Sunday, April 08, 2007

Wallis - Toth, 1-0

I don't have the game score yet but another upset was scored by another Australian Junior. Victorian Christopher Wallis defeated IM Andras Toth. It is certainly a fine day for Aussie juniors.

Who knows, maybe some day these young guys will one day be the next Smerdon. Smurfo, as he is known on ICC, has just drawn his game against GM Ian Rogers. It was an exciting game with both players queening a pawn. The position was such that one mistake would have meant goodbye on the spot.

Here are some partial results for round 5 in the premier event.

Wallis - Toth, 1-0
Rogers - Smerdon, draw
Ly - Matamoros, 0-1
Johansen - Stojic , 1-0
Antic - Hu, 1-0
Mikhalevski - Sales, 1-0
Morris - Shipov, 0-1

I must say, if you ever get the chance, do take the time to observe Sergey Shipov conduct a postmortem. You'll learn something. But more importantly, the guy is grandmaster yet is entirely full of humility. There is no pretense there whatsoever. He is very happy to analyse games even against the weakest (relative to him, of course) opponents. In his analysis of his game above against James Morris, he took time to explore lines where he would have lost. Many lesser mortals wouldn't have done that, insisting that they were winning right from move 1 as if it was fated!

I should mention that I just spotted some advertising for the upcoming NSW Open in June this year. They are professionally designed on what appears to be expensive paper. Let's see if all this will pay off.

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