georgia Reeve or Wilderness.
The primary girls team is almost certainly be from Wilderness with most of the players that played in Mt Buller last year.

Scott

[Oepty]

The State Under 11, 10 and 9 championships were played at the SA Chess Centre over the last two days. This tournament was dominated by an impressive Tom Milton who finished with 10.5/11, his only draw being to Alistair Cameron. Cameron finished =2nd with Kaustubha Heitmann and is the new state U10 champion, while the U9 title was shared between James Bowditch, Lachan Cameron and Declan Gray.
There was also an Under 18 tournament that was jointly won by Matthew Borg and Syam Heitmann. Anthony Khoo and Anthony Milton finished equal 3rd.
The Interclub competition was concluded on Tuesday night with Matisons winning the competition by half a point from Adelaide in a very close competition. This was a very good result for Matisons who were without Srbo Zaric for about half the rounds because he was at the World Seniors. BB poster Peter Ballard is a member of the winning team and filled in on board 1 in Zaric's absense. Congratulation Peter.
More news should be available soon regarding the SA's secondary girls team for the ASTC.
Scott

[four four two]

Freddy,are first prizes in SA weekenders always as low as $120? This may explain why there was only 13 players.Im not saying you have to guarantee $500 for first to have a good tournament,but a weekender with less than $200 for first is always going to struggle in my opinion.

[Alan Shore]

Freddy,are first prizes in SA weekenders always as low as $120? This may explain why there was only 13 players.Im not saying you have to guarantee $500 for first to have a good tournament,but a weekender with less than $200 for first is always going to struggle in my opinion.

There was once an SA weekender with just 2 entrants!

[four four two]

Did they tie for 1st place? Lets not forget thay have actually had quite a few big tournaments in Adelaide over the last 25 years Belthasar.

[Oepty]

Freddy,are first prizes in SA weekenders always as low as $120? This may explain why there was only 13 players.Im not saying you have to guarantee $500 for first to have a good tournament,but a weekender with less than $200 for first is always going to struggle in my opinion.

I agree that there is not going to be huge numbers in a tournament with the prize money as low as this, but I think the numbers in are declining in tournaments of this type. I am sure a couple of years ago there were more than 20 players playing.
Scott
P.S. I didn't play so I guess I can't complain too much.