From 12-20 December 2015, the best young Australian prospects will be taking part in the Melbourne Masters, a nine round GM round robin tournament that has become a fixture on the Australian chess calendar.
Each year it’s passionate organiser Leonid Sandler devotes huge amounts of time seeking sponsorship and this year he is helped by the Kasparov Chess Foundation Asia-Pacific, Chess Victoria Inc., Australian Chess Federation, Chess Australia and Swanston Hotel.
The venue is non other than the historical Melbourne Chess Club, celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2016, and with the following list of participants, averaging 2443, it will be Category 8 with 6.5/9 required for a GM norm.
1. GM Arturs Neiksans, Latvia, 2603
2. IM Max Illingworth, Australia, 2499
3. GM Vasily Papin, Russia, 2497
4. IM Anton Smirnov, Australia, 2463
5. IM Kanan Izzat, Azerbaijan, 2456
6. GM Darryl Johansen, Australia, 2427
7. IM Bobby Cheng, Australia, 2419
8. IM James Morris, Australia, 2407
9. FM Luke Li, New Zealand, 2332
10. IM Ari Dale, Australia, 2331
The tournament website will be http://www.chessvictoria.org.au/ with live games broadcast at http://auschess.org.au/acf/