News

CM Alex Nagorski won the Spring Rapid

It was another Nagorski — McDougall finale at an ACC club tournament, Spring Rapid this time, and with colours reversed compared to the recent Winter Cup.

Going into the last round, Euan McDougall was leading the tournament by half a point and needed only a draw, but Alex Nagorski beat him from an equal endgame position, being more precise in an “every Russian schoolboy knows” type of endgames.

The given position is when Alex spent 13 minutes of a 25+5 game to find a plan. The long think paid off. Yolanda Chang and Grayson Po’e-Tofaeono are two other players finishing second equal with Euan, ahead of Alphaeus Ang, Bruce Wheeler and Justin Wang who finished third. Both Yolanda and Grayson scored 3/3 in the last rounds.

Vega link with full results

DGT boards (round 4 is missing due to a technical problem)

Spring Rapid is 15/8 and 22/8, please check your registration

ACC Spring Rapid will be held the next two Mondays, the 15th of August and the 22nd of August. It’s a FIDE- and NZCF-rated Swiss tournament, six rounds of 25+5 rapid chess.

We’ve removed some players who do not wish to play rapid. Please check your registration and let us know if we have forgotten you or if you want to skip this tournament.

The whole club will play in one grade – https://www.aucklandchess.nz/vega/2022/wwwACCSpringRapid/

For a better experience, please let us know in advance if you will be late and want to skip the first round of the night, or if you require a bye in the third round. Three rapid games mean about 3 hours of play plus about 10 minutes between rounds to make the pairings.

Winter Cup results; rapid on 15/8+22/8; Club Champs start on 29/8

Euan McDougall is the outright winner of ACC Winter Cup A-grade, with Philli Park-Tamati in second place. Hao Tang and Alex Nagorski shared third.

In the B-grade, the winner is Luna Xu. Sai Somaraju came second. Ayaan Vasudeva, Pranav Shenoy and Jerome Tao shared third.

We will start a 9-round Club Champs on the 29th of August. Before that, 15/8 and 22/8 are rapid nights. Please let the captain know in advance if you do not want to play 25+5 rapid (three games a night).

ACC invites clubs to the Auckland Teams Arena, 27th-28th of August

There is no Auckland Interclub tournament this year, but there’s still the Auckland Teams Arena (ATA), a series of two-day (one normal weekend) tournaments at ACC that you can join. ATA August will also be the only classical OTB weekender besides the NZ Seniors Champs this month.

ACC would like to invite other Auckland clubs to build teams and bring them for these fun team events. The entry fee is only 20 NZD for six FIDE- and NZCF-rated games. Even though we don’t offer prize money, there are more lasting things on offer like T-shirts for individual winners and teams, and a lot of team spirit. For the August event, we will also have outdoor lunch with pizza and drinks (weather permitting).

Note: teams can be of any size, as long as they won’t be more than half of the tournament list. The tournaments are run as individual Swiss events, but team members won’t be paired against each other. The team score is the sum of the top 4 scorers.

Register online here (team captains can register several players at once) https://newzealandchess.nz/auckland-teams-arena-august-2022/

Auckland Teams Arena July is this weekend, 23-24/7

The July edition of the Auckland Teams Arena will happen this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, July 23-24. Please register online at https://newzealandchess.nz/auckland-teams-arena-july-2022/

Don’t worry if you haven’t formed a team with anybody yet. We’ll find a team for you.

This weekender is different from others:

  • runs on two days only, Saturday and Sunday, so easier to plan
  • costs only 20 dollars (we only cover the NZCF and FIDE rating fees and small ACC venue costs)
  • you can team up with somebody else and have added motivation for shared results

And you can still win the events individually, just like William Liu did in June, even though his team came last 🙂

More info about the Auckland Teams Arena is on the dedicated page – https://www.aucklandchess.nz/auckland-teams-arena/

May be an image of 2 people, people standing and outdoors

North Island Championship 2022 at ACC, July 15-17

Please clear your calendar for the biggest classical chess tournament of the month – the 2022 North Island Championship – nine rounds of classical chess over three days July 15-17, just before the Rapid Champs on July 18-19.

The venue for the classical champs is Auckland Chess Centre, while the rapid portion will be run by Auckland Central Chess Club in CBD.

More details and online booking on https://newzealandchess.nz/north-island-championship-2022/

No more unrated players in the A-grade

July FIDE ratings are published. All players in the Winter Cup A-grade now have FIDE ratings, and games of rounds 1-5 will go for the August rating list. Rounds 6 and 7 will be affecting the September ratings. The B-grade has newly rated players, too, and their rounds affect future ratings similarly to the A-grade.

Congrats to FM Alphaeus Ang who peaked at 2307, playing in a much lower-rated field this year. New FIDE rules give him 0.0 points for many of his wins in our club. Only one game per tournament is calculated with a 400 rating difference, and others with the actual value.

Auckland Teams Arena, July 23-24, registration open

Auckland Teams Arena July 2022 is the only OTB classical chess event on the July chess calendar in all of New Zealand. You can register here https://newzealandchess.nz/auckland-teams-arena-july-2022/

The June event was run successfully on June 18-19 (see Vega) with three teams participating. Current team standings are:

The Knightmares (Po’e-Tofaeono Hunter, Grayson and Tyleah + Fergus Lee) – 15.5 pts
Mi Caissa, su Caissa (Timothy Ha, Mantra Bhatt, Daksh Bhatt) – 11 pts
The Morphians (William Liu, Luna Lu, Jacob Barry, Branden Li, Lisa Shi) – 10.5 pts

The individual winner of the June event was William Liu with 5.5 pts.

We expect to have several new teams joining for the July event. And you can always join an existing team. Some offer nice T-shirts 🙂 Four top scorers of the winning team in each event will also get T-shirts from the organisers.