I just witnessed something utterly remarkable at the Upper Hutt Rapid. With a field including the current New Zealand champion Scott Wastney, 12-times champion Anthony Ker, and New Zealand's only active grandmaster, Mark Noble, the 6-round Rapid was jointly won by the lowest rated player in the whole field,
Vaibhav Sharma, with 5 points out of 6. He was listed at the competition with an extremely modest NZCF rating of 800 (I'm not sure where this figure came from, as he was not included in the last NZCF rating list). Vaibhav was last seen playing at Scott Wastney's Rapid in Johnsonville a couple of weeks back.
In the first round, as the lowest rated player in a field of 23, he got a one point bye. However, in the Swiss pairings in the rounds that followed, this one point does not seem to have been counted. This meant that he was paired against easier opponents than should have been the case. Still, this should not detract from his stupendous achievement - let's hope we will be seeing a lot more of this promising young player. The only game he lost was to our very talented 12 year old Layla Timergazi.
2 other players ended up with 5 out of 6 - Anthony Ker and Brian Nijman. Brian beat Scott, but lost to Anthony. Anthony drew with Scott and Mark and won his other games.
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| A view of Vaibhav's back - sorry, it's the only picture I've got! |
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| The playing hall at HIBS |
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| Ross is buying one of these for the club - yippee! |
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Hi, I'm Vaibhav, thanks for the great article. I really appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteJust one minor error though, with all due respect, I am not one of Scott's pupils. I have been in the past, but am not one now.
ReplyDeleteHi Vaibav, thanks for the clarification - I'll update the report.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations again on a brilliant result! Feel free to come and visit us some time at the Chess club, if you can make it!
Cheers
Thanks, I'd love to visit after school exams. Could you give me the details?
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