2011 Arthur Koelle

2011 Arthur Koelle Tournament

2011

The inaugural Arthur Koelle Tournament was won by Rob Loveband. The Reserves Tournament was won by junior Jonathon Yates and Chris Segrave.

The last major event on the Club calendar has, traditionally, been the John Holmes Memorial, in honour of a promising young player and administrator who was killed in a car accident in 1970.
This year, a few members expressed the wish for a separate event for Reserves players, and so it was agreed that a new event, split into 2 tournaments would be played, and a change of name was deemed appropriate as well. The consensus view was that we name the new event after one of our most famous sons, Arthur Koelle, the 1971 Australian Junior chess champion. (see more on Arthur in the 2009 Arthur Koelle invitational report).
The Koelle ‘A’ tournament attracted an entry of 8 players, enabling a rare Round Robin event to be played, while the Koelle ‘B’ was a 7 round Swiss for the remaining 12 players.
Round 1 in the ‘A’ showed that competition was keen and reputations meant nothing,with ambitious junior James Watson resigning a drawn position against Patrick Cook, while Rob Bailey overcame Kevin Perrin. Joel Beggs began play, but, sadly, had to withdraw later, and so all his games were deemed forfeits.
In round 2, young James Watson continued to show he is no pushover in a hard fought draw with Kevin Perrin, and Club champion Rob Loveband fought out his almost traditional draw against Patrick Cook.
Round 3 saw James Watson continue his good showing with a win over Peter Miitel, while Rob Loveband got going with a victory over Kevin Perrin.
Round 4 was pretty much as expected. Patrick Cook drawing, again, with Kevin Perrin, while James Watson’s great run came to an end against Jamie Brotheridge.
Round 5 showed that James Watson is undeterred by defeat as he scored a noteworthy win over experienced chess trainer Rob Bailey, while Jamie Brotheridge held Rob Loveband to a draw.
Round 6 proved to be a “whitewash” with White winning all played games. Patrick Cook was very lucky to profit from an incomprehensible blunder by Jamie Brotheridge.
In the final round, Jamie Brotheridge recovered to defeat Kevin Perrin, while Rob Loveband made sure of outright tournament victory by defeating the fast improving James Watson.
This was Rob Loveband’s 4th Major title of the year, a Grand Slam!!, and cemented his place as the 2011 Player of the Year.
In the Koelle ‘B’, another of our up and coming junior players shone! Jonathon Yates scored an unbeaten 6 ½ from 7, conceding a draw only to equal first placed Chris Segrave.

To view some games, go to the games page here.

Standings

A Grade

Reserves