Monday 26 November 2012

Commonwealth Championships 2012: First Half

The massive playing hall














By Moulthun

As you all know Junta is currently playing over in India. Which has already been underway, at round 6 as we speak. He steamrolled his way quickly to get to 3/3, before having to meet with some tougher opposition. Since its such a big open tournament, the bottom half of players makes up for most of the field. Any points you gain will help benefit to keep your playing field much higher. Although round 2 saw Junta's swindling ability at his very best. Coming back from a rather unpleasant position to weave a nice mating net.

The opening looks to be a standard hedgehog with the inclusion of the strange 16...h6?! and 17...Kh8?!
These moves don't accomplish anything at all for Black. The standard ...Bd8 immediately or ...Kh8 by itself would be much preferred. Unfortunately for Black the later ...d5 break which was played achieves too little, not giving enough counter-play. Although with White's 40th move blunder, everything changes in a heartbeat.


The first real challenge came in round 4 when he was up against his first titled player. A good opening was reached early on, through the active placement of the bishops. White gave up the d4 square early on. Without the use of the move b5!, Black was unable to make use of this outpost. Some further exchanges in the center left Black with too many any holes, and white went on to convert the point. 


He is now on 3.5/5 and playing a 2043 rated opponent in the 6th round. Hopefully he will convert and we will see him climb up the boards. Good luck!















Friday 23 November 2012

Commonwealth Championships 2012: Day 0

by Junta

After finishing my uni exams for the year on the 20th, I left Canberra at 6am the next morning and arrived at the hotel in Chennai around 24 hours later via Sydney and Singapore. This is my second time in the city after the World Juniors in August last year. The room and food are better this time, but unfortunately there is no Wi-Fi in the rooms, only in the lobby.

I'm here to play in the 23rd Commonwealth Championships, 11 rounds from tomorrow, the 23rd, until December 1st. The pairings for Round 1 were released just before, and out of the 454!! participants (about 400 being domestic players), I am seeded 50th. Here is the chess-results.com link:
http://chess-results.com/tnr85756.aspx?ix=1&art=2&rd=1&lan=1&turdet=YES

Round 1, Board 50
Ikeda (AUS, 2304) - Sai (IND, 1654)

The opening ceremony was held in the evening - the venue is a massive indoor stadium, and it seemed to be quite hot inside, I hope it will not be too bad during the rounds.

I feel good about this tournament (post-exams inspiration?) so I look forward to enjoy playing the games. I'll blog a bit when I have time, and with the games Moulthun has agreed to annotate them so I might send them to him each day (unless I have time to post them myself).