NSW Junior Chess League

(26 Jan 2010):

Australian Junior Championships 2010

Andrew Pan wins Open Under 12 Title

Kashish Christian wins Girls Under 10 Title

Victorian 12-year-old Bobby Cheng, who won the World Under 12 Championship in November, is the new Australian Junior (Under 18) Champion. The highlights for NSW were Andrew Pan's win of the Under 12 title (with a magnificent score of 11/11) and Kashish Christian's win of the Girls Under 10 title. Joshua Behar finished second behind Andrew in the Under 12. Noah Gong just missed out on the Under 8 title after a marathon play-off.

NSW players also picked up nine of the titles in the subsidiary events – Lightning, Rapidplay and Problem Solving. The most consistent was Kashish Christian, who won the Girls Under 10 title in all three (as well as in the main event)!

For full results including games see the AJC website, which you can find by clicking on the link at the top of the right-hand column.

(22 Jan 2010):

Summer Holiday Tournaments 2010

Bernard Chau wins Summer Three-Day Tournament

Joshua Lau wins Summer One-Day Tournament

Clive Ng wins Summer Two-Day Tournament

Peter Dixon and Ramon Aich tie in Orange Summer Tournament

Thirteen-year-old Bernard Chau has added to his list of tournament victories by winning the 2010 Summer Three-Day Tournament. Bernard, who won last summer's One- and Two-Day Tournaments, made sure of this summer's Three-Day Tournament by obtaining a clean score, 9 out of 9.

Another thirteen-year-old, Joshua Lau, who finished second in the Three-Day Tournament, won the One-Day Tournament with a score of 8 out of 9.

Clive Ng has achieved his first major success by winning the Two-Day Tournament, his last junior tournament as he turns 18 in a couple of weeks. He conceded two draws to finish with 11 out of 12.

In the Orange Summer Tournament Peter Dixon tied with Ramon Aich, winner of the previous three holiday tournaments in Orange and Dubbo.

For full scores of all four tournaments see "Results" at left.

(13 Jan 2010):

NSWJCL Ratings Officer Allan Wright awarded the Koshnitsky Medal

The Australian Chess Federation today announced that the 2010 winner of the Koshnitsky Medal for services to Chess Administration is the NSWJCL Ratings Officer Allan Wright. The medal, named after the famous Australian chess player and administrator, the late Gary Koshnitsky, has been awarded annually since 1982.

The citation for the award is as follows:

Allan Wright has been Ratings Officer for the NSW Junior Chess League since he was elected to its council in 1990. He has developed a rating system suited to the particular characteristics of junior competitions (one challenge being to meaningfully rate the many players who play only a few games). The current ratings list contains over 7000 junior players, of which nearly 3000 are included in the list published in the NSWJCL’s quarterly magazine. Allan processes all the ratings himself and has to cope with thousands of inter-school match result cards, many of which are incomplete, inconsistent or have players’ names misspelt, and require considerable detective work to decipher.

Allan’s other main role for the NSWJCL is running the league’s inter-schools competitions in the Hunter Region. He and his wife Dorothy have built up the main Primary Schools Competition in this region to over 100 teams from nearly 50 schools. The league’s Primary Schools One-Day tournaments have also been growing in popularity – the two Hunter Region tournaments in this series now attract about 70 teams.

In addition Allan runs the Newcastle Junior Chess Club, which meets weekly. In the 1990s he used to travel to Sydney to help arbit at the NSWJCL’s school holiday tournaments, but now concentrates on running holiday tournaments in Newcastle and helping with tournaments on the Central Coast.

Allan is the fourth NSWJCL office-bearer to be awarded the medal, after Margaret Cuckson (1995), Richard Gastineau-Hills (2001) and Charles Zworestine (2009).

(13 Jan 2010):

Australian Championships 2010

Former NSWJCL members GM Zong-Yuan Zhao and IM George Xie came first and second in the Australian Championship which concluded today. Zong-Yuan scored a superlative 10 out of 11 (no losses, two draws) and George was not far behind with 9 out of 11 (losses to Zong-Yuan and previous Australian Champion Steven Solomon), which was 1.5 points ahead of English GM Gawain Jones in third place. George's result secured his second GM norm – he needs only one more for the GM title. Junior Max Illingworth also achieved an excellent result, finishing equal fifth (out of 28 players) with 6.5 points.

A large number of NSW juniors played in the supporting tournaments with many notable results.

Australian Major (96 players): =12th (7/11) Oscar Wang; =16th (6.5/11) Anton Smirnov, Andrew Pan, Dawen Shi, Peng Yu Chen, Benjamin Encel, Alexander Papp; =31st (6/11) John Papantoniou, Jack Ruan; =45th (5.5/11) Pasan Perera, Dylan Siow-Lee; =57th (5/11) Adrian Kong, Jonathan Ren, Kinto Wan; =67th (4.5/11) Vincent Chen.

Australian Minor (42 players): =8th 6.5/11 Daniel Zhang; =15th (6/11) Leo Jiang; =20th (5.5/11) Victor Dai, Aran Sandrasegaran; =37th (4/11) Jasper Hong.

Norths Classic (21 players): 2nd (5/7) Peter Yang.

For full details (including a commentary by GM Ian Rogers which is well worth reading), see www.australianchesschampionship.com.

Membership of the NSW Junior Chess League (NSWJCL), available to juniors under 18, entitles you to participate in our junior chess tournaments and coaching clinics, and to receive the quarterly magazine JUNIOR CHESS, the League's official journal, which gives details of all our activities, ratings, puzzles, games, tournaments, results, etc. Full members are also entitled to play in NSW Chess Association events. For details see "Membership" in the menu in the left-hand column.