Queenstown Chess Classic and Irene Sukandar

A resort town of New Zealand, Queenstown, was hosting their third Chess Classic event from 15th-23rd January 2012 at the Millennium Hotel in Queenstown. The town is famous for being the location of several top end Hollywood motion pictures such as The Lord of The Ring trilogy.

In this Chess classic event, three players climbed to the top and ended up sharing the highest points, hence sharing first place. Australia's GM Darryl Johansen, GM Li Chao and GM Zhao Jun managed to be those first three. In the last round, GM Darryl Johansen won the thrilling sicilian game as black verses GM Gawain Jones. The game had been pushed into the narrow battlefield at the Black's king corner, but Black managed to escape the pressure and pulled out the counter attack. Following game are GM Gawain Jones vs GM Darryl Johansen.

The tournament also marked a succesful trip for Indonesian WGM Irene K. Sukandar. Flying and play in high spirit , as she always shared on her social network, IKS managed to score a positive 6.5 out of this nine rounds event. Only losing point to higher rated opponent , to GM Gawain Jones and GM Zhao Jun, IKS managed to score point notably against IM Stephen Soloman of Australia and WGM Nadig Kruttika from India. This let her to get the 2449 performance point from her 2325 Fide rating.

Irene also scored a nice international exposure, thanks to a report by WGM Nadig Kruttika on Chessbase.com. A photo of Irene with lovely friend, chessplayer/photographer Vivian Gu Xiaobing.