The last hoorah!

Fifty-one diehard chess players converged at the Nell van de Graaff Classic and teams event to farewell Outreach Chess who had been running events on the Gold Coast for the last 4 years. The highlight of the tournament was the new opening played!

Top seeds where IM Peter Froehlich, FM Gene Nakauchi and the ‘in form’ Phachara Wongwichit. This event also features team prizes with players joining into groups of 4 with an average rating of 1500 or less.

And of course we had the regular upset prize of chocolate for the biggest winners. Some players definitely got a tummy ache for over achieving.

Australian U12 Girls champion Leteisha Simmonds exploded out of the blocks with upsets in both the opening rounds including against David Lovejoy (800 pts) for a draw and a win against John Humphrey (150 pts). No one was fooled by Leteisha’s serene smile after that start!

Round 2 was preceded by the free sausage sizzle which smelled great all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Round 2 also saw upsets by visually impaired Zac Clarkson over Peter Booy (400 points) and Philip Ee against Lalo Laurent (300 pts). Lalo was visiting from New Caledonia and finding just how strong Australian chess is.

Round 3 saw the first of our top seeds take a crash as Yi Liu ensured that Gene Nakauchi never recovered from an opening material loss. There was a 300 point rating difference in that game.

Round 4 started on the Sunday and Mark Stokes stunned everyone with his new opening. It’s called the Redcliffe 20 minute gambit. It’s played when he went to pick up fellow Redcliffe player PJ Bargo and much to his surprise PJ was still wearing his pyjamas and feeling that he should be getting ready for something!  Mark and PJ arrived 20 minutes late but that wasn’t enough to deter Mark from defeating John Wu (200 pts).

My forecast for the dark horse was Jonas ‘Jaws’ Muller and he lived up to my expectations by earning a spot on board 1 against ‘the ever so relaxed’ Peter Froehlich. However, Peter turned ‘Jaws’ into a minnow with a quick victory and to secure one hand on the trophy he won last year.

Phachara Wongwichit maintained his consistency by dispensing with Yi Liu who was having a great tournament. This left the top two seeds equal first with 4/4. 

Meanwhile on the lower boards teenager Robbie Peck continued his strong year with a good win against Daniel ‘I can live on 10 seconds a move’ Ford (200 pts).

Round 5 exploded as loud as the traditional coming thunderstorm with Peter only able to draw with Phachara. At one stage Peter was behind two pawns. This allowed the Gold Coast’s favourite son Matt Sonter who recently returned from Europe to sneak into equal first after defeating David Lovejoy.

The final round was set for fireworks with Sonter playing Froehlich on board 1, Wongwichit playing the fast finishing Tyson Walker on board 2 and Gene Nakauchi playing Jonas Muller on board 3.

It was appropriate that the football led the way for upsets this weekend as Sonter showed no respect for Froehlich’s 400 point rating difference to win the game and the event with 5.5 from 6. This loss just blew Peter out of all contention.

Meanwhile Phachara could only draw against Tyson which gave Phachara equal second with Gene Nakauchi who defeated Jonas Muller.

However, the adventure doesn’t stop there! There were no less than 7 teams chasing team Jess who were leading by 1 solitary point into the last round. With the upsets on the top boards came massive ramifications in the teams event results with second level tie breaks needing to separate 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th.

The tie breaks meant that the final standings were 1^st place to team Matt (Matt Sonter, Gene Nakauchi, Peter Haron (who had a great finish to win the U1200 division) and Alex Arase.) Second place went to ‘The Evil Prawns’ (yes I spelled it correctly) who consisted of Yi Liu, Axel and Alex Stahnke and the fast improving Martin Jack. Third was secured by team Ford with Daniel Ford, Robbie Peck, Mark Stokes and another rising junior in Daniel Lapitan.

Phew, what a weekend and what a way to celebrate our final tournament but don’t worry the Gold Coast Chess Club will be reinvigorated by President Peter Haron and life member Graeme Gardiner to continue the fine tradition of running Gold Coast’s three major weekend tournaments next year.

So on behalf of Outreach Chess I would just like to thank all the players, sponsors and especially the volunteers who have helped over the last four years to make our chess tournaments great and really, really enjoyable.

Take care and God bless,

Peter Bender