2015 Canadian Universities Championship : Tournament Report
Photos by John Upper
See Chess-Results for the standings and pairings
This year again, the McGill University chess club sent 3 teams to the Canadian Universities Chess Championship (CUCC).
This edition was organized at the University of Toronto on January 10-11, 2015 and there was an impressive number of 23 teams from 10 different universities.
The championship section was particularly strong; 17 players had a CFC rating over 2200 and 4 teams were clearly strong candidates for the first place :
Team / Average rating
1 McGill University A 2315
2 University of Western Ontario A 2286
3 University of Toronto A 2205
4 University of Waterloo A 2178
Meanwhile, it would have been hard to make any predictions for the U1800 section, as many of the players are severely underrated (or not rated at all).
The first round didn’t feature any surprise in the championship section, with the top four teams winning their matches. The second round was more interesting, with McGill A beating Waterloo A 3.5-0.5, Western A beating Ottawa A by 2.5-1.5 and McMaster A tying with McGill B.
However, the third round was definitely the most important rounds for the first four teams. McGill was playing against Western and Toronto against Waterloo. The rating gap between the respective teams being very small, anything was to be expected. In the end, McGill managed to win against Western Ontario, after a great save by Keith MacKinnon on the third board against David Itkin and a very wild win by White on the fourth board (Felix Dumont – David Gibson). Raven Sturt, McGill’s first board, once again played an amazing game, defeating FM Shiyam Thavandiran, the highest rated player of the tournament.
Meanwhile, UofT tied their match against Waterloo. Surprisingly enough, considering the big rating gap between its first and last two boards, UofT won on boards 3 and 4 and lost on boards 1 and 2. It then made little doubt after the tournament that UofT’s third board, Jim Zhao, was heavily underrated at 2078 CFC.
Still, UofT could catch McGill by defeating them in the fourth round. It did seem possible at some point in the match, with Keith MacKinnon being in a clearly worse position against Jim Zhao and Raven Sturt being down a pawn against Nikita Gusev… However, the tables turned and Keith MacKinnon once again miraculously saved his position, holding Jim Zhao to a draw, and Raven obtained a big advantage. Nikita Gusev was still able to draw against Raven Sturt, and the match ended up 3-1 in favour of McGill.
With McGill now out of reach, the last round featured a great match between Western and UofT for the second place, in which the last two boards of UofT lost, leading Western to a 2.5-1.5 win.
Final standings
Open section
1) 1) McGill University (5/5)
2) 2) University of Western Ontario (4/5)
3) 3) University of Waterloo (3.5/5)
Top players for each board
Board 1 :
Raven Sturt (McGill) and Joey Qin (Waterloo) with 4/5
Board 2 :
Lloyd Mai (Ottawa) with 4.5/5
Board 3 :
David Itkin (Western) with 4/5
Board 4 :
Felix Dumont (McGill) with 5/5
U1800 section
1) University of Toronto B (4.5/5)
2) McMaster B (4/5)
3) University of Toronto Mississauga (3.5/5)
Top players for each board
Board 1 :
Ross Cunningham (Western B), Kabeer Sethi (Ryerson A), Ian Mahoney (Toronto B) with 4/5
Board 2 :
John Venner (Toronto B) with 4.5/5
Board 3 :
Tal Ziscking (Toronto B) with 5/5
Board 4 :
Alexandru Dumbraba (York B) with 4/5
Final comments :
When McGill won the championship last year, it was the first university to do so two years in a row. It was then hard to imagine that we could have our names engraved on the Queen’s Cup for a third year. However, Raven had an amazing performance on board 1, and my preparation paid off on board 4. In the end, we didn’t lose a single game, which is probably our greatest achievement from the weekend. Raven, Michael and Keith were on the team for the three years, but the fourth player was different every year (respectively Kenny Ah-Lan, FM Louie Jiang and myself). We should finally note the good results of McGill B (especially Laurent Allard and David Zhou), which was the only second team from a university in the Championship section.
There was also a captain’s meeting during the tournament. We were able to discuss about what when wrong this year, mostly the late advertising and the delay in the rounds, although the latter occurs every year. We also discussed about the good parts of the tournament, mainly the free food, the friendly atmosphere and the overall level of the tournament.
It was decided that next year’s tournament will be at Queen’s University in Kingston.
