22nd June, 2009 Oceania Zonal

This week is an exciting week for Australian chess as Australia is hosting the Oceania Zonal Tournament at Tweed Heads on the Gold Coast.

Ninety-one players from our region are competing in the Zonal and the Women’s Zonal with the winners earning the right to play in the World Cup later in the year.

As an additional attraction the world number 6 player, Levon Aronian from Armenia, is attending the tour...

I attended the RJ Shield Tournament at Doncaster Gardens Primary School last Sunday and had the opportunity to watch about 40 young players compete over 7 rounds in 15 minute games.

It’s a pity that these days players don’t have an opportunity to play in more events that require them to use a clock and consequently learn how to manage their time.

You will generally find that there are four categories of chess players when it comes ...

In a May survey of over 200 Australian schools, 98 percent said that chess has many ‘soft’ skill benefits in addition to the commonly discussed ‘hard’ benefits like problem solving, mathematical reasoning and spatial awareness, with 61 percent stating that chess had an equal effect on both soft and hard skills. View the survey results .

Decision making (74% rated impact as significant) and self-confidence (51% rated impact as sig...