A reminder that the ACC May weekender starts on Saturday May 6th. It is played across 3 days over 2 weekends.See the NZCF calendar page for details.
The 2017 Autumn Cup started on April 24th. It is a two 7-round swiss tournaments, each with just over 30 players.
For the first round a larger number of people took byes due to school holidays and also playing in the ANZAC weekender that took place that weekend and following day
We unfortunately also had around 7 players from B Grade ( Zi Hao Lin, Zyre Milina, Jason Huang, Hugh Gao, Isaac Yuan, Jacob Chai, Jeffrey Yu and Shawn Hui) not bother turning up without telling us beforehand. This meant that their opponents had a wait around for 15 minutes until another opponent could be found. A reminder that players who do this repeatedly will be withdrawn from tournaments.
PGN for Round 1 of the Autumn Cup by Ewan Green
A Grade
The fist round saw the usual mismatches with only one upset.
Hague v Caroline Yan – fairly even as players exchanged pieces, but black allowed a tactic that White didn’t miss. 1-0
Tim Ha vs Watson – White castled without covering pieces on his King side & Black threatened mate to win a piece. Win in 13 moves. 0-1
Garbett vs Eric Wu – White poked some holes in Blacks defense with some swaps and then pushed in with a couple of supported Knights with too many threats to for black to block. 1-0
Burrows vs Gong – after a dubious opening and cramped looking position White found a nice tactic to break out for a slight advantage. But he made a tactical error a few moves later and resigned. 0-1
Morrell vs Peak – A Slav which White played strangely and allowed Black to quickly equalize. Black then took advantage of Whites poor pawn structure and swapped down to a rook each and a pawn advantage. 30 moves later with a rook and 3 pawns vs a rook and pawn. But Black missed a couple of winning moves and had to settle for a draw. Draw
Jacobs vs Fan – After a good start by White he allowed a tactic by Black & lost a piece. Black took another 20 moves to mop up – 0-1
Leo Zhang vs Milne – Some sharp tactics with a web of pieces guarding each other in an open position. But Black eventually made a mistake and dropped a piece. 1-0
Andrew Michael vs Jasmine Zhang – White miscalculated a pawn swap and left some pieces under threat. He lost a pawn and got a stranded Knight that Black took a few moves later. Black opened up the position and created too many threats to handle. 0-1
Wells vs Sarah Yan – Black played will against White’s dubious opening before the game evened out with Black in a solid defensive position. White managed to punch a hole in and won and exchange and then a pawn which he swapped down to a won endgame. 1-0
Steiner vs Nagorski – White made some tactical mistakes and resigned a pawn and an imminent exchange down. 0-1
Eade vs Aaron Wang – Black attempted a tactical trick and got a Queen and Knight stuck. Eventually White allowed him to extract them and after a few missed moves the position was close to even. However Black made a slip-up and allowed a mate in 1. 1-0
Goodhue vs Ward – A slow game with 8 interlocked pawns in chains in the middle of the board and both players maneuvering behind them. Black eventually (on move 50) opening a break which looked good until he blundered a piece. 1-0
Lyall vs Liu – A fairly even game with the players slowly trading down pieces. Eventually they were left with 2 Knights and six pawns each. Black tried a trap which White saw and ended up a little better, A small mistake later by Black saw White with an extra pawn and opposition in a King and pawn endgame. 1-0
B Grade
There were upsets on the top 3 boards with Tom Fu beatign Ying Wang, Winston Weng beating Jocob Barry and Erica Hu winnign against Isabelle Night. Then on board 4 Selena Hu drew with Renae Ghadiali.