Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Congratulations IM Zong-Yuan Zhao

International master Zong-Yuan Zhao opted for an easy 5-mover draw against Malcolm Tredinnick in the last round to secure victory in the 2006-07 Australian Open. Zhao finished the event on 9.5 points out of 11 games.

Top finishers are:

9.5 Zhao, Zong-Yuan
9.0 Rogers, Ian
8.5 Bluvshtein, Mark; Johansen, Darryl
7.5 Antic, Dejan 7.5
7.0 Goldenberg, Igor; Tredinnick, Malcolm

More results from the official website.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats to Zhao on a very nice job in winning the Open.
I spoke with a Canadian 'net friend' about Bluvshtein's results. His only comment, "Untitled Aussies are dangerous." We have some great players, we need some great administrators to assist in getting them the recognition they deserve in the form of titles, etc.

Anonymous said...

Nice to see Bluvshtein was humble enough not to blame his results on jet lag or some other convenient excuse.

In the past some visiting title players were rather miffed that they couldnt mow down the local opposition.

Anonymous said...

It was a tremendous effort by Zhao, but the real shame was that it won't count as a GM norm. Despite having a performace over 2700 by the end of round 10, FIDE require a player to a minimum average opposition of 2381 for a GM norm to be valid.
The organisers had endevoured to make the tournament as attractive to norm aspirants as possible by having 4 Grandmasters take part, assuming that a number of Australian IM's would appreciate the opportunity presented to them. Unfortunately only Zhao and Rujevic were the only IM's that played while Goldenberg was the only FM.
So in the end what let Zhao down was the fact that other Australian players were not interested in "getting them the recognition they deserve in the form of titles, etc."

Anonymous said...

All of the overseas visitors were a lot of fun to have at the tournament. Hilton Bennet (NZ) and Henrik Mortensen (Denmark) were always fun to hang out with, despite hovering around the middle boards for most of the event. Antic and Bluvshtein both accepted their difficult games with politeness and a willingness to talk about chess afterwards. Bluvshtein especially, I think, will be a nice inspiration for the older teenagers who hung out with him during the event: away from the board, he's a well-mannered, but pretty typical 18 year old -- he's just a stronger player with more frequent flier miles than most people his age.

Anonymous said...

your the best chess player i have ever known! and u know me!