This year’s Bob Wade Memorial Masters was held in Auckland from January 14 to 20, 2023, to commemorate the significant contribution made by New Zealand’s first truly professional player IM Bob Wade who was born in 1921. He was a three-time NZ Champion and twice British champion.
The main idea of the event was to celebrate the enormous contribution that Bob made to chess globally and at the same time to hold a tournament that would give IM norm opportunities to aspiring NZ players. It was only made possible by the generosity of NZCF patron Jim Benson and support from the NZ Chess Federation along with the Howick-Pakuranga Chess Club and NZCF Vice-president Paul Spiller who was the Chief Organiser. It also created an opportunity for Invercargill chess organiser and arbiter Richie Christie to achieve his final norm for the FA title.
It was won by French/Egyptian Grandmaster Samy Shoker with 7.5/9 — 7 wins, 1 draw (with runner-up Grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi) and 1 loss to NZ FIDE Master Ben Hague. GM Moradiabadi had 5 wins and 4 draws to finish 2nd on 7 points. In third place were International Master Gary Lane from Australia (who recently won the Asian Seniors 50+ division in Auckland last October) and 14-year-old NZ chess star Felix Xie. For most of the tournament, Felix was on course to make his first qualification towards his IM title (7 points were needed), but a loss in the penultimate round to GM Shoker dashed his hopes.
There were also two Challengers sections, won by Hao Tang and Daniel Wang respectively. Full results can be found on the Results page.
