Friday, January 15, 2010

2009 Chess Medal Winners

During the closing ceremony of the just completed Aussie Chess Championships, ACF boss Gary Wastell announced the latest winners of Australia's chess medals. They are as folows:

GM David Smerdon
Steiner Medal (Australian Player of the Year for 2009)

Bobby Cheng
Arlauskas Medal (Australian Junior Player of the Year for 2009)

Allan Wright
Koshnitsky Medal (Chess Administration)

Being a selector for the Steiner, I've got to say that I was genuinely considering between Smerdon and Cheng. However, in the end I voted for GM Smerdon. In addition to David's long list of firsts in 2009 (e.g. Queenstown, the Zonals and the NSW Open), I was particularly impressed by his willingness to give something back, either coaching up and coming juniors or simply being amongst us commoners, just playing in regular weekend events.

Congrats to all these guys.

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