Nations come together

The tournament that brings all the nations together and no we aren't talking about the Olympiad, but we are talking about the zonal championships.

The Open section attracting 56 players from Australia (AUS), host federation New Zealand (NZL), Fiji (FIJ) and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Two other nations that are part of the Oceania region, Palau (PLW) and Solomon Islands (SOL) didn't fill a player to represent them in the championships. Unfortunately not a big number in the Women's section with only 11 players from Australia, New Zealand and Fiji which is now resulting in a round robin.

In the Open section we have had a few upsets already and only 4 rounds have been played. A lot of the top seeds have conceded points. Just by having a look at the standings after round 4 will give you some indication.

 
  
  1   Zhao, Zong-Yuan       AUS   2586 2579 gm    4    
  2   Illingworth, Max      AUS   2311 2284 fm    3.5  
3-15  Brown, Andrew         AUS   2175 2168       3    
      Stevens, Tristan      AUS   2050 2004       3    
      Lane, Gary W          AUS   2373 2319 im    3    
      Schon, Eugene         AUS   2157 2153       3    
      Ly, Moulthun          AUS   2321 2288       3    
      Ansell, Alan          NZL   2001 1884       3    
      Ikeda, Junta          AUS   2262 2238 fm    3    
      Cheng, Bobby          AUS   2335 2207 fm    3    
      Smerdon, David C      AUS   2531 2488 gm    3    
      Morris, James         AUS   2270 2190 im    3    
      Smith, Robert W       NZL   2287 2289 fm    3    
      Feldman, Vladimir     AUS   2262 2181 im    3    
      Reilly, Tim           AUS   2276 2358 fm    3 

  

It shapes up to be a tough tournament and anyone can get still get the IM and FM titles that are up for grabs.
The top players from Papua New Guinea and Fiji are as follows:

       Kumar, Manoj          FIJ   2011 1859       2
       Marcos, Joselito      PNG   2095 1747       2



   

The Women's section is pretty one sided and doesn't have last zonal's winner, WIM Arianne Caoili participating in the event but we do have another new player, WIM Biljana Dekic though, who surprisingly is leading the tournament. Below are the standings of the tournament after 5 rounds:

  1   Dekic, Biljana          AUS   2095 1949 wim   4.5  
 2-3  Berezina-Feldman, Irina AUS   2238 2047 im    4    
      Guo, Emma               AUS   1969 1856 wfm   4    
  4   Smith, Vivian           NZL   1810 1571       2.5  
 5-8  Tsoi, Nicole            NZL   1675 1417       2    
      Drastik, Penelope       AUS        1533       2    
      Setiabudi, Megan        AUS   1627 1397       2    
      Wijesuriya, Vineetha    AUS   1892 1696       2    
9-10  Gao, Judy               NZL   1914 1616       1    
      Chai, Hweimeen          AUS        1550       1    
 11   Vukikomoala, Hilda      FIJ                   0   

Anyone can still get the WFM title, which there is 2 been awarded, but there is only one person I think will get the WIM title and that is WFM Emma Guo.

Stay tuned in the coming days as I will be publishing some games from both the Open section and the Women's section.

Sunshine state attacks

The Sunshine State has had an attack of flood, but not just any old flood, but the worst flood in the history of the State.

These floods said by the Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh to be the worst ever in the State. Some of the worst hit towns are: Gailes, Goodna, Grantham, Gympie, Ipswich, Lockyer Valley, Rockhampton and Toowoomba. The cities of Toowoomba and Ipswich were the worst hit out of the list mentioned.

Toowoomba was the first of the two major cities to be hit on monday which totally flooded the whole city. With the floods peaking at 19.1 metres, it caused chaos in the main street where all the shops were based. It was devasting and locals were stunned and shocked that the floods could have reached Toowoomba. For everyone out there who doesn't know much about Toowoomba, Queensland, this city is located 127kms South East of Brisbane. With a population of around 130,000 people and with the town sitting 700m above sea level, you can only imagine why you not evacuate being so high from the ground. Toowoomba locals can now only look towards to the future and the clean-up ahead of them. As a result of these floods, lives have been lost in Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley. A total of 12 people have died and as many as 50 people missing. We can only hope that the people of Toowoomba can re-group and continue on with life after the disaster that has his hit this great city of Queensland.

Now the other major city to have a full dose of flooding is Ipswich. This city has had floods up to 19.7 metres which is practically having your entire house under water. Can you imagine your house under water at all? I can't and the locals certainly can't. Back in 1974, Ipswich had a flood disaster that had similar depth of water in it and you can only imagine if there were locals there from that year what they would be feeling right now. I was able to get in touch with a local, Snjezana Bobic, from the town of Redbank, located 29kms north of Brisbane. Snjezana, a journalist herself, was able to tell me first hand of her experiences and even provided me with two photo's of Ipswich, one including Redbank.

Snjezana, the photographer of this photo told me the blue building in this picture is Collingwood Park and the Redbank Sports Complex Centre is under water very badly. The height of where this photo is taken she tells me is on the third level of the Redbank Shopping Complex so you can imagine how badly it is. Having got the bare essentials from the shops she went home and was told to evacuate her premises immediately. Her family departed the premises and went to an evacuation centre where Ms. Bobic describes the emotions floating around there.

Snjezana's family arrives at Springfield evacuation centre and sees people who have lost absolutely everything and elderly people as well and yet, the locals are more worried for her family. "People are tring to have happy spirits in this terrible time" qoutes Ms. Bobic. People are hungry and trying to find something to do. Not know if her house will actually survive the floods or not was a terrifying experience for her and the locals at Springfield evacuation centre. It will take between 24-36 hours before the flood will even calm down. With electricity cut from most properties in Ipswich, only generators are to be used in hospitals and police stations. Back in the 1974 floods, people raced back to there homes and a lot of people got eletrcuted so the death rate was high. Local and state politicians are asking you not too rush back to our home as electricity could be floating around in the water.

I will now show you another photo of Goodna, another town of Ipswich where it is flooded totally except for a little bit which was also provided to me by Snjezana Bobic.



This area is probably the best area of Goodna.

With the floods now making its way to Brisbane and already have hit the 4.40 metre mark, we can only expect drastic things to happen any hour now. I was informed about 90 minutes ago that the Gold Coast will probably get some floods as well. Just recently the Kings of Chess Club hosted the Gold Chess Festival from the 26th-30th of December. Then there were terrible weather with rain everyday.

Having had some conversation with President of Chess Association of Queensland, Garvin Gray, he has assured me that no chess clubs in his state have been affected by the floods. However reports have come in saying that Ipswich Road, where the Brisbane Chess Club is a possible road that could have some flooding. How much we don't know exactly.

We can only wish that the floods don't affect the chess community in any way at all, but we hope that these floods don't affect any more people or businesses badly.

If you wish to donate to the flood relief fund you can at this website: www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate and you can choose your way of donating and the amount you wish to donate.

Chess puzzle

To start things off we will have a chess puzzle but it may be a hard for some people and easy for some players. Have a go at solving this puzzle.

White to move and checkmate in 8 moves. Post your solution to what you think it is.