Auckland Chess Centre

Report from the 2010 Wellington Open

Monday, May 17th, 2010 | News

Report by Simon Lyall

Over the weekend of 14th-6th of May the Wellington Open was held. The event was a 6 rounds ( 1 Friday night, 3 Saturday, 2 Sunday ) of 90 minutes plus 30 seconds with a single draw. Mike Steadman and myself from the ACC competed.

The field of 32 was very strong with GM Gawain Jones at the top, another dozen over 2000 rating and only 8 players under 1700 (and one of those was a provisional rating who played to 2000 ).

At a 1629 rating I was ranked 26th in the field so I wasn’t expecting to finish near the top but I got off to a good start with a draw and a win against players rated just over 2000 (although neither had much recent experience). However the next 2 rounds against similar strength players were both loses which bought me back to earth.

Meanwhile after 3 rounds Mike was on 3.5 after 4 rounds quickly chewing through a couple of lower rated players in around an hour and drawing with Russell Dive.

My two Sunday games were against players closer to my strength (only 200 points above and 32 below) both of which I managed to convert slight advantages into wins.

Mike’s games on Sunday were another win against a similar rated opponent (Mark Noble) and a Draw against GM Jones.

In the end I finished with 3.5 points from 6 games ( performance around 1950 ) and first prize in C grade ( 10th= overall ).

Mike ended up with 5 points ( 4 wins, 2 draws ) to get second equal overall with a performance around 90 points above his ranking.

The tournament was run quite well with a very nice venue of Turnbull House directly opposite The Beehive. Two games were lost due to cellphones ringing (after some confusion as to the rule) while a 3rd very strange game saw:

1. Whites cellphone rings. Black ignores this and play continues. The arbiter is out of the room and was not made aware of this at any point.
2. Play reaches an endgame with both players short on time.
3. Black is in a winning position with a queen, bishop and 4 pawns vs Queen and 4 pawns but decides not to swap queens
4. Play continues with black chasing white’s king. White’s flag falls but Black doesn’t notice
5. Both players are warned by the arbiter for not keeping their spreadsheets up-to-date
6. Black runs out of checks and White starts checking, he gets a passed pawn and takes whites bishop. White’s flag fell around 20 minutes previously (Black has around 5 minutes on his clock)
7. Black resigns in a lost position (on the board)
8. The arbiter (after consultation) declares Black the winner since he (the arbiter) was aware of White’s Flag falling before the score-sheets were signed.
9. Note that neither player was from Auckland.

I noticed that compared to Auckland tournaments, there were very few junior players (only around 4)