Waitakere and ICC Tournaments

National Master Leonard McLaren won the Waitakere Licensing Trust Open with a score of 5/6, Palmerston North was represented by Justin Davis who finished on 2.5/6. Crosstable taken from here, full results here. The Waitakere is clearly one of the bigger and better tournaments on the New Zealand chess calendar. Unfortunately the games from these tournaments are not easily available which is rather sad.

I was unable to take part in the Auckland tournament and had to console myself with the Internet Chess Club Open. Top prize of $600 was won by World Number 8 Hikaru Nakamura. The attractive part of the tournament were the grading prizes including u2200, u2000, u1800 and u1600 each 1st place was worth $200 2nd $100 and 3rd was a years free membership to ICC. I finished out of the prizes but had some interesting games along the way.

The ICC open consisted of 4 qualifiers of 11 rounds, in the game below I am white.

The time control is 3 0 so moving quickly is quite important so when I played 20.Qg5 threatening mate I thought maybe I have a chance until my opponent bashed out 20...Nb3# oops. Luckily I was able to redeem myself on the very last game of the tournament

I am white in the position below

My opponent rated 300 points higher than me hammered down the move 10...b5 allowing a 11.Nf6# and probably one of my quickest wins in blitz.