Sunday 12 October 2008

A win for the good guys

It is a sad fact in Australian chess that most State Championships no longer attract the absolute top quality fields they did 40 or 50 years ago. In the case of the NSW State Championship only Greg Canfell seemed to be a regular participant over the last decade or so. As a reward for his continued support of the event he collected 56 NSW Championship titles.
This year the NSWCA, through the efforts of Brett Tindall, decided to try and reverse this trend. All the leading NSW players were invited directly and consequently the strongest field in a number of years was assembled. In fact it was strong enough to qualify as an IM Norm tournament, with 6/9 being the score required for an IM Norm. The titled players in the event included GM Dejan Antic, IM George Xie, and IM Tibor Karolyi.
And with an event far stronger that previous years, guess who turned out to be the winner? That's right, Greg Canfell. He finished with 6.5/9, scoring his third IM Norm, and earning his 67th NSW Championship.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

imho, this event looked to have some dodgy aspets. 1. antic (the top seed) had to go back to serbia half way through and so finished all his games before the end. 2. rounds were split over different days and different locations. 3. some games were postponed. 4. the final round was not simultaneous. hence, the last round was easily open to fixing. 5. games/results were not posted to the public - hence little scrutiny of games/results as they were played :(

Anonymous said...

As usual an anon talks out of his hat!

1.Dejan Antic being the professional he is came to me before the tournament started and told me he had to leave the country before the tournament finished but was prepared to play all his games before he left as he gave a commitment to play in the tournament.

I then asked all player involved if they would reschedule theirs games with him and everyone agreed. I was present for all the games Dejan played and all games have been collected.

2.The tournament was organised to run the Championship at Sydney Academy of Chess and the Reserves at Parramatta RSL but some players in the Championship couldn't play Wednesday nights and Vince Suttor had trouble with Thursday nights.

3.All postponed games were played in front of myself or Nick Chernih.

4. What fixing? Last round Jesse Sales 5pts played Greg Canfell 5.5pts both chasing a norm and George Xie 5.5pts played Vladimir Smornov who was and still is in contention for a IM norm.

5. Results and some games have been posted on chesschat.org and cross tables on the NSWCA website. All games including the Reserves Championship have been collected and when input will be given to all the players involved and later posted on the NSWCA website and passed onto Paul Dunn.

Shaun, I said on chesschat that it was 6 (Since Corrected) it was in fact 7 titles that Greg has won.


Shane Burgess
NSWCA Tournaments Officer

Shaun Press said...

Thanks for the correction Shane, and congrats for your involvement in what was clearly a successful and significant tournament.

Garvin said...

of course mr anon did not put a name to his post. Should his name be changed to gutless wonder.

Anonymous said...

to respond to bergil.
with 1, you should not have accepted his entry. simply as that.
if he couldn't complete the tournament he shouldn't start.

with 2-4 these are concessions to accommodate players/schedules, etc.
this is fine in many situations.
however, i don't think they are ok in a fide-rated with norms being awarded.

this is my opinion. free speech is encouraged in australia (contrary to what garvin thinks).