Girls Only Finals

Today was the last day of Victorian Interschool Chess Finals week, with a Girls Only event. Girls Chess in Victoria is in a pretty good place with a number of strong players across all age groups. Unfortunately the tournament suffered a little in participant numbers due to the fact that when it was organised earlier in the year today wasn't a public holiday in Victoria. But it was still a great event dominated by the girls from Glendal Primary who won the event. Glendal's girls put up a great fight in the Open Primary on Tuesday finishing second, and the top 4 players from that performance showed their class again today.

With the top five finishers Glendal won the event comfortably, but there was a tremendous fight for second place with the positions changing many times over the course of the Finals. In the end, Alamanda College clinched the Runner's Up spot with one of the youngest teams.
During the week there has been over 2300 games played in the various finals tournaments, and I've looked through hundreds of them, but it was today that I was most impressed by a game that displayed creative elements of attack and defence.
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White was top seed Angela Feng of Glendal who has won material, though she must have received a big shock when Black played the typical "Greek Bishop Sacrifice" 1..Bxh2+. Prisha Rewel of Huntingtower had a good tournament and it is no wonder if she is thinking of advanced attacking themes like this! The idea is that after 2.Kxh2 Ng4+ 3.Kg1 Qh4 Black is looking to checkmate on h2 with their queen. Do you think White has a defence or not? Check out the full game here!

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