The Ballarat 2004 Championships          By Bas van Riel

Gordon Lindberg is the new 2004 Ballarat Champion.

Play-off for the B-grade title between Tim Cummons and James Eldridge

(3rd June 2004)

This years Ballarat championship is marked by the absence of defending champion Simon Rutherford and yours truly. Instead, (stimulating) new blood was injected by the participation of Gordon Lindberg, who currently studies at the Ballarat University, and Bill Stokie from Geelong. The latter, despite his rating, but due to his late entry, was placed in the B-grade. One Ian Rogers (!) did register for the B-grade but withdrew after the first round...

The current club policy for the championships is to split the field into two groups according to ratings. The winner of last year's B-grade also enters the A-grade. All nice and good in theory, but in practice some people strongly prefer to play in one or the other section. However, with some arm twisting (of the DOP and the rules), the current line-up of the two sections does not seem to make much sense, but everybody seems happy....

This is probably the place and moment to point out, that this website doesn't represent the Ballarat Chess Club any longer and that some energetic young members with plenty of fresh ideas have decided to highjack this role. It better be good, as they have not gone further than just reporting this event, thus far. Of course, it is only early days and naturally  we are all looking forward to a creative, novel and innovative Ballarat Chess Club website, which would make the input of your current reporter superfluous.

Up till now, the new webmasters have been busily copying material from this website, but I was told that they soon will fill it with their own ideas.   Please forgive my bitchiness, but these new webmasters (and their supporters) better deliver the goods to justify the damage they have caused by pushing the need for their own website. Silly buggers!

Not being a participant, I can only pass on the results, some snippets of information which I hope to pick up from third parties, and to comment on the official info. For further details about this championship one is referred to the new and  now official (?) website!

Firstly, I have to admit that a strong start of the website was made regarding the current tournament. It included the scores of the games of the first round, and lively reports by Patrick Cook, covering the first four rounds. Hopefully more games (and analyses) will follow.

One thing is certain: the playing field is very level, as evidenced from the results in first 4 rounds. And quite a number of surprises have occurred already, not the least the defeat of top-seed Jing by Judd Madden. Deservedly so and via a good game, I was told. All the draws by Patrick Cook are no surprise at all (why does he plays chess, one sometimes wonders..) but he was lucky to win against Clint (in a loosing position) and against Jamie who accepted Pat's usual draw offer in a better position.

Remarkable is Kevin Perrin's high number of (generally hard-fought) draws. The surprise packets for opposite reasons sofar are the two Baileys: Robert lost only in round 4, while Mitchel was expected to do well after his recent surge in ratings but lost both his games todate.

Looking at the ratings we can clearly distinguish three groups. A group of 5 players (the topseeds) will ultimately decide amongst themselves who will win the championship, I believe. Below the no.5 seed (Scott Stewart) we see a considerable gap before finding a bunch of 4 players, all with a rating of just above 1600. They will make (and already have) life hard for the 'stars' by stealing the occasional points off them. Following is a drop in ratings of about 200 points down to the group of (expected) tail enders.

The unlucky Jamie Brotheridge (2nd group) has played all his  4 games against the top players, scoring two good draws.

From the top group Jing Jia lost 1 1/2, John Lavery 0, Gordon Lindberg 1 (from 5), Patrick Cook 1 1/2 and Scott Stewart 1/2 (unexpected) points against players from outside their own group after 4 rounds. Only 2 games were played amongst themselves resulting in a draw between Scot and Gordon and a win by Jing Jia over John Lavery. It is imperative in my view for the winner to limit the damage (=win) against the lower rated players and 'make his move' against the fellows in the top group. 

(August 13th 2004.)

The dice has rolled, and it has decided that Gordon Lindberg has won the 2004 title of Ballarat Club Champion. For different reasons, it was a very strange and unusual championship. 

Gordon had joined the club for the first time because he started his studies at the Ballarat University earlier this year. But at one point he decided to abandon his studies, but not the championship. As a consequence, he played most of his games within a short period of time and ahead of schedule, acting as the bunny for others to try and beat his score. His last game was against the no1 seed, Jing Jia and when their game was drawn, only Scott Stewart had the chance to catch up on him. In his last two games, Scott 'only' had to score 1^1/2  to overhaul Gordon against lowly rated players, and win the title. However, Scott drew against Mitchell Bailey and even lost his last game miserably against Charlie Andrews.

The latter incidentally, became the surprise packet by finishing equal 4th. Just like two years ago, his games were characterised by lucky and inexplicable wins.

Remarkable is the big gap between the 4-5th (9 points) and the 6-8th (6 points). Of these latter three, it was said that Peter Lumson had an awful tournament with quite a number of games which he won from completely lost positions; Patrick Cook, a multiple champion, completely lacked the will to fight (ie. 3 wins, 3 losses and 7 draws); while Jamie Brotheridge has established himself as a solid and dangerous competitor, finishing according to his seeding.

The old war-horse/knight Kevin Perrin had a troublesome tournament and he will finish at par, only if he manages to win his last, postponed game.   

In the B-grade, a play-off between Tim Commons and James Eldridge resulted in James becoming the ultimate winner. The complete results are unavailable.

-  A Grade   (courtesy of John Lavery)

ppn=postponed game

-B Grade  Double round robin

	Seed	Rating	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Tot
1.Bill Stokie	1	1583		0	1	0					1
2.Tim Commons	2	1359	1				1   1		1	1	5
3. (bye)			0					0	0	0	0
4. James Eldridge	3	1268	1				1	1	1		4
5.John Abson	5	1091		0  0		0		1		1	2
6.Darren Young	4	1112			1	0	0		1		2
7.Michael Schreenan	6	839		0	1	0		0			1
8. Reuben Barnett	7	unr.		0	1	0					1