Originally published in NZ Chess Magazine Vol. 18 No. 5. Oct 1992
https://newzealandchess.co.nz/nzchessmag/pdfs/1992-10.pdf
Republished with permission, article by Robert Mackway-Jones.
The 1992 South Island Chess Championship was held at the Ascot Park Hotel in Invercargill from 31st August to 4th September. 34 entries were received from eight different centres. Entrants hailed from Hamilton, Wanganui, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Ashburton, Dunedin and Invercargill.
The venue, which was the same as when the tournament was held here in 1988, proved extremely popular with the contestants and even had a bar in the analysis room (good for some and hazardous for others!) A five-star hotel is the ideal place to have a tournament with restaurant, bars, accommodation, pool and sauna all under the one roof.
Stephen Lukey from Christchurch, however, went through unbeaten to finish on six and a half points and take his second South Island title. Stephen seems to have a liking for tournaments held in Invercargill having jointly won the South Island title here in 1988 and, earlier this year, jointly winning our Queen’s Birthday event.
Second place getter in this year’s event was Bruce Anderson on six points with five players tied for third on 5.5. One of those was David Guthrie of Otago. David has made rapid improvement in his game this year and made nonsense of his rating and his expected score of 1.27 to record his best result to date.
The B grade prize was won by Malcolm Foord (Otago) with 5/8 and Dan Dolejs (Nelson), Martin Post (Wanganui) and Bruce Gloistein (Christchurch) tied for second with 4.5. The C grade winner was, naturally, David Guthrie and second was John MacDonald (Ashburton) storming home with three wins to finish on 4.5. There were many upset results, mostly by David Guthrie. However, the biggest upset prize winner was Roy Keeling (Ashburton) with his second round win over Arie Nijman.
Many thanks to Paul Vecovsky (Dunedin) who was an efficient DOP and to all the players who took part. Judging by the population in the bar each night, most thoroughly enjoyed themselves plans are afoot to host next year’s congress at this venue so pass the word.
The first two games are by courtesy of Tony love and the Otago Daily Times.
