This event is almost to the half way point, with Aleks Wohl the best of the Australian's with 4/5 (+3=2). David Smerdon is on 3.5, despite missing one round, apparently due to illness. Finding the current standings on the tournament website seems impossible (to me at least), but fortunately the results are also being hosted at www.chess-results.com (I should have looked there first).
One of the interesting things about this tournament is that it is being held as one big swiss. When the requests for entries were sent to all the federations it stated that each federation could send representatives for the Open/Womens plus representatives for U/20, U/18 ... U/8. I'd simply assumed that they were holding separate tournaments for each section. But no. The winner of the Under 8's Commonwealth Championship doesn't get to play just other Under 8's. They may have to play big scary IM's and GM's instead.
The other interesting thing is that at least 3 GM's playing in this event are likely to make the trip to Canberra to play in the Doeberl Cup. Hopefully an official announcement can be made shortly.
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The tournament website has apparently been updated. Wohl and Smerdon are now both on 4.5, with the leader, Himanshu Sharma, on 5.5 and 11 players on 5.
The tournament was played last year as one open swiss, with the same format of awarding medals for the age groups. As these are invariably mid field they are a little random, but I guess the format is easier on the organisers and has the advantage of giving all those scary Indian juniors tough competition.
Gareth is playing a 1900 FIDE rated 9 year old tonight. Last night he had a 15 year old rated over 2300, whose rating has gone up 300 points in the last year and another junior a couple of rounds ago, who was beating up GMs and IMs in a tournament in Spain in July! The strength of these kids is just incredible.
David was indeed very ill - I had an e-mail from Shannon and he was as sick as anything the night before he forfeited.
He and Gareth woke up Shannon and Alex Jule at 4 in the morning to raid the medicines I had sent over.
Jenni
Things are getting a bit rugged when even a junior has a legitimate complaint about ultra strong juniors who are so small they're almost invisible.
Also that update is after round 6 in which Aleks Wohl drew with GM Kunte - his second draw against a GM in two rounds and no "GM draw" either. He now plays another GM today. David won and has dropped only half a point in actual play.
Denis J
Update on David's illness. He is still not that well and throwing up a little, but not as bad as a few days ago.
Gareth (who is sharing a room with David), was feeling a little unwell yesterday and possibly is coming down with the lurgy.
Bus ride is about 1 hour from hotel to venue, and is a pretty rough ride, so they are finding that pretty tiring before the games.
On the positive side everyone is having a great time and really enjoying the event. I understand Harry (the 8 year old), is enjoyng himself and not worried at having to play big scary people.
Jenni
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