The Wood Green International, 19-23 August

Title-norm all-play-alls are coming thick and fast. Following the Muswell Hill International earlier this month, we now have one organized by Lawrence Cooper in his home town of Stafford. (It was called the Wood Green International, despite taking place nowhere near Wood Green, because the players were mostly members of the Wood Green club.) This was a somewhat stronger event, with GM norms available; the field was such that the GM norm score was 7 for all players and the IM norm score was 5.

Going into the final day's play, there were three live norm chances, and two of them came in; Ravi Haria wrapped up a GM norm and Marcus Harvey an IM norm with a round to spare. Jonah Willow's norm chances ended in round 8, when he lost to Jonathan Blackburn needing 2/2.

This is Marcus's final norm, and he is well over the 2400 threshold, so that should be the IM title in the bag. Ravi needs one more norm and to get his rating over 2500; the 37 rating points he has gained here and at the World Cup should help a lot with that latter aim.

Also worthy of note here is that deputy arbiter Agnieszka Milewska gained her final FIDE Arbiter norm at this event. Congratulations to her.

 

Rk.
Name Rtg Federation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Pts.
1 IM Haria Ravi 2440 England * 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 7½
2 GM Fodor Tamas Jr 2520 Hungary 0 * ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1 6½
3 GM Hebden Mark L 2453 England ½ ½ * ½ 1 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 6
4
 FM Harvey Marcus R 2440 England ½ ½ ½ * ½ 1 ½ ½ 1 1 6
5 GM Turner Matthew J 2509 Scotland ½ ½ 0 ½ * ½ ½ 1 ½ 0 4
6 IM Fitzsimons David 2324 Ireland 0 0 0 0 ½ * 1 ½ ½ 1 3½
7 IM Greet Andrew N 2417 Scotland 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 * 0 ½ 1 3
8
 FM Willow Jonah B 2396 England 0 0 ½ ½ 0 ½ 1 * ½ 0 3
9
 FM Derakhshani Borna 2373 England 0 0 ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ * ½ 3
10 FM Blackburn Jonathan LB 2235 Wales 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 ½ * 2½




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Great Players: Ignatz von Kolisch

Image
I first referenced this video in the piece about Alexander Petrov , but it bears another look: You will notice that  Paul Morphy was dominant throughout his entire competitive career, but his reign as world #1 was interrupted briefly by a player called Kolisch, who then almost immediately disappears from the scene. So this piqued my interest: who was this mysterious Kolisch, and why is his name so much less familiar than those of his contemporaries? Well, the answer, on looking at his  Wikipedia article , seems to be that he just had a very short playing career, and did not play much against the big names of his day. This is backed up by his chessgames page , which shows nearly all his games coming in the years 1857-1867. This did, however, include two triumphs in international tournaments. One was the relatively weak Cambridge 1860 event, but the other was the rather stronger  Paris 1867 event, which would also star future world champion Steinitz. This tournament effectively mark
Read more

West is Best at the 4NCL, Rounds 1-2, 22-23 October 2022

 The 4NCL , Britain's only professional chess league, has, like many chess events, been disrupted by the ongoing pandemic. The 2019-20 season was aborted six rounds in; there was no 2020-21 season, and the 2021-22 season was an experimental format for that season only: a Swiss system (chosen so that if it needed to terminate early, the final finishing positions would still be reasonable ones). The twelve teams who finished at the top of the Swiss that year would be in Division 1 in the new 2022-23 season, and my team, West Is Best, were one of the lucky twelve. This was naturally always going to be a tricky season to negotiate, and the way the draw was done meant we could expect a rocky start: the top six finishers of the previous season were paired to face the teams finishing 7th-12th in the first six rounds of the season, thus maximizing the chances of exciting promotion and relegation clashes occurring towards the end. Thus, arriving at the Daventry Court Hotel on the Saturday,
Read more

4NCL Congress, 9-11 July 2021

 So it turns out congress chess has started to make a return, in the shape of the long-running series of 4NCL Congresses . The 25th such event was held in Leamington Spa over the past weekend, and attracted a total entry of 130 entrants across 3 sections. Among the entrants were three grandmasters, Nigel Davies, Keith Arkell and Peter Wells, but none of those players actually won the Open section. First place was instead shared by two strong young players, FM Jonah Willow (19) and CM Aaravamudhan Balaji (16), with 4½/5. Balaji's performance was especially impressive, including a win against Wells and a draw against Arkell on his way to a rating gain of 67.2 points. Arkell finished third on 4 points. I've annotated three of the games; thank you to Jonathan Tait for giving help on how to display them.
Read more