Saturday 20 October 2012

Mate early, mate often.

Today was Election Day here in Canberra, with for seats in the local assembly. As I often do, I was at the polls early in the morning, before grabbing an egg and bacon roll outside the polling station, and then heading off to Street Chess.
And I might not have been to only one, as there was a very large field today. 25 players rolled up, which makes me wonder if the inability to get out of bed on Saturday morning is the real reason why more people don't play. Of course the fact that was a wonderful Canberra spring day (blue skies, not too warm weather) might have also been a factor.
Not only was the field large, but it was also very competitive. The bulk of the top half of the field were all rated within the 1700 to 1800 range, while the bottom half wasn't to shabby either. And in a result that mirrored some previous local elections, there were a couple of runaway winners (Yijun Zhang 6/7, Victor Braguine 5.5/7) and then a 6 way tie for third place on 4.5/7.

1 comment:

Garvin said...

I think it is not so much an issue of the inability to get out of bed on a Saturday morning, but with the election and then chess, people have the opportunity to combine two activities with the same time allotment.

Also being the election and having gone to the polls, players say, well I am already out and about, so might as well go play some chess.