I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long. It’s been a busy time for us and then when we got to Corsica we didn’t really have good internet. I did try to write an update but the connection was so terrible and I wasn’t able to even go to the new post page.
We left about 10 days ago to go to Corsica via London (and Paris/Nice) to Ajaccio. Gawain has played in Corsica many times before but this was my first visit to this beautiful Island. When we were on our descent I unfortunately had a lot of pressure on my sinus, it was the first time I had experienced such pain and now I’m going to take chewing gum whenever I travel. When we arrived in Ajaccio after a slight delay we found that my luggage had not departed Paris but would come the next day. Luckily for us, Ga’s bag did arrive so I was able to wear some of his clothes.
We stayed at the Hotel Marina Viva in an apartment. It was spacious and just across the road from the rest of the hotel complex. The hotel had tennis courts, a swimming pool, table tennis and there was the beautiful beach. The weather was gorgeous and it’s been a bit of a shock (but not a surprise) coming home today (11/07) when it’s just been raining the whole afternoon.
Rating wise,Ga loss 1.53 and I loss 1.78 which for me is a success! The tournament for me was a big yoyo, I unfortunately didn’t play many players in the 2200-2400 rating bracket I like to challenge but instead I played many players below 1850. I didn’t managed to win all those games (but at least didn’t lose) so I loss rating overall.
Gawain came 7th on tie breaks and the winner was the friendly Polish GM Michal Krasenkow who had a fantastic tournament finishing on 8/9 including a last round win against Gawain.
It was a very hectic schedule but still such a fun tournament to play in. We had 2 double round days so we played Sunday-Saturday before heading up the mountains to Ciamanacce for the Blitz event. This weekend there will be also another blitz tournament the 9th Open of l’Alta Rocca featuring GM Alexandra Kostinieuk and GM Pavel Tregubov. There are so many strong tournaments on this small and fiercely proud island.
I’ll write more later this week but we are now back home and will have a break before our next tournament the British Chess Championship.