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James Watson won the 2009 St George club lightning last night with a Fischer-like picket fence score of 11/11, followed by the unfortunate Jason Chan on 10/11 who only lost to Watson. Distant equal third were club regulars John Stuart Plant and Nicholas Kordahi on 7.5/11.
Top seed Mathew Drummond who out-rated the field by 200 points had a tournament he would rather forget. At the start of one of the earlier rounds Drummond took his seat at board 1 only to find that he was paired on board 2. A visibly frazzled Drummond then proceeded to quickly lose a piece to Jason Chan and resigned soon after. Drummond’s tournament never recovered who believed that even though he did not have the highest score in the tournament he should clearly float up to the leader James Watson. The arbiter Charles Zworestine stated that colour distribution is the primary indicator of allocation of pairings, and ratings or rank of players is a secondary indicator.
St George play North Sydney next Tuesday night at North Sydney Leagues in the annual big boards grudge match. This match has featured strong grandmasters in the past and hopefully this year will be no exception. Australia’s newest grandmaster Zong Yuan Zhao could be in action on top board which will be a treat for stalwarts of Sydney club chess.
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