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A few no-shows complicated the draw this week (in two cases two players have now played each other twice). One player has managed to not turn up (without calling) in 3 rounds so far. They have been withdrawn from the competition.

I hope to do an other post or two later this week so keep an eye on the site. Please remember to enter the Club Champs soon.

Results from this week

A Grade

• Round 6 pgn from Alex Nagorski
• Bruce Watson beat John Duneas on board 1 to hold his lead. Going into the last round he is a full point ahead of Hague, Ang and Ward (on 4.5)
• Another seven players are on 4 points due to draws compress the top of the field.
• Upsets this round included Andrew Michael beating Paul Macdonald in a long rook and pawn endgame.
• Scott Treanor also beat Caroline Yan to continue his excellent competition. He now has a performance rating over 2000 which is 400 rating points above is current rating.
• Richard Taylor also drew with Gordon Morrell and Keith Ward beat Simon Lyall.

B Grade

• The Grade has Euan McDougall, Neil Sonnekus and Mike Steiner on 5 points who are a point ahead of a group on 4 points.
• Amusingly the leaders have all played each other.
  • Euan beat Neil
  • Neal beat Mike
  • Mike beat Euan
• There were no major upsets this round.

The Vega website for the tournament is

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Round 7

As of Wednesday June 15th the following byes have been received for Round 7:

• Alexei Kulashko
• Keith Ward
• John Duneas

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye. Please let us know as early as possible.

The draft draw for both grades is below. Please remember that this may change if there are additional byes

First up a reminder that Monday the 6th of June is Labour Day and the Centre will be closed. Round 6 of the Autumn cup will be on Monday the 13th of June.

Next I’d like to send out a huge thanks to Alex Nagorski for entering the top 8 boards in A Grade. The pgn is linked below.

Results from this week

A Grade

• A PGN of round 5 games has been entered by Alex Nagorski
• Board 1 saw a draw between Ben Hague and Bruce Watson so Bruce remains in the lead
• The next two boards all saw draws with Gordon Morrell and Allen Fan managing to hold Alexei Kulashko and Mike Steadman to draws.
• John Duneas won against Simon Lyall on board 4 to join Ben Hague in 2nd place on 4 points
• Keith Ward managed to pick up an early piece from Paul MacDonald for an upset on board 7
• There were a few upsets further down the field although some were with people whose provisional ratings might be inaccurate.

B Grade

• The two undefeated players Neil Sonnekus and Euan McDougall meet on board one. Euan won to leave him in the outright lead on 5 points
• In second place on 4 points are Neil Sonnekus, Mike Steiner and Temu Maroroa

The Vega website for the tournament is

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Round 5

As of Sunday June 12th the following byes have been received for Round 6:

• Stephen Peak
• Bishop Everett

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye. Please let us know as early as possible.

The draft draw for both grades is below. Please remember that this may change if there are additional byes

Another reminder to let us know if you are going to miss a round. It means we can give you half a point instead of zero. Also if you don’t tell us then we schedule you to play somebody and then they don’t get a game or start late when we shuffle them around.

On a more positive note I have updated the correct country for most players. This means we are down to just two from “Jamaica”.

Results from this week

A Grade

• The clash of the unbeaten players on board 1 saw Bruce Watson beat Mike Steadman to go into the lead by himself. Bruce is now half a point ahead of Ben Hague on 3.5 and 6 players on 3.
• John Duneas continued his good run by drawing with Alexei Kulashko
• Keith Ward came very close to beating Alphaeus Ang but miscalculated and allowed Alphaeus to squeeze a draw.
• Andrew Michael nicely played an endgame to upset Eric Wu while Rodney Li got the biggest upset beating 300-points better Hilton Jacobs

B Grade

• The top board clash saw Neil Sonnekus upset Mike Steiner.
• Euan McDugall’s win saw him join Neil as the last 2 unbeaten players.

The Vega website for the tournament is

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Round 5

As of Sunday the following byes have yet been received for round 5:

• Ying Wang
• Aaron Wang
• Daniel Gong

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye. Please let us know as early as possible.

The draft draw for both grades is below. Please remember that this may change if there are additional byes

Once again a reminder to text or call if you can’t play. It means we can schedule you for a half point bye rather than you getting zero points and somebody having to wait around but not get a game.

Results from this week

A Grade

• Once again there was a draw on board one of A-Grade. John Duneas managed to to covert a R+P vs B+P endgame against Ben Hague into a winning  K+P vs K position but forgot his endgame theory at the critical moment and let Ben get away with a draw.
• Further down the field Paul Macdonad was (I’m told) lucky to get a draw against Caroline Yan.
• Over White had a good day in the A grade with 10 wins, 1 default win, 3 draws and 4 losses.
• There are now only two players in A Grade with perfect scores (Mike Steadman and Bruce Watson) but there are another 4 rated 2200+ just behind them on 2.5.

B Grade

• There are now 3 players in B Grade on 3 points plus 1 more on 2.5
• Upset this week included Xinyang Liu beating Gaurav Pahuja , Ying Wang drawing against Pavlo Chudinov and Selena Hu beating Hugh Gao

The Vega website for the tournament is

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Round 3

As of Wednesday the byes for round 4 are:

• Saasha Ghadiali
• Renae Ghadiali
• Rashit Patel

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye. Please let us know as early as possible.

The draft draw for both grades is below. Please remember that this may change if there are additional byes

A crash on the Southern Motorway delayed a few people from getting in on Monday but most games started on time.

Please txt if you are going to be late in and we can sort something out. We had one player turn up late after their game had been defaulted and another didn’t turn up at all.

Apologies for the delay updating the website. We had some problems with Vega. Thank you to Keong Ang for his hard work chasing the bugs (and re-entering the draw/results) and to both Keong and Ewan for organising on Monday.

Results from this week

• Alexei Kulashko on board one was held to a draw by Nathan Goodhue. The game was the last to finish and went to just over 80 moves. At the end Alexei had to play a perpetual check to prevent Nathan from getting a second Queen.
• Newcomer Alex Negorski beat Alphaeus Ang
• Scott Treanor continued his run of upsets from last week and got a draw against Daniel Gong
• The B Grade saw several upsets including from Daniel Qiu, Leo Li and Isaac Yuan plus 3 draws.

The Vega website for the tournament is

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Round 3

As of Wednesday the byes for round 3 are:

• Rodney Li
• William Li
• David Ansell
• Tom Fu

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye. Please let us know as early as possible.

A reminder to players to bring a pen when they come in on Monday, we don’t have many spares to lend out. Also please make sure you pay you sub if it is still pending. I believe we are down to the last few.

The draft draw for both grades is below. Please remember that this may change if there are additional byes

The Autumn Cup is the first tournament using the new start time of 7pm. We didn’t quite make that but we were going around 7:10pm.

A couple of last minute entries means that we have a record of  70 Entries with 40 in A Grade and 30 in B Grade. This presents a problem with space, since we only have 32 boards at present. The 3 board shortage is bridged by byes and by starting a couple of games late. Specifically Shawn Hui and Charlotte Wen both arrive a late so they (and their opponents) will take over the first 2 boards that become free.

The Vega website is online for both grade:

• Autumn Cup A Grade
• Autumn Cup B Grade

Results in round one saw the top half playing the bottom half so there were only a few upsets.

In the A Grade

• Scott Treanor beat Simon Lyall (who probably spent a bit too much time not looking at the board)
• Richard Taylor took a draw against Virginia Milne while materially ahead but low on time and not having an easy path forward
• Wayne McDougall got a piece ahead against newcomer Andrei Toporkov and converted it to a win.

B Grade upsets were:

• Toby Zhang drew with Mathew Steadman
• Isaac Yuan beat Temu Maroroa
• Renae Ghadoali beat newcomer Gen Li

Looking forward to Round 2 I have created a draft draw for each grade below. This is very much a draft and any additional byes will cause changes.

As of now the byes for Round 2 are:

• Stephen Peak
• William Li (and also round 3)
• Richard Taylor
• Tom Fu (also for round 3)

If you are unable to play please contact Simon Lyall either via text (021 575 233) or email to contact @ aucklandchess.nz . Normally you will get a half point bye.

The Initial list of players in the Autumn cup is now online

• A Grade
• B Grade

Please check you are listed correctly. The first round is at 7pm on Monday the 2nd on May. Entries close at 6pm on that day.

To enter please email contact @ aucklandchess.nz or text Simon on 021 575 233.

Notes:

1. Players not currently registered with the NZCF are shown as another country code. This will be updated to show their correct country at some point
2. We may shuffle some players between grades to ensure blance at the start of the tournament.

Due to the increased number of juniors in the club (over half are at school), the Centre will begin starting all games at 7:00 pm from the next event beginning May 2nd 2016 – the Autumn Cup.

To ensure this is successful, the draw will be prepared and advertised on the web and at the Centre during the week for the next Monday night round. Any withdrawals must be made to the club or Simon Lyall by 6:00 pm on Monday night. Failure to notify the club of a withdrawal may disqualify the person from entering the club’s next event.

All events will be advertised 2 weeks in advance and players need to have their names entered. The top round robin events will be populated the week prior to the event, no latecomers will be allowed entry.

Any players, who feel disadvantaged and cannot start at 7pm, please contact Mike Steadman for a refund of their club fees.

Simon Lyall
Club Captain

Bruce Wheeler
Club President

The Summer Cup started on February the 15th. We have A,B and C grade of 8-player round-robins with around 30 players in a D-Grade Swiss. All Grades are Nationally rated.

Draw for Round 2

A Grade

Daniel Gong     - Bruce Watson
John Duneas     - Alphaeus Ang
Ben Hague       - Gino Thornton
Alexei Kulashko - Mike Steadman

B Grade

Leo Zhang      - Simon Lyall
Richard Taylor - Vinod Kumar 
William Lee    - Allen Fan
Paul MacDonald - Nathan Goodhue

C Grade

Alex N         - Don Eade
Jasmine Zhang  - James M
Hilton Jacobs  - Joy Qin
Eric Wu        - Keith Ward

Apologies to the new Club members in C-Grade whose full names I don’t have.

On January 25th New Zealand Champion and top ACC player Alexei Kulashko played a Clock Simul against various other club members. A clock simul is where every board is setup with a chess clock and players can move whenever the like (and start the opponents clock), so at times Alexei could have his clock counting down on 20 boards

Time was 90 minutes+30s for Alexei and 45min+30s for his opponents.

Results will be posted at some point but for now here are some photos taken by Simon Lyall