Tuesday 11 December 2007

Zong Yuan Zhao - First GM Norm!

Via Ian and Cathy Rogers comes news of Zong Yuan Zhao scoring a GM Norm in the First Saturday GM Tournament in Hungary. Zhao needed to win his last 2 games for the norm, and defeated IM's Arnaud Payen and Vinh Bui to finish on 7/9. He also finished equal first with GM Zlatko Illincic.
Although the tournament website is a couple of rounds behind, hopefully this link will eventually provide more information.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Yuan!!!

Actually, he needed to win his last five games - and he did it!!!

Anonymous said...

Congrats to Zong Yuan! Are we seeing the glimpse of the Australian chess renaissance breaking just over the horizon? The context for this hope lies in the other remarkable breaking story of Wesley So (Philipines) becoming the seventh ever youngest grandmaster.

On another note, to alert readers of this blog to the amazing story of what happened to a 14 y.o. Belgian competitor at the recent World Youth in Turkey: woken up at 11 pm to finish a game!!! (see http://www.chessvibes.com/?p=1434)Would be interested to hear from parents of Australian players about the tournament. At same webblog, there is a comment by Steve Giddins that there was rampant cheating.

Anonymous said...

This is great! Yuan has been playing at GM norm level for a little while now at least and it's a great pity that he hasn't had the opportunity to get a norm until now.

Denis Jessop

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to Zong Yuan from Coffs Harbour Chess Club. It has been a pleasure to be associated with you since your arrival in Coffs Harbour, and I sincerely hope youy achieve the GM title. Nobody deserve it more than you do.
Alf Klinkby, Coffs Harbour Chess Club

Anonymous said...

Yuan just won his first game in a round robin GM tournament in Spain against WGM Sabrina Vega Gutierrez 2331.

Anonymous said...

Zhao beat FM Diego Suarez Pousa (2406) in the second round.