2011 Arthur Koelle Tournament

2011 Champion: Rob Loveband

A Group

Inaugural Tournament - 2011

The 2011 Arthur Koelle Tournament was won by Rob Loveband. The Reserves Tournament was won by junior Jonathon Yates and Chris Segrave. This was Rob Loveband’s 4th Major title of the year, a Grand Slam!!, and cemented his place as the 2011 Player of the Year.

Arthur plays Joel in a friendly

The last major event on the Club calendar has, traditionally, been the John Holmes Memorial, in honour of a promising young player and administrator who was killed in a car accident in 1970.
This year, a few members expressed the wish for a separate event for Reserves players, and so it was agreed that a new event, split into 2 tournaments would be played, and a change of name was deemed appropriate as well. The consensus view was that we name the new event after one of our most famous sons, Arthur Koelle, the 1971 Australian Junior chess champion. (see more on Arthur in the 2009 Arthur Koelle invitational report).
The Koelle ‘A’ tournament attracted an entry of 8 players, enabling a rare Round Robin event to be played, while the Koelle ‘B’ was a 7 round Swiss for the remaining 12 players.
Round 1 in the ‘A’ showed that competition was keen  and reputations meant nothing,with ambitious junior  James Watson resigning a drawn position against Patrick Cook, while Rob Bailey overcame Kevin Perrin. Joel Beggs began play, but, sadly, had to withdraw later, and so all his games were deemed forfeits.
In round 2, young James Watson continued to show he is no pushover in a hard fought draw with Kevin Perrin, and Club champion Rob Loveband fought out his almost traditional draw against Patrick Cook.
Round 3 saw James Watson continue his good showing with a win over Peter Miitel, while Rob Loveband got going with a victory over Kevin Perrin.
Round 4 was pretty much as expected. Patrick Cook drawing, again, with Kevin Perrin, while James Watson’s great run came to an end against Jamie Brotheridge.
Round 5 showed that James Watson is undeterred by defeat as he scored a noteworthy win over experienced chess trainer Rob Bailey, while Jamie Brotheridge held Rob Loveband to a draw.
Round 6 proved to be a “whitewash” with White winning all played games. Patrick Cook was very lucky to profit from an incomprehensible blunder by Jamie Brotheridge.
In the final round, Jamie Brotheridge recovered to defeat Kevin Perrin, while Rob Loveband made sure of outright tournament  victory  by defeating the fast improving James Watson.

In the Koelle ‘B’, another of our up and coming junior players shone! Jonathon Yates scored an unbeaten 6 ½ from 7, conceding a draw only to equal first placed Chris Segrave.   


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Mr. Arthur Koelle was Victorian Junior champion in 1968 at 14, Country Victorian champion in the same year, and Club champion, also in 1968 as well as 1969. Most of these achievements are age records to this day! He went on to win the Australian Junior championship in 1971. Arthur has been living in Germany since 1982 and competed in the famous Bundesliga club competition, mixing it with experienced grandmasters, up until the mid-1990’s when work commitments became more pressing. Like the Club Championship, the A Grade is a round robin tournament restricted to 8 players, while the B Grade tournament format depends on the number of entries. The inaugural tournament was held in 2011.