lichess.org
Donate
Pademelon

My Photo

Australian Champions

ChessChess PersonalitiesTournament
Australian Based Chess

The Australian Chess Championships are over for 2025 and we move into a series of regional events and the zonal tournament for this Oceania region.

To start with the Australian Open Championships held in Melbourne, the winner was IM Mihajlo Radovanovic from Serbia, but who has Australian citizenship and so can claim the title. Equal first was CM Tri Kien Le from Vietnam who couldn't claim the title. Third spot went to young Victorian Ryder Testolin who managed to beat top seed IM James Morris in the final round. James consolation was becoming Australian Blitz Champion. GM Darryl Johansen was top senior as well as coming equal 4th, while Heather Richards won the women's title.

The Australian Junior Championships in Perth started just two days after the Open Championship and Melbourne to Perth is a 4 hour plane flight! A lot of people don't really understand just how big Australia is. Perth is the capital city of Western Australia. Western Australia is four times the size of Texas, and bigger than Mexico and Greenland (shhh, don't tell Trump!) and nearly as big as India! Of course, Western Australia has a lot of open space and a population of under 3 million compared to India's population of nearly 1.5 billion people. So I guess what I'm trying to say was that it was quite an effort for players to double up the Championship and Junior Championship this year, though some did.
The winners:
Under 18: FM Rui Gen Teh (WA)
Under 16: Lucas Ni (NSW)
Under 14: Lachlan Wang (QLD)
Under 12: Zeqi Xing (QLD)
Under 10: Terrence Li (QLD)
Under 8: Nicholas Chen (QLD)

This was a great championship for Queensland!

Under 18 Girls: Athena-Malar Retnaraja (SA)
Under 16 Girls: Joy Liu (NSW)
Under 14 Girls: Deethya Sai Katakam (VIC)
Under 12 Girls: Cindy Chen (SA)
Under 10 Girls: Adelyn Wang (VIC)
Under 8 Girls: Eleanor Wu (QLD)

So in the end, a nice spread of states winning titles. The full results including Blitz and Problem Solving Champions can be found here. And one little shout out for my state and my student. Yusuf Khodjaev of Tasmania came second in the Under 8 championship and first in the Under 8 Problem Solving competition!

Currently, the Oceania Zonal tournament is in full swing. After 3 rounds, top seed GM Temur Kuybokarov has yet to drop any points and is equal first with 5 other players. WGM Julia Ryjanova is the clear favourite in the women's event and is also on 3/3 where she is joined by 4 others. There is a broadcast on lichess to follow the top games.

I haven't been following the zonal too closely as I'm playing in a tournament myself. It is a late summer long weekend in Australia and a bunch of tournaments are happening around the country. There are weekend events in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart that I know of.