Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Australian Open Round 4

Quite a blood thirsty round yesterday in the Australian Open with only six games being drawn out of 29 encounters. The high kill-rate, as might be expected, counted a couple of upsets. Sydneysider Robert Hvistendahl snagged the point from the 2122-rated local Roger Farrell and Mehmedalija Dizdarevic also failed against Gary McNamara. Another ACT resident, Milan Grcic, lost out to a visitor - Victorian player, Douglas Stones.

Were it not for his missed chances, aided perhaps by his seemingly perennial trouble with time, Junta Ikeda's draw with GM Dejan Antic might have been game of the round. Still, the Australian deserves our congratulations for a fine effort.

IM Zong Yuan Zhao, in his board 1 game, made it look easy against GM Mark Blvshtein. The visiting Canadian grandmaster's paralytic Queen-side pawns didn't help. Zhao had to merely mop them up, usher his little ones upwards carefully, and that was that.

On board 4, FM Igor Goldenberg delivered checkmate against Alex Mendes da Costa. A nice workout for Igor. I'm sure Alex will have learned something.

Our pick was the GM duel between Rogers and Johansen. I have to say I expected this to be another boring draw. But, no - this was grandmaster Ian Rogers in hot form! Love the finish.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good result for Zhong,keeps the GM's honest and on their toes.

Anonymous said...

Mos Ali is playing in the Open as well as the Major...now thats getting value for money.

Anonymous said...

From a local perspective, Andrew Brown also had a great result yesterday.

Also, check out the game Suttor v Lin from Round 3. Interesting for different reasons.

Libby