Place Name Feder Rtg Loc Score Progr.
1-3 Hu, Jason 2154 5 20.0
Lip, Michael 2059 5 19.0
Mandla, Blair 2088 5 16.0
4-8 Chan, Jason 2094 4 16.0
Huddleston, Heather 1642 4 16.0
Szeto, Jonathan 2025 4 15.0
Zvedeniouk, Ilia 1965 4 14.0
Spark, Benjamin Philip 4 12.0
9 Sreetharan, Kishore 1462 3.5 10.5
10-16 Lee, Terry 1509 3 13.0
Lo, Anthony 1530 3 12.0
Zworestine, Charles 2036 3 11.0
Rej, Tomek 2256 3 10.0
Vaccari, Nick 3 10.0
Utturkar, Ashwin 1787 3 9.0
Elgindy, Tarek 1436 3 8.0
17-18 Tran, David 2.5 9.5
Wong, Tony 1366 2.5 6.5
19-24 Mahoney, Chris 2 11.0
Barker, Mitchell 1588 2 10.0
Webster, David 1546 2 10.0
Plant, John-Stuart 1840 2 9.0
Batuwatte, Prabuddha 2 8.5
Murphy, Justin 2 6.0
25-26 Yao, Zhi 1.5 5.0
Oh, Jun-Hyun 1.5 5.0
27-28 Wheeler, Matthew 949 1 5.0
Sotiri, Diamand 1 2.0
29 Liang, Robert 1461 0.5 2.0
30 Lewis, Zachary 0 0.0
No Name Feder Rtg 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Rej, Tomek 16:L 22:W 18:W 11:L 14:L 30:W 2. Hu, Jason 17:W 13:W 7:W 3:W 5:W 4:L 3. Chan, Jason 18:W 12:W 11:W 2:L 8:L 10:W 4. Mandla, Blair 19:W 15:L 23:W 12:W 7:W 2:W 5. Lip, Michael 20:W 14:W 15:W 6:W 2:L 8:W 6. Zworestine, Charles 21:W 23:L 16:W 5:L 25:L 13:W 7. Szeto, Jonathan 22:W 16:W 2:L 14:W 4:L 11:W 8. Zvedeniouk, Ilia 23:L 25:W 20:W 13:W 3:W 5:L 9. Plant, John-Stuart 24:L 26:W 28:W :L :L :L 10. Utturkar, Ashwin 25:L 21:L 27:W 15:W 30:W 3:L 11. Huddleston, Heather 26:W 24:W 3:L 1:W 12:W 7:L 12. Barker, Mitchell 27:W 3:L 21:W 4:L 11:L 18:L 13. Webster, David 28:W 2:L 24:W 8:L 15:L 6:L 14. Lo, Anthony 29:W 5:L 25:W 7:L 1:W 16:L 15. Lee, Terry 30:W 4:W 5:L 10:L 13:W :L 16. Sreetharan, Kishore 1:W 7:L 6:L 30:D 22:W 14:W 17. Liang, Robert 2:L 28:L 30:D 22:L 26:L 29:L 18. Elgindy, Tarek 3:L 27:W 1:L 25:L 21:W 12:W 19. Wong, Tony 4:L 30:L 26:W 24:D 28:L 22:W 20. Wheeler, Matthew 5:L 29:W 8:L :L :L :L 21. Murphy, Justin 6:L 10:W 12:L 28:L 18:L 26:W 22. Yao, Zhi 7:L 1:L 29:D 17:W 16:L 19:L 23. Mahoney, Chris 8:W 6:W 4:L :L :L :L 24. Tran, David 9:W 11:L 13:L 19:D 29:W :L 25. Spark, Benjamin Philip 10:W 8:L 14:L 18:W 6:W 28:W 26. Sotiri, Diamand 11:L 9:L 19:L 29:L 17:W 21:L 27. Lewis, Zachary 12:L 18:L 10:L :L :L :L 28. Vaccari, Nick 13:L 17:W 9:L 21:W 19:W 25:L 29. Oh, Jun-Hyun 14:L 20:L 22:D 26:W 24:L 17:L 30. Batuwatte, Prabuddha 15:L 19:W 17:D 16:D 10:L 1:L
Alongside the Australian Universities Rapid Championships, there were also 2 fun tournaments run, one on each day, where in each round, a different variant of chess was played. Here is a summary of the variants that we played:
Round 2: Two kings (one fake)
In round 2, the queen is replaced by another king, but only one of the kings is the 'real' king, while the other king is just a decoy, but the opponent does not know which king is which. The aim of the game is to capture the real king (which is indicated by a piece of sticky-tape underneath). This is a tricky variant since you must usually invest material to capture one of the kings and figure out for certain which king is the real one, but at that point, your opponent will usually have more material.
Round 3: Set-up game
This variant (which I invented) does not require any chess understanding, and is perfect for all those people who know nothing about chess, although you do need to know the starting position. The pieces start laid down and randomly mixed in their respective halves of the board and the aim of the game is to set up your side of the starting position before the opponent does, with an interesting twist. As soon as a player thinks they have finished, they call "time". If they have set up the position perfectly, then they win, however, if just one piece lies on the edge of a square, then that player loses.
Round 4: Fighting kings
In the standard starting position, the kings are taken off the board and instead, one of the pieces is designated as the king by placing a piece of sticky-tape underneath it so that the opponent does not know which piece. That piece moves in the standard way but at any point in the game, the owner of that piece can choose to replace this special piece with the real king, at which point it only moves like a real king. The aim of the game is to capture the opponent's king (or the piece that is designated as the king). In this game, players must beward of sudden ambushes. For example, if your queen is standing next to an enemy pawn, that pawn may suddenly turn out to the enemy's king, and if revealed, your queen can be captured next move!
Round 5: Contramatic chess
In this bizzare variant, the aim of the game is to be checkmated! In other words, after you have played your move, if your king is in check and you would have no moves to get out of check if it were your turn again, then you win. Kings are allowed to walk into check in this game.
Round 6: Super move king chess
I feared that this variant (which I also invented) may possibly be too confusing after a very brief introduction, but the players demonstrated that chess playing students are more intelligent than average uni students! In this crazy game, the king has super moving capability as it can land on any square on the board (except where it is currently at) in one move! The aim of the game is to capture the opponent's king. However, the obvious move "king captures king" is not allowed if the king being captured is defended by one of its own pieces, because the capturing king fears being captured on the very next move. Needless to say, even though the king can capture any piece at any time, it should not do so if it will not be defended after that move, since the enemy king would be able to capture it!
Round 2: Peasants Revolt
In this variant, the player with the White pieces represents the poor masses while Black plays the role of the powerful monarchy. As with regular chess, the aim is to capture the opponent's king. This game is best described by the following starting position:
Although both sides have very different forces (Fritz prefers Black and gives -2.3), practice has shown that this position is well balanced.
Round 3: Explosion Chess
This is a very volatile chess variant! Each time any piece is captured, an explosion takes place on the square where the capture takes place. This means that the captured piece, the capturing piece, and all other pieces on the 8 surrounding squares are removed from the board. Obviously, the king is very vulnerable in this game and must at all costs avoid capturing anything (unless the enemy king will also die in the resulting explosion, in which case it is a draw). Again, to avoid theoretical preparation, this game was played with a Fischer-Random starting position.
Round 4: Stallmate chess
No, that is not a spelling error. This game was invented by a person who wanted to promote peace, and so the aim of the game is for the two players to work together to obtain a stalemate position, in which case both players win. However, that seems a bit too easy, so we added a twist. The player who can deliver the stalemate earns 1 point, while the player who is stalemated will recieve 1/2 a point for his cooperation. This means that the players at the start try to obtain the upper hand. At some point, the weaker player will have to settle for the 1/2 a point and try to assist his opponent to get stalemated. If a checkmate occurs, or either player runs out of time, then both players score 0 points! Although we reduced the players' times to 3 minutes each, it turned out that this was too much time and the task of obtaining a stalemate was too easy.
Round 5: Intrigue
Another non-deterministic game where players have incomplete information. At the start of the game, the kings are taken off the board and each player writes down on a card where their king is hidden. They also mark one of the pawns underneath with sticky-tape which pawn will be the pawn that 'knows' where his king is hidden. When this special pawn is captured, his king is forced to be revealed on the square that it was hiding at, capturing whatever happened to be there (including its own pieces). If a player's special pawn happens to promote, then their king will never be revealed, so they can never lose! The aim of the game is to capture the opponent's king, which of course, must be revealed first.
Round 6: Grand crossing
The aim of this variant is to get your king to the other side (8th rank) of the chessboard. But on top of this, it is illegal to walk into check and also to check the opponent's king! Typically, the opening sees both kings attending to the center which restricts the opponent's possibilities (the king cannot be checked), but only when the endgame is approaching do the kings start getting close to their goal.
Round 7: Stationary king
In this variant, the kings are not allowed to move! However, to add a different twist, we allowed the kings to move only if they are capturing an enemy piece. This made the king slightly less vulnerable.