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Winners of ACF medals, announced during the presentation
of prizes following the 2010 Australian Championship at Norths Rugby
League Club, in Cammeray, Sydney, on 13 January.
Steiner
Medal – Australian Player of the Year for 2009
David Smerdon
Selectors: Greg
Canfell, David Ellis, Bill Gletsos, Denis Jessop, Amiel Rosario.
Nomination by ACT Chess
Association:
David
has had an outstanding chess year, winning numerous tournaments and
achieving the GM title. Relevant details are
1st:
Oceania Zonal
1st:
Queenstown Chess Classic (9 GMs, etc)
1st:
Australasian Match of the Decade (against Puchen Wang; score: 4-2).
1st:
NSW Open
1st:
Adelaide
Freytag Open
1st:
ANU Open
1st
=: Surfers Paradise Open
1st
=: Melbourne
Chess Club Anzac Day Weekender
1st:
Australian Chess Grand Prix.
David
received the Grandmaster title in June 2009.
He
represented Oceania in the 2009 World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia.
Knocked out in tie-breaks
in the first round. Other factors relevant to the nomination:
David
is both an excellent role model and mentor for younger players in the
ACT. Since moving to Canberra,
he has given generously of his time to work with and encourage several
of the promising junior players.
He
has also willingly given time to play in various simultaneous
exhibitions and local championships, in so doing supporting the
development and status of chess in the nation’s capital.
Nomination by NSW Chess
Association:
David
won the Integra NSW Open in June 2009 and in so doing achieved the
required number of points to be awarded the Grandmaster title, he being
Australia’s
fourth GM. His current ratings are FIDE 2525 and ACF 2510.
David
was the 2009 Oceania Champion and won
the 2009 ANU Open. He competes in tournaments within Australia
and overseas, having participated recently in the FIDE World Cup. David
is currently leading the Grand Prix.
We
consider David Smerdon to be a worthy recipient of the Steiner Medal
for “Player of the Year” 2009.
Arlauskas
Medal – Australian Junior Player of the Year 2009 (incorporating the
2010 Romanas Arlauskas Award)
Bobby
Cheng
Selectors: Haydn
Barber, Roland Eime, Garvin Gray, Evelyn Koshnitsky, Charles
Zworestine.
Nomination by Chess Victoria:
12-years
old Balwyn
High School Bobby
Cheng is our first World Champion under 12 !
Fantastic
performance!
Bobby
increased his ELO rating by impressive 158 points(from 2098 to 2256) in
one year.
Amongst
his other notable results in 2009 we can mention:
equal
second in Oceania Zonal and FIDE
Master title
equal
third in Australasian Masters 2009
equal
first in Geelong
Open 2009.
Koshnitsky
Medal – Chess Administration
Allan
Wright
Selectors: Peter
Cassettari, Graeme Gardiner, Alan Goldsmith, Norm Greenwood, Jenni
Oliver.
Nomination by NSW Chess
Association:
Allan
Wright has been Ratings Officer for the NSW Junior Chess League since
he was elected to its Council in 1990.
He
has developed a rating system suited to the particular characteristics
of junior competitions (one challenge being to meaningfully rate the
many players who play only a few games). The current ratings list
contains over 7,000 junior players, of which nearly 3,000 are included
in the list published in the NSWJCL’s quarterly magazine. Allan
processes all the ratings himself and has to cope with thousands of
inter-school match result cards, many of which are incomplete,
inconsistent or have players’ names misspelt, and require considerable
detective work to decipher.
Allan’s
other main role for the NSWJCL is running the league’s inter-schools
competitions in the Hunter Region. He and his wife Dorothy have built
up the main Primary Schools Competition in this region to over 100
teams from nearly 50 schools. The league’s Primary Schools One-Day
tournaments have also been growing in popularity – the two Hunter
Region tournaments in this series now attract about 70 teams.
In
addition Allan runs the Newcastle
Junior Chess Club, which meets weekly. In the 1990s he used to travel
to Sydney to help arbit at the NSWJCL’s
school holiday tournaments, but now concentrates on running holiday
tournaments in Newcastle and helping
with tournaments on the Central
Coast.
All
in all, we consider Allan Wright to be a worthy recipient of the
Koshnitsky Medal for services to chess administration.
Gary Wastell
ACF Medals Selections Coordinator
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