Congratulations to Evan Inavolu and Joseph Wong who are the latest Chess Kids Junior Masters. They were presented with their certificates at the State Primary Schools Finals on 25th October.
To become a Junior Master a player must achieve a rating of their age x 100 + 100.
Evan, aged 8, is rated 976 and Joseph, aged 11, is rated 1338. Well done boys!
This week I attended the Primary and Middle School State Finals of the Chess Kids Interschool Competition held at Monash University. It was a great day with over 400 players competing and a very high standard of play. I was supervising the top boards in Middle School Competition where Scotch, Brighton and Mazenod were battling hard for top spot.
The critical game saw Brighton’s top player Issac Ng paired against Scotch’s top player Nicholas Liu. Issac got off to a great start and was a rook ahead but Nicholas won back a piece and then the exchange and a very even rook ending was reached. Nicholas offered a draw, but with the title in the balance Issac bravely played on and they reached the following position where Issac (White) has just played d5 in response to Black’s f5. Nicholas must now choose between 1…exd, 1..fxe or 1…Kf6 but surely the result must be a draw??? Nicholas played a line which gave one of the players a chance to make a blunder and sure enough he did! But was it White or Black? Can you spot the trap that he fell for. The State title hinges on your decision!
3r4/5p1p/4p1k1/3P1p2/4P3/4K3/3R2PP/8 b KQkq – 0 1Should Black play 1...exd, 1...fxe or 1...Kf6?
Full results online. (Temporary problem with Tornelo and I don’t know why – please see PDF of primary-results, middle-years-results).
Great day today; congrats to Brighton Grammar for a win in the Middle-Years division, narrowly defeating Scotch College. That’s 2 from 2 for Brighton Grammar who also won the Open Secondary Finals two weeks ago.
We knew the Primary division was going to be close with Deepdene proving themselves too strong for Waverley Christian College and Patterson Lakes in third. Full results.
See some photos on Carl Gorka’s blog.
This video shows the skills of the Deepdene team — what speed and confidence!
Getting your opponent into Zugswang is fun! Zugswang is a position where any move your opponent plays 
hurts them. Basically you’re setting it up so they have to play a losing move.
Take a look at the picture here – Alistair Dyer in the TAS State Finals is having a laugh because he was able to force his opponent to lose the game!
This has been a busy week for interschool events with State Finals in Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia (in progress).
Here is the finish of a game from the 3rd round…
When you get older you want an easy life and analysing chess variations isn’t much fun. A nice simple position with a clear line of play that doesn’t require too much thinking would be ideal. A messy position with lots of promising tactics – captures and checks everywhere sounds like hard work! That’s why I need your help today. Have a look at the position below. I’m Black and my opponent has just played h3 attacking my B on g4 but I can move my N on f3 with discovered check and even double check. Looks promising but there are just too many possibilities for my poor brain to cope with. Worse still, a friend has just told me that he thinks that I have two ways to mate in three moves and has challenged me to find both! Can you help me?
Have you ever thought how we compare with chess players of past eras? How would the current World Champion, Anand, have gone against players from the 19th century such as Morphy and Anderssen? Surely today we are much better than our predecessors? We can run faster, jump higher and we live longer. We must be much smarter as we have invented computers an flown to the moon.
The other day I was reading the war diary of my great uncle who was killed in World War 1. He was just an ordinary guy but I was surprised to find that he was clearly more literate than I and must have had a very good education. Are we really better than those who have gone before us?
Let’s put it to the test. I’d like to take you back to the year 1619 when the Italian chess player Gioachino Greco reached the following position as White. He didn’t have a computer to help him but he wrapped up the game very nicely in three moves. Can you do as well?
r1b3nr/pppk2qp/1bnp4/4p1BQ/2BPP3/2P5/PP3PPP/RN3RK1 w KQkq – 0 1White to Play and Win
Safe, fun and free - battle other Chess Kids from around the World.
