We’re excited to congratulate our team member Kye Walls who performed well at the 2024 NSWCA Australia Day Weekender and 2024 Pirtek Newcastle Open chess tournaments. Kye joined Roberts + Morrow as a finance officer in 2022, and is currently studying a Bachelor of Accounting at the University of New England. He is a hardworking and intelligent young man, and we’re excited to see what his future holds as he continues his first corporate job at R+M.
Kye Walls contributed the below to provide insights into his recent tournaments in Sydney and Newcastle…
Over the last 4 weeks I have attended two tournaments; one in Sydney over the 27 until 28 of January and one in Newcastle over 17until 18 February.
The Sydney tournament was a massive affair, with 111 total entrants playing at the pace of 60 minutes per player, plus 30 seconds added per move. This field included IM Cameron McGowan, who by his national rating was ranked 6th in NSW and 32nd in Australia at the time. I finished on 4/6, with 3 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss. My standout result was a draw in Round 4 against Sterling Bayaca, who outrated me by 426 points at the time and thus meant a draw was a major upset. The disparity between our ratings meant that Sterling had an approximately 92% chance of winning the game.
The Newcastle tournament was a smaller affair, but still large for a non-Sydney tournament with 55 entrants playing at the pace of 60 minutes per player, plus 10 seconds added per move. This field included IM Gary Lane, a Newcastle local who by his national rating was ranked 3rd in NSW and 13th in Australia at the time. I again finished on 4/6, though this time with 4 wins, 0 draws and 2 losses. I faced a stiff run through Rounds 3, 4 and 5, in which I had to play the 2nd highest rated, 4th highest rated and the highest rated players back-to-back-to-back. Though I was only able to win the first of these three games, it was a great experience to play these strong players, such as IM Gary Lane in Round 5, to learn from such skilled players.
My next tournament will be the Premier Division of the Doeberl Cup in Canberra over the Eater Long Weekend, which will be a very difficult affair. For reference, the defending champion is flying in from Armenia and at the time of writing is ranked 98th in the world!
