
Meet The New Australian Open And Oceania Champions
January is always a busy month on the Australian chess calendar and this year, the Australian Junior Championships, as well as biennial tournaments like the Australian Open and the Oceania Zonal Championships, guaranteed an action-packed month. See the new title winners below:
Title | Winner |
Australian Open Champion | IM Mihajlo Radovanovic |
Australian Women's Champion | WIM Heather Richards |
Australian Blitz Chess Champion | IM James Morris |
Australian Junior Champion | FM Rui Gen Teh |
Australian Girls Champion | Athena-Malar Retnaraja |
Oceania Champion | GM Temur Kuybokarov |
Oceania Women's Champion | WGM Julia Ryjanova |
Oceania Blitz Champion | IM James Morris |
Oceania Women's Blitz Champion | WFM Alana Chibnall |
Australian Open
This year's Open and Oceania Zonal Championships were held at the Huntingdale Golf Club in Victoria by IA and Dr. Peter Tsai, whose ubiquitous involvement in Australian tournaments and attention to detail has helped elevate the standard expected at national events. 92 players participated in this year's open, vying for their share of approximately $15,000AUD in prize money, and none would've been more bullish about their chances than the top seeds: IM James Morris, IM Mihajlo Radovanovic, and Australia's third GM, Darryl Johansen.

Morris and Radovanovic were the sole leaders after four rounds and couldn't be split when they faced off in a round five showdown. However, both suffered setbacks at the hands of Vietnamese CM Tri Kien Le in rounds seven and eight (Le drew with Morris and defeated Radovanovic) opening up a three-horse race to heading into the final round.
With all three players sitting on 6.5/8 and with favorable pairings, it looked as though the tournament might come down to tiebreaks. Caissa had other ideas... Morris fell at the last moment against the ever-crafty Ryder Testolin. Thanks to his fast start, Radovanovic was announced as the Australian Open Champion for the first time ahead of Le on tiebreaks.
Many Australians will know that Radovanovic recently served as the Captain of the Australian Women's but don't realize he is a dual citizen of Serbia and Australia. Radovanovic highlighted that he now has something in common with fellow Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic—winning an Australian Open, although we figured out he would need to win 991 (if he won these in a row he would need to live until the year 3016) Australian Open Chess Championships to earn the amount of money Djokovic won at the event in 2023.

For Morris, the finish wasn't what he had hoped for but winning the Australasian Masters, Australian and Oceania blitz championships, as well as the Steiner Medal (awarded to the Australian player of the year) leaves him with plenty to celebrate.

The Australian Open is also unique in that the Australian Women's Champion is biennially awarded at the tournament to the top-scoring female. The 2015 champion WIM Heather Richards overcame adversity and distance (Richards lives in rural QLD and has found it tough to traverse the country for tournaments of late) to win her second title and despite this being her first event since the 2022 Chennai Olympiad, Richards oozed precision.
A Brisbane-based student of mine, the talented Daniil Yelkhovsky also had a big event, winning the Minor division (U1800) outright with a score of 6.5/7 ahead of 128 aspirants.
Oceania Championships
All imagery below was posted by the Box Hill and Canterbury Junior Chess Clubs on Facebook.
The Oceania Zonal Championships is one of the most highly-anticipated tournaments on the chess calendar for players hoping to secure condition chess titles. For those unaware of the regulations, if a player achieves a minimum 50% score in the event it wipes 200 rating points off the FIDE rating required for the Candidate Master title (normally 2200). The FIDE Master title is also on offer for players who score 6/9 points, provided they reach a 2100 FIDE rating at some point (normally 2300 is required for the title). The winner of the event gets the IM title and a World Cup berth.

Also run by Tsai, the tournament was a fantastic viewing spectacle for those who couldn't be present. 12 DGT boards relayed the action live to feeds on Chess.com and Lichess and results and pairings were posted quickly after each round, leaving ample time for preparation.

This year's event was won by GM Temur Kuybokarov after a spectacular comeback following a round-four loss to IM David Cannon. Naturally, Kuybokarov had to play double-edged chess to get to 8/9. His game against Queenslander and CM Benjamin Leong was particularly flashy.
Morris, IM Rishi Sardana, and surprise packet FM Sterling Bayaca shared second place with the latter gaining 59 rating points.

In the women's section, Ryjanova maintained her reign over the Women's zonal spot with an indomitable 8.5/9 score. The one draw she conceded was at the hands of fellow Olympiad teammate WFM Shiyuan Shen, who also went undefeated in the event but scored 8/9.

The game between the two was a 93-move epic where both played with more than 98% accuracy according to Chess.com's Game Review.
Thanks to this event, numerous new players across Oceania will leave Melbourne with titles. While I would love to talk about the individual performances of the title-getters, there are simply too many. Thus, I have included a provisional list provided by ACF committee member Kevin Bonham.
While there is plenty of discourse in Australian chess circles about whether Zonal titles should exist, I prefer to focus on how well the event was run and the great standard it sets for Australian chess.
Please note that my criticism below is primarily concerning junior events (not the Melbourne events which were not monetarily profitable as pointed out by @Necromon). For example, prize money at the Australian Junior Championships was less than the cost of standard entry in some divisions. With more than 250 players across the divisions, profits had to have been significant (data is not public but basic maths shows this).
As someone involved in the growth of chess in Australia, my personal opinion is that in cases where organisers stand to make significant profits from events such as national junior events, tenders should be questioned and re-considered if the organisers do not intend to facilitate a live viewing experience. Broadcast should not be optional anymore at national events.