Tournament:
There were a total of 231 chess players at our annual Burwood Chess Challenge, hosted by Club Burwood RSL in their Entertainment Dome. This is the 4th time that this tournament has been held, normally in the Winter school holidays.
Their ratings ranged from 247 up to top seeded Yifu Wu, with 841. We also had about 100 unrated players in their first or second tournament.
There were a couple of shock upsets in the first half of this 8-round Swiss event, with 2 of the top 4 seeds falling early in Round 1 (with Ryan Maharjan defeating Brendan Anderson, a 347 point upset!) and in Round 4, where Ricky Guan surprised number 2 seed Sebastian Bracks, a 223 point upset victory.
Very often, all 8 rounds are needed with this many players in the tournament, in order to make sure that there is an outright winner. The stage was set for a final showdown on board 1 in the last round between leaders Yifu Wu and Angus Cheng, both on a perfect score 7/7. However they both had cold feet, and left their own fate out of their hands, with the computer counting up the tiebreak scorers after they drew their game quickly. See more on the tiebreak system here.
Congratulations Yifu, who came out on top in the battle of the highest tiebreak score. Yifu takes home trophy for 1st Place, and also will have his name engraved on the Burwood Chess Challenge large perpetual cup.
The final standings, crosstable and list of prizewinners can be downloaded from the links below. Sydney Academy of Chess would like to thank Club Burwood RSL for supporting the event by providing a fantastic and spacious hall, and for supplying lunch and drinks for the players and arbiters. Also a big thanks to the parents for making it possible for the players to compete, by driving them to and from Burwood, and to all of our wonderful arbiters and helpers on the day for working hard to ensure the day ran smoothly. Finally thanks to all of the players – the importance of displaying great sportsmanship and fair play benefits everyone and can never be understated!
We hope to see you at another chess event soon.
