Commonwealth Championship: Gawain Jones first on tie-break

Gawain Jones won the Commonwealth Championship on Sunday with a score of 9.5/11. The English grandmaster finished shared first with his compatriot Nigel Short, but had a better tie-break.

Gawain Jones wins in South Africa | Photo © Günther van den Bergh, more here

General info

The Commonwealth Chess Championships took place from June 25th to July 4th in the Emperors Palace Hotel Casino & Convention Resort in the City of Ekurhuleni in Gauteng, South Africa. The event, an 11-round Swiss, also functioned as the South African Open Chess Championships. There were over 700 participants with more than 40 titled players, headed by three times past champion GM Nigel Short from England. There was also a strong Indian contingent present including former World Junior Chess Champions GM Abhijeet Gupta and IM Harika Dronovalli. More info here.

Rounds 8-11

Gawain Jones was leading the tournament after seven rounds, but eventually Nigel Short managed to catch him and in the final standings they shared first place with 9.5/11. Australian GM David Smerdon finished third. He wrote:

Gawain won the title from Nigel Short on tie-break, due to, bizarrely, me beating one of Nigel’s previous opponents in the last round. In an even crueller and more unfair twist of fate, I finished in third. Justice did not prevail, not only because my opponent, Watu Kobese, was beating me severely, but also because I played some of the worst chess of my life and I was worse in all eleven of my games. Well, I guess there’s no accounting for luck in these big opens…

As we mentioned before, unfortunately the organizers were having trouble getting the games live online or saving them correctly. We assume that Mark Crowther of TWIC is still trying to get the games correctly. In the game viewer below we show a few from rounds 8-11 but it's clearly incomplete data...

Selection of games rounds 8-11

Game viewer by ChessTempo


Commonwealth Championship 2011 | Round 11 (Final) Standings (top 30)

Rk.	Fed.	Ti.	Name	Group	Sex	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	ENG	GM	Jones Gawain CB			ENG	2596	9.5	56.5	74.25	2254
2	ENG	GM	Short Nigel D			ENG	2682	9.5	55.5	73.00	2286
3	AUS	GM	Smerdon David			AUS	2520	9.0	54.0	63.00	2117
4	GER	IM	Huschenbeth Niclas	U20		GER	2502	9.0	53.0	64.25	2095
5	IND	GM	Kunte Abhijit			IND	2526	9.0	50.5	63.00	2131
6	ARG	GM	Lafuente Pablo			ARG	2555	8.5	55.0	63.00	2191
7	ZAM	FM	Jere Daniel			ZAM	2344	8.5	54.0	62.00	2182
8	IND	IM	Grover Sahaj	U20		IND	2485	8.5	53.5	61.75	2154
9	IND	GM	Laxman Rajaram			IND	2446	8.5	51.5	59.75	2099
10	BEL	IM	Ringoir Tanguy	U18		BEL	2399	8.5	50.5	59.00	2090
11	IND	IM	Karavade Eesha		W	IND	2343	8.5	48.5	58.25	1992
12	IND	GM	Gupta Abhijeet			IND	2604	8.0	54.5	57.25	2269
13	RSA	FM	van der Nat Nicholas P			RSA	2308	8.0	54.0	55.50	2183
14	IND	IM	Harika Dronovali		W	IND	2520	8.0	53.5	57.00	2164
15	RSA	IM	Kobese Watu AKW			RSA	2355	8.0	52.0	56.50	2126
16	IND	WGM	Ghate Swati		W	IND	2317	8.0	52.0	55.75	2099
17	IND	IM	Mokal Prathamesh S			IND	2405	8.0	51.5	57.00	2095
18	RSA	CM	Bouah Lyndon			RSA	2147	8.0	49.5	53.50	1992
19	IND	WGM	Subbaraman Meenakshi		W	IND	2317	8.0	49.0	54.50	1980
20	RSA		Dole Anant	U18		RSA	2103	8.0	49.0	53.00	1987
21	RSA	IM	Mabusela Johannes M			RSA	2272	8.0	49.0	52.75	2059
22	ZIM		Makoto Rodwell			ZIM	2166	8.0	48.0	53.00	1957
23	RSA		Anderson Gavin A			RSA	2157	8.0	47.5	52.25	1943
24	RSA	CM	Cawdery Daniel J			RSA	2274	8.0	47.5	51.00	1986
25	ZAM	FM	Phiri Richmond			ZAM	2165	8.0	47.0	48.25	1991
26	ZAM		Simutowe Musa			ZAM	2119	8.0	46.5	50.50	1958
27	RSA		Ovcina Denis			RSA	2248	8.0	46.5	49.00	2069
28	BOT	CM	Notha Moakofi			BOT	2123	8.0	44.5	50.25	1777
29	IND	IM	Sachdev Tania		W	IND	2416	7.5	50.0	50.75	1953
30	ZIM		Takawira Erick			ZIM	2035	7.5	48.5	46.50	1995

Links

• Official website
• Details at Chess Results
• Games in PGN via TWIC