Ben Harris at Youth Olympiad

Ben Harris

When Ben Harris swept through the 'B' Division of last year's Rooty Hill Club Championship he gave notice that this year he planned to give the Open Division a mighty shake, and so he will. On the other hand, we don't often hear what he's doing at Junior level.

Ben competed in the Australian Junior Championship in January and in August flew to Agri, Turkey, for the World Under-16 Chess Olympiad where he played Board 3. Ben's father, Max, is travelling with the team.

The Turkish organisers made the following statement:
"Lots of countries showed interest in this tournament from different continents and this tournament has the highest participation in Children's Olympiad history. 21 countries and 24 teams applied for this chess tournament including Australia, Azerbaijan, China with two teams, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Korea, South Africa, Singapore, India, Switzerland, Turkmenistan with two teams, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekstan, Syria, Sweden, Iran, Iraq and Kenya. Also Turkey is participating with three teams. The participants number 170 with players, officials, trainers and accompanying persons, another record broken in the history of the championship."

Agri lies to the south of Mount Ararat where Noah was said to have grounded his ark.

The Australian team comprised: Zhigen Wilson Lin, Vic, 12yo, 1906; Rukman Vijayakumar, Vic, 15yo, 1869; Ben Harris, NSW, 13yo, 1718; and Derek Yu, Vic, 13yo, 1582. Considering the strength of the teams they met (eleven teams had all four players rated above 2000) they did remarkably well—for instance, in Round 6 against the strong India team Lin beat Adhiban (2310) on Board 1. [Please note: the ratings shown for the Australian team are ACF ratings. Ben had no FIDE rating before the tournament and Derek's is thought to have been inaccurate.]

Ben Harris had a horror start to the tournament. He was left in Singapore for two days, courtesy of QANTAS. When he arrived at Ankara there was no flight to Agri, which would have been twenty-fours away by bus, and he had to wait another day. He was forced to forfeit his first two games. Ben arrived, very tired, in time for Round 3 when he beat Charyyev of Turkmenistan. A great effort!

We understand that Derek Yu was also let down by QANTAS in Singapore and had to fly to London before picking up a flight to Turkey. Had there been no transport problems they may well have picked up a couple of extra points—not only did Ben drop the forfeited points but he appeared to be tired a couple of his later matches. It would have been an upsetting experience for both Ben and Derek and they are both to be congratulated recovering so well.

The team probably played above themselves. They were outplayed by three of the four top teams—Georgia (rated 2459, 2358, 2289, 2281), Hungary (rated 2461, 2412, 2429 and 2317), and Ukraine (rated 2450, 2411, 2324, 2371) but gave a good account of themselves in their other matches. They did well to draw with Syria after forfeiting on Board 3.

Ben beat Charyyev of Turkmenistan B and Tira of Tunisia; he drew with Serda of Turkmenistan A, Hercules of South Africa, and Fabre of Switzerland; he lost to Saravana (2251) of India, Prohaska (2404) of Hungary, and Yaremko (2324) of Ukraine. Congratulations, Ben, you did yourself proud.

All-in-all the team finished with 20 points (from a possible 40) and placed 16th in the field of 24.

                              —Report:   David Evans