Chess State Finals
On October 11th, we attended the Girls Chess State Finals at Glen Eira College with the ambitious goal of winning to qualify for the nationals school competition in December.
Congratulations to all the students who participated: Aadriti B, Amrit L, Annaeya B, Aparna M, Callista L-L, Catherine J, Valentina D, Xin C, Kathleen H, Tiffany H, Namya M, Keen H, Sanaaya R, and Shalana P. Special shoutout to Xin who was the overall, undefeated winner of the tournament, with a most impressive 6.5 points out of 7!
For most of the tournament we felt quite pressured by the other schools, especially PLC (the 6 time national champions in a row) and St Catherines, but we were in first place the whole way through and won the State Finals with a 3.5-point lead, equivalent to winning 3 games and drawing one.
Thus we have qualified for Nationals, which will be held in Cairns on December 2nd-4th! Nationals is a very different format to the normal tournaments, in that it is a round-robin, with the top 4 players of each state’s best school playing against the top 4 players of every other state!! The time controls are also different, as it will be 60 minutes per player plus 10 seconds increment per move, allowing for more thinking time in comparison to the usual 15 minutes per player and hence more quality games.
Exciting times ahead!
The Mac.Rob Chess Team