Round 1 results:
Tony Howes 1 Brian Willcock 0
John Curran 0 James Hiller 1
Peter Hiller 0 Harvey Quaresmini 1
Debbie Jenkins 1 Stuart Holt 0
Andrew Robinson 1 Stuart Wilson 0
Ross Mills 0 George Flitcroft-Smith 1
Marty Chadwick 0 Luthien Russell 1
The build up to the first round commenced well before the clocks started at 8.30pm with the late entries earlier in the day of Toowoomba based Ross Mills and Luthien Russell.
Then, at around midday the DOP received the following email:
“Andrew, I notice I am playing John Curran tonite.
I think tonights match should be billed as THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE II
or THE SOUND AND THE FURY III.
I AM determined to end my losing run tonight. James”
– James Hiller (original spelling and fonts maintained)
The response was:
“Just remember, if you talk the talk you’ve got to walk the walk”
– Andrew Robinson
John arrived half an hour before hostility commenced and came across James’ email. His response:
“He’s totally out of his league”
– John Curran (in a disgusted tone, accompanied by shaking of the head)
It should be noted that there is a history of great and bitter rivalry between John and James:
One Hour 19 July 2002 James ½ John ½
One Hour 1 August 2003 James 0 John 1
Flood Cup 23 April 2004 James 0 John 1
The ‘great match’ commenced a little after the others as James had purposefully arrived 5 minutes late as a psychological move. The position seemed evenly matched until James gained the exchange up at around move 16. Then, as another calculated psychological move, James pretended to lose concentration and started conceding pawns and pieces. John became over confident and took one piece too many at move 27, conceding checkmate in one on the back row to James’ diagonal queen move. Brian Lara ‘the queen playing a lone hand’ had struck! Checkmate and revenge for last month’s Flood Cup travesty!!
Naturally the quotes came thick and fast:
“Just beware of the KO punch” – James
“I walked the walk” – James
“I can’t believe it” – muttered by John, shaking his head
“That’s the first time I won with Black in competition play” – James
“Don’t you mean: ‘that’s the first time I’ve EVER won in competition play’” – Andrew
“I think I showed who was out of his league tonight” – James
“Well I didn’t think you had it in you” – George
So, James won his first rated game over the board (rather than through his opponent’s narcolepsy) and ended a losing streak of 12 games in a row. After the game James was dispensing his chess wisdom most liberally (small ‘l’) with unsolicited in-depth analysis (all of it wrong, but who cares tonight?). The match score was re-constructed with great perserverance by Andrew, Brian and Peter using James’ scoresheet (John had taken his scoresheet home to be destroyed in a high temperature incinerator).
“In the heat of battle it’s hard to record all your opponent’s moves” – James
And so it was that all honours went to James on this night, and the whole club waits with great anticipation for the next meeting of these giants of chess in ‘RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE III”!!
All other games were an anti-climax compared with this. The first game to finish occurred when Tony overcame Brian who came up with:
“I let him win…”, then
“I’ve got a bad cold” – Brian Willcock <readers must imagine an unimpressive attempt at a cough>
Andrew beat Stuart Wilson in a game that remained competitive until near the end. Stuart entertained everyone after the game with his story of a recent game:
“James was down a rook, a minor piece and 3 pawns and offered me a draw!” – Stuart Wilson
Debbie came second in the Queensland Women’s Championship last weekend. Tonight she managed a win over Stuart Holt who lost a piece, and thereby the game, to a blunder. Harvey won a rook and pawn ending against Peter in a fairly close game.
George executed some fine positional play to set up a winning position against Toowoomba CC president Ross Mills. The youngest player in the tournament Luthien Russell managed a win after Marty blundered in the endgame. Marty was a pawn down in a rook ending but may have scraped a draw with accurate play.
Ray Adams and Jack Badenhorst have both advised the DOP that they will not be entering the One Hour. Therefore the format is a 14 player round-robin.
One Hour tournament 2004: Current standings
All players to play 13 games
|
No. |
NAME |
POINTS |
PLAYED |
|
1 |
Tony Howes |
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
Andrew Robinson |
1 |
1 |
|
3 |
George Flitcroft-Smith |
1 |
1 |
|
4 |
Harvey Quaresmini |
1 |
1 |
|
5 |
Debbie Jenkins |
1 |
1 |
|
6 |
Luthien Russell |
1 |
1 |
|
7 |
James Hiller |
1 |
1 |
|
8 |
Ross Mills |
0 |
1 |
|
9 |
Stuart Holt |
0 |
1 |
|
10 |
Brian Willcock |
0 |
1 |
|
11 |
Peter Hiller |
0 |
1 |
|
12 |
John Curran |
0 |
1 |
|
13 |
Stuart Wilson |
0 |
1 |
|
14 |
Marty Chadwick |
0 |
1 |
One Hour tournament 2004 results in detail
Quote of the night
There were so many quotes tonight, and the ones that were recorded for posterity are contained in the main report above.