Bolens: I sacrifice too much

Johny Bolens was up to his usual antics as he lost to Polish talent Dariusz Swiercz in their round 4 game. At an important moment, the local man suddenly began to wave his arms about, clasping his hands and every now and then looked upwards as if beseeching the high heavens. He did all these while seemingly muttering some prayer. Even his opponent, Dariusz, couldn't help himself and began to laugh.

It was all just a bit of trickery by Bolens. I've seen it before. You'd think he was winning, apparently celebrating some diabolical combo - in fact, he himself has realised that he's lost!

Playing his trusted anti-Sicilian maneouvre (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bc4), Bolens quickly coaxed a sharp position against the 12-year old. The Polish visitor, however, remained calm throughout and defended well enough. As we say at Hyde Park, Bolens just managed to only trick himself.




Bolens actually offered a draw after his 23. Rxd6. During the post mortem he had nothing to say but, "He was losing, but I played incorrectly".

My fourth round game against Ivan Zirdum was completely atrocious. Not worth talking about in detail. I should really take up poker, you know, like Jason Hu. Today he was seen wearing a bright red shirt with "I Love Poker" printed on it. Jason had a good win over Max Illingworth in the 4th game.




However I did score a win against my good friend and blitz sparring partner Toby Lewski in the third round. Toby's been around for yonks. I think he even won an Australian Championships reserves back in the 70's. These days you'll see him spend hours with Charles Ghenzer at the Town Hall chess club (just a pretend club, really). In the faster time limit, Toby has a big score against me. But today, I managed to get one back.



For other results, I leave that to our fellow blogger Trent Parker. Poor guy nearly had a heart attack this morning when he heard a phone ring with a familiar ringtone. Luckily it wasn't his. And one of our foreign visitors has a special request of the NSWCA: please update the website with the next round's pairings. Let's hope they can manage that.

More photos from the event are available in my flickr stream.