2024 NZGS Digital tournament - Results

Hi everyone

 

Thanks for being part of our tournament and making it so easy to run and organize. My apology for being slow to finalise the results, I was sick for a period, I am very much better now and will resume normal work next week. Here are the results:

 

Open division

This was very close at the top. In the final round Chahine (4 wins and a draw against Michael) played Ken (4 wins and a draw against Jerry) The result? Another draw! We have to go to SOS (Sum of opponent's scores) to get a result and Chahine wins by a nose. Congratulations Chahine Koleejan!

Ken Xie is second. 

Jerry Lei is third with four wins and a draw.

Amy Song is first in group 2 (Players who lost their first game) 

 

Division 2

It's tough at the top. Adam was unbeaten going into the final round but could not quite make it a clean sweep and lost to Christopher in the final round. Both Adam and Christopher finished with 5 wins, because Christopher beat Adam in their match, he wins the championship. Congratulations Christopher Meekin!

Adam Reis is second.

Eric Chen, also finishing with 5 wins, is third.

James Huang gets the group 2 prize*.

Kevin Ho gets the group 3 prize.

Tianze Wang gets the group 4 prize.

* Group 2 are players who won their first game and lost their second. Christopher is also in this group - but has a better prize)

 

Handicap Division

I like to play in the handicap division, I find it easier to play 'emotionless' games - making the best moves I can find - and not caring (much) about the result. In even games I care, probably too much. There were only 6 players in the division, and only 5 after Allan Hunt had to withdraw, so we got to know each other well also it can be nice to have a rematch and a chance to even scores. Thang and Tashi entered as 8k, their online ranks, and crushed their first round opponents. Online ranks are rather stronger than NZ ranks, adjustments were made - the organiser should have picked this up earlier... After that the results were closer. Even with an adjusted rank and a rank promotion for each win, Thang kept winning. Surprisingly (to me) so did I. We had a rematch in the final round, which I won by a few points. Very close. 5 wins each. A win and a loss against each other. 16 points SOS each. Thang Do and Colin Grierson first equal.

Tashi Visschedijk third.

 

Team Division

This was an experiment to try a new format that we thought would be more for fun than 'serious' games. We were hoping for more entries so that we could change the teams each round - maybe 4 v 4 then two games of 2 v 2 and so on. Seven players was not enough to do this unfortunately, but still we changed the teams every round. OGS handled the format well mostly, getting the games started felt a bit clumsy, but once started it worked very well. The chat was visible to all and some of the comments were good fun. Playing the games was interesting, frustrating, educational. I felt pressure not to let my team down. There were moves I wanted my team to play (but they didn't) and then I didn't have sente to play the move when it came to my turn. It was educational when others in the team changed my plan, this happened often and they were usually right. I enjoyed the games, and will enter this division again. We have to allow more time though, for some reason several of the games were won by time, not on the board.

Winner in this division is the person who won most games across the various teams they were in, with three wins each, congratulations Jerry Lei and Colin Grierson.

Also many thanks to Stepan Lapshev who found how to run teams games on OGS and totally ran this division. You did a great job!

Prizes 

We will post laminated certificates to all the prize winners and give modest cash prizes to the division first and second place winners.

Thanks again and until next year

Yours sincerely

Colin Grierson