25 Mar 2019
On Friday 15th March a squad of 28/30 enthusiastic HSPA Chess players from both Primary and Secondary boarded a bus bound for the first tournament of the season - the 2019 NSW Chess Challenge (Heat) at Bishop Tyrrell Anglican College. We have been going to this tournament for many years now - and this year the number of entries broke all previous records - 296! It was going to be a tough tournament. In fact, the number of rounds was reduced from seven to six as the initial registration process for so many players took quite a bit longer than usual.
A number of our players were playing in their first big tournament as HSPA representatives. The tournament got under way and whilst played in a friendly positive spirit, there were some fierce battles on the board. Our top rated player Simon Gordon (YR11) narrowly escaped defeat in an early round when his opponent missed a mate in one! Simon made him pay for the oversight by winning that match. Close call there. Tristan Bates-Saunders, one of our very promising YR7 students had an unusually slow start to the tournament with no points registered in the first two rounds. However, he recovered in fine fashion by winning all four of his remaining four rounds! his score of 4/6 was vital as our forth best Secondary score [School Team scores use the points of the top four players combined]. Oskar Sutherland and Connor McKay also reached a score of 4/6 - whilst our best Secondary effort went to Simon Gordon (4.5/6) who could have at least had a half point more except for a very shrewd end game played by his opponent (very effectively (and legally) playing for time) in the final round under the serious duress of chronic time troubles on the clock - Simon's clock expired in an exciting end game scramble and sadly denied him a podium finish.
Perhaps the most impressive effort came from our 7 Primary division players. Not one of them failed to get at least 3/6 - an excellent achievement! - and four of them reached 4/6 or better. This helped their team score equal the 16.5 point total that our Secondary Team had acquired. Orlando Walshe (YR4) got 4/6 -as did Marley Burke and Cooper Williams (both YR6). Hugo Sutherland (YR5) posted another very impressive personal best with 4.5/6. In both cases the 16.5 point scores were marginally (1 point) short of qualifying for the Semi Finals (held later in the year). However, we are very hopeful that we will be able to qualify in our second and final chance to do so at the next heat of this tournament that we will be hosting (in our brand new Gym/Hall) in mid May. Very exciting!
Congratulations to all of our participants - a fine effort and always representing HSPA proudly - well done Team!
Tom Bonjekovic (HSPA Chess).