Friday 11 January 2008

Australian Championship - Antic wins tournament, Solomon wins title

The final round of the Australian Championship was played today, and a number of exciting games decided the final standings. Former tournament leader Herman Van Reimsdijk picked the worst round to record his first loss, getting run over by the resurgent George Xie. This left Van Reimsdijk stuck on 8 points, while Dejan Antic score a win over Igor Goldenberg to jump to 8.5. He could have been joined by Stephen Solomon, but Solomon was lucky to escape with half a point after Tomek Rej launched a strong attack, but was unable to find the killer punch. The draw moved Solomon up to 8 points, and first place amongst the Australian players. This should also give Solomon his first Australian Championship title, assuming that Antic is ineligible as a non-permanent resident.
Xie's last round win moved him into outright 4th on 7.5, which is pretty remarkable given he started with 1/3. Also encouraging was the fact that =5th was shared between 2 junior players Moulthun Ly and Max Illingworth on 7/11.
Gareth Oliver and Junta Ikeda (both ACT) had good last round wins and finished on 6.0 (+1) in =11th. Current Australian Junior Champion Michael Wei would be disappointed with his 3.5, although this may be explained by a year spent studying hard at University rather than playing chess.

Rej,T - Solomon,S [E29]
Australian Championship , 11.01.2008

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.a3 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 0-0 6.e3 c5 7.Bd3 Nc6 8.Ne2 b6 9.0-0 Ba6 10.e4 Ne8 11.f4 f5 12.d5 Na5 13.e5 d6 14.dxe6 Qe7 15.g4 fxg4 16.Ng3 dxe5 17.fxe5 Rxf1+ 18.Qxf1 Qxe6 19.Ne4 h6 20.Ra2 Bxc4 21.Rf2 Nc7(D)
22.Nf6+ Kh8 23.Bxh6 Rd8 24.Bxg7+ Kxg7 25.Nh5+ Kg8 26.Rf6
[ 26.Qc1+-] 26...Rxd3 27.Rf8+ Kh7 28.Rh8+ Kxh8 29.Qf8+ Qg8 30.Qh6+ Qh7 31.Qf8+ Qg8 ½-½

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr Dejan Antic is the best GM in a world!

Anonymous said...

this was an excellent tournament! - well done to the organisers.