The Friendly Club!
The St George Chess Club prides itself on a diverse membership with a range of chess abilities. We foster a social atmosphere for players of all ages and abilities.
The club runs regular internal club competitions and participates in interclub tournaments. More information about the activities can be found from the calendar.
Club Games: 7:30pm Tuesday nights, Prince Edward Rooms, St George Leagues Club, 124 Princes Highway, Kogarah NSW
News
St George Club Champs kicks off with 7 divisions!
For the first time in my time at St George, the Club Championships is running seven divisions. With 66 players registered, divisions 1-3 each have ten players, and 4-7 each have nine. As usual, it’s a single round-robin tournament, so participants in any one division get to play every other player once. In any division with an odd number of players, each player will also have one week where they don’t play, i.e. a bye, for which they will not score any points. Board One featured an exciting 17-year old prodigy from Ulaanbaatur, the capital of Mongolia: WCM Bayasgalan Khishigbaatar. A decisive win over Jeremy Plunkett suggested she will be a force to be reckoned with in the Club Champs, and showed why she has a Blitz rating of 2453 on chess.com.
Results of 2024 St George QuickPlay
Our apologies for the delay, but the final crosstable for the recent 9-round Quickplay Tournament is now accessible here. Congratulations to the outright winner, Arthur Huynh who scored 8.5/9! CM Daniel Melamed was a point behind, and club stalwart Sarwat Rewais was third with 7 points. Round by round results are accessible on the results page. There will be divisional awards as well; these will be announced at the annual presentation night towards the end of the year.
Round 1 of 2024 Club Champs postponed by one week
Due to some very sad news (the death of the mother of our Club Captain, Charles Zworestine), we are postponing Round 1 of the Club Championships until next Tuesday, March 12. Tonight, March 5, there will only be social chess, from 7.30 as usual. We have tried to alert everyone to this late change by email, text or phone.
Charles has asked me to say that if you want to play in the club champs, and you have only expressed interest by sending him an email, text or phone call, then you now need to either: (1) register via the website (link below) or (2) advise me (Geoff Hyde) separately. Any previous expression of interest, apart from registering on the website is now null and void. Charles is basically not checking any past or future personal messages between now and next Tuesday, and he has not compiled a list of names of the people who contacted him personally.
Also: to reduce the stress on Charles next Tuesday night, and to help get the games off to as early a start as possible, please do not wait until next Tuesday to register. Do it now, either on the website, or by advising me personally. Organising people into their ratings division is not an easy task, and if Charles has everyone’s names well before Tuesday, his job is made much less stressful.
I will be there tonight, as will our treasurer, Mark Boan, so if, for example, you do not find it an easy thing to register on the web, you can see us personally then, and pay the annual fees, if necessary.
Club Champs Registration Link
https://stgeorgechess.org/
For anyone wishing to attend the funeral service, all the information is on the Sydney Chevra Kadisha website: https://www.sck.org.au/ – just scroll down. The service will be at their chapel, 172 Oxford Street (corner Wallis Street) Woollahra NSW 2025, at 1:30pm on Wednesday March 6, and will last likely under half an hour. Please advise Charles if attending.
Geoff Hyde
geoffjhyde@gmail.com
0466 904 941
2024 St George QuickPlay Rounds 4-6. Daniel takes the lead.
It was an intense, mano-a-mano finish at board 1 on Tuesday, with CM Daniel Melamed finally prevailing against John-Stuart Plant. They finished long after all the other games had finished. Daniel, now on six points, retained his perfect record and has a slender half-point lead over Arthur Huynh. Anthony Karnaout sits on third with 5 points. Daniel and Arthur square off on board 1 in Round 7 next week. See the crosstable after Round 6 here.
Compared to the first three rounds, upsets were aplenty. The following players had victories against players at least 10 positions above them on the initial ranking list or a draw against a player 20 positions or more above (the number in parentheses shows the difference): Wins: Alex Freitas (R4:30; R6:23). Jing Jia (R6:23; R4:14; R5:12); Ralph Shaw (R4:22; R6:19); Christian Lagarez (R5:19; R6:13); Joel Shreshta (R4:18); Emmanuel Vardakis (R4:17; R6:14); Stephen Elliott (R5:17); Ralph Mitchell (R6:17); Isaac Wang (R4:14); Chris Morkos (R4:13); Ramu Srinirasa (R5:13); Ben Hepworth (R6:12); James Bullen (R5:10). Draw: Nihal Scammell (R5:21).
2024 St George Summer Lightning: JSP and the Perfect Score
Reprising his shared 2023 victory, but this time with an even better result, John-Stuart Plant scored a win in each of the 9 games of the 2024 Summer Lightning tournament. Second on 7.5 points was Mario Falchoni, and third place was shared between Sarwat Rewais and Changhao Yu (6.5). Thirty-one players took part.
The U1700 and U1500 divisions saw great winning performances by two continuing improvers: Sait Buzgan (5/9) and Samuel Slingo (4/9). Samuel shared the first prize in his division with one of his his practise partners, Ralph Shaw, twice winner of the NSW State Junior Blitz Championships, back in the ’60s.
Final Crosstable
2023-24 Summer Lightning Prizes | ||
---|---|---|
Open | U1700 | U1500 |
1st $80: John-Stuart Plant (9/9) | 1st $45 Sait Buzgan (5.5/9) | Eq 1st $37.50 each Ralph Shaw; Samuel Slingo (4.5/9) |
2nd $50 Mario Falchoni(7.5/9) | Eq 2nd $6 each: Srijan Badam; Ghassan Beydoun; Christian Lagarez; Ashton Li; Kevin Liu. (5/9) | |
Eq 3rd $15 each: Sarwat Rewais; Changhao Yu (6.5/9) |
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