Tuesday 7 August 2007

Under 16 Olympiad

The Under 16 Chess Olympiad is up and running in Singapore, and Australia is well represented with 4 teams. Currently Australia 1 (Ly, Ikeda, Wilson Lin, Song, and Illingworth) are on 8.5/12 (+6=5-1), and lie in =6th. Surprisingly the second best Australian team is Australia 3, who recovered from a 4-0 loss in Rd 1 to Uzbekistan, to be on 6/12. Australia 4 are on 5/12, while Australia 2 are having a rough time of it on 3. Full results for this tournament are available from the always excellent www.chessresults.com
A number of Canberra players are taking part in this event (Junta Ikeda, Emma Guo, Tamzin Oliver, Andrew Brown, Alana Chibnall, Satya Chitturi) and you can see their individual performances by clicking on the team names.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you have to take the numbers 2, 3 and 4 very loosely as there was no hierarchy in the secondary team formations.

Team 1 was definitely selected as the 5 best players. Aus 2 is actually the girls team. Denis Jessop suggested sending a girls team and on reflection this seemed a good idea as far as girls promotion went. They are having a great time playing together and are really doing quite well. Tamzin was quite ill for her first game and Angela is now not so great either - hopefully will feel better by tomorrow. If we were grouping on strength, Angela would have been in another team, but she wanted to play with the girls.

Then a further 8 kids were endorsed to go - the best players wre put onto boards 1 and 2 of Aus 3 and 4 and the weakest onto 3 and 4 of both teams.

Jenni

Anonymous said...

I was having a giggle as I read this as the (vicious) thought crossed my mind that one 9 year old had a win against an endorsed player at the ANU open, so does that mean she should have gone instead? Obvious answer is of course not but it still brings a wry smile to my face.

Anonymous said...

Only players who applied to go could be endorsed, so obviously there are many eligible players in Australia, who are better than some who were endorsed to go.

It takes a fair bit of courage to come and play in one of these events when you are not a super good player and you lose game after game.

However hopefully all will come back having learnt a lot and maybe with more of a will to put their heads down and work, so they can be more competitive in future.

A number of players have made the comment to me that they have enjoyed this much more than world youth, because of the team bonding and support.

Jenni

Anonymous said...

ACT did quite well - Junta Ikeda was in the Aus 1 team that picked up the 5th place medal and Junta also received the silver medal for board 2. Andrew Brown came =3rd on board 1, but his countback was too low, so he missed out.

The girls team had Emma Guo and Tamzin Oliver and they finished mid field with Tamzin getting 50%.

Satya and Alana struggled a bit, but have had some great experience.

I really think this is a great tournament for juniors looking for overseas experiene.

Jenni