Soo and Sean shine with second placing at the Hjorth Open

The Melbourne Chess Club's Greg Hjorth Open Weekender saw 86 entrants with IMs James Morris and Stephen Solomon as well as WGM Julia Ryjanova being the favourites to clinch the $2000 top prize (out of a prize fund of $6000).

A couple of Singapore youngsters, 15 year old Sean Christian Goh and 21 year old Soo Kai Jie however made their way into the prize tally when they scored 7/9 points to tie with the IMs for joint second place, (half a point behind the champion Julia) thanks to their final round exploits - Sean's last round win over the higher rated Kayson Wang and Kai Jie holding top seed Morris to a draw.

Apart from the $625 earned, Sean and Kai Jie nabbed 39 and 18 elo points respectively. The boys are in contention for the event's Brilliancy Prize with the following efforts  which are ironically similarly themed - Black did not do enough to restrain White's central pawn break and soon, the first player blasts through with a pulverizing Knight sacrifice and Black's king is surrounded by enemy forces and thus had to resign in 20+moves.

The boys certainly had a hackfest, eh.

Final Results (Main prize winners)

1st: WGM Julia Ryjanova, 7.5/9 (inclusive of a 1st round bye), $2000 

Equal 2nd: IM Stephen Solomon, Stephen, IM  James Morris, Sean Christian Goh, Soo Kai Jie,  7/9, $625 each. 

Equal 6th: Chris Kolak,  Daniel Gusain, Nicholas Ilic, 6.5/9, $50 each.

More information on the Hjorth Open can be found on Chesschat.