Revisiting Adelaide and its Chess Centre

The last time I went to the sleepy city of Adelaide was 7 years ago. Over the past 2 decades or so, things have changed tremendously (especially infrastructure and food/living costs). Take for example, the Chess Centre of South Australia. it is still the same as ever...but the buildings around it have sprouted up like the proverbial beanstalk. It is just surrounded by tall apartments on all ends.

Any outdoor meal will cost about $15 (so with drinks $20) per head and hotel/accommodation also doesn't come cheap these days. But the weather in Spring November is as nice as ever (15-25 degrees Celsius),  what Singaporeans will call Air-con weather, and of course the coffee is great and people are very friendly.

It so happens that the centre is only a 10 minute walk away from my hotel and a quick check on their website showed that the November Booster (15min + 2 sec rapid) event will be held that day. Just as 7 years back, Aaron Perkins was the organizer. The big difference is that the attendance this time was pretty small. There were only a total of 6 players. Aaron explained that the demand for their rapid weekend events has been dwindling this year though their team  events and big FIDE weekend events are still going on strong. So they will be revisiting the format for the quick-play events for 2025.

Thus we had a 6 player round robin event that day

Just to clarify, the stuff on the windows is street graffiti, not Christmas decor

I tied for 1st in the event with Perkins at 4.5/5. The games were not very eventful and my play after 5 years of tournament inactivity was quite sucky. There were 3 interesting points to show though.

So in my first tournament game after half a decade, I managed to blunder within 4(!) moves...

In this Scandinavian after 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nf3 Bf5!? 4 d4?, both my opponent and I didn't see how Black can grab a pawn here...

Although a couple of master friends assured me that White has sufficient compensation after 4...Qe4+ and 5....Qxc2, it clearly showed that I can't see 2 moves deep now

There were two other interesting positions though in subsequent games. In the Round 2 game against veteran Edgar Mdinaradze, a former Adelaide Champion and 7 time SA Senior Champion, I had this ending.position with a slight material advantage.

So I have a slight material advantage with 2 pieces for a rook. However, here, I thought it was important to take some time to find a plan rather than to develop stereotypically (eg Rf1, Be3). What White wants to do is to deny the Black rooks any good files to use as well as to restrain a possible kingside pawn advance with ...Ke6 and ...f5. So at least all these years of coaching kids on how to improve one's pieces came to good use personally. I came up with Nd1! with the idea of Ne3, to dissuade ...f5 (which is met by exf5 gxf5, and g2-g4!). After Nd1-e3, g2-g4 and Kg2, I could basically decide whether I want to play for a break on kingside, centre or queenside. Eventually I won with a d4-d5 break.

Finally, in the final round game against Dino Cinco, I had this Reversed Dubov Tarrasch position where I didn't have much. So I decided to turn the game tactically with 22 Re1!?, offering the d4-pawn. My opponent saw that after ....Qxd4, Nxg6 fxg6, Rxe6, the d5-khight is doomed and White retains a strong initiative. By presenting Black with tactical problems, my opponent erred immediately with  22...Rd6 (to protect the e6-bishop) and walked into a Nc4 fork and the game was decided thus.

So a joint 1st place with Perkins on 4.5/5 and a $20 first prize (which was quickly gone after a Noosa Burger meal from Betty's Burgers in town) and i got my chess fix from the trip.

I would also like to congratulate Matthew Izadi of Sydney who popped down to play his first rated event. By scoring 3/5 for 3rd place, he will get a nice initial rating of around 1800 or so (Aaron said he should get it cos he played 5 rated players).

Those who wish to check out the Adelaide tournament scene can visit their events webpage here.