Category: Tournaments
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Round 7
Gawain had a flying start with 6/6 and facing the young and talented IM Sahaj Grover in the 7th round with the white pieces. Gawain’s position looked good but Sahaj defended well and the point was split. The next 2 boards were also drawn and now Gawain is leading with 6.5/7 with four rounds to…
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Safari time – Pre tournament preparation!
The journey to Heathrow during the day is definitely a lot easier than coming back from Stansted at night, and I was at the terminal within an hour of leaving the house. As I arrived to check in for my 18:50 flight to Madrid I was told that it was running late and so was…
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Lucca Finale
The start of the game against Efimov didn’t bode well for a decisive result. As black I countered 1.Nf3 with …e6 when he played 2.e4 and offered me a draw. Such a passive way of playing doesn’t make sense; granted I’m top seed but he’s got White and a GM himself, while a draw would…
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Round 5
You can watch the Round 5 games live here. There has been a few upsets but there are still 17 people on 4/4. Gawain this round is playing WGM Subbaraman Meenakshi from India. Pairings are available from Chess-Results. Gawain has now received a dongle (mobile broadband stick) but there was a problem with setting it up.…
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Campione di scacchi (de Lucca)
Gawain’s currently on a plane back home to London. Inbetween the final round (which he drew) and going to the airport I managed to have a quick chat with him and he duly informed me that he won the tournament – not with an outright score but tied with 4 others on 4/5. In Italy…
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OPEN A – XXIII° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE “CITTA’ DI LUCCA”
Gawain is currently on 3/3 in the Lucca Open. I have topped up my dongle so now I’m able to use the web freely until we get internet all set up here. I can’t seem to find a site with results and the Lucca website seems to have been infested with malware. I have seen…
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Gelfand victorious in Kazan!
In my last write up I left the Candidates Matches with two Classical games to go and my forecast was rather bleak for entertainment value. Out of the 28 games played at a normal time control there had been 26 draws and just 2 wins (both with Black!). Recently Silvio Danailov, the current ECU President…
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Candidate Matches – Final!
A lot has happened since I wrote about the Candidates matches. I was right that Aronian and Kramnik were the favourites but that doesn’t mean they were guaranteed to progress. Kramnik duly survived scraping through the blitz although Radjabov can count himself unlucky as after going one up in the rapids it looked he was…
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Ennis Open: A success
Sue has already recounted the games step by step but I’ll do a quick roundup of the whole event. We arrived on Thursday lunchtime and were picked up from the airport by Gerry Casey who was also our host for the weekend. We spent the afternoon walking round Ennis, me occasionally remembering the directions and…
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Round 5
I just had a quick win against Peter Cafolla (rated 1976). It went down the a6 line of the Grand Prix, he lost a pawn and then another plus I had the dominating bishop pair!###pgn###[Event “Ennis Open”] [Site “?”] [Date “2011.05.??”] [Round “5”] [White “Maroroa, S.”] [Black “Cafolla, P.”] [Result “1-0”] [ECO “B23”] [WhiteElo “1999”]…
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Round 2,3,4
Hello, Well yesterday was a tough day! 3 games in a roll and then of course a few pints after (and perhaps during the game) meant a late evening. The day got of shaky for Ga, who managed to convert 3 drawing positions plus a slightly worse endgame into wins so he is on 4/4.…
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Round 1, Ennis Open.
Last night, Gawain was paired with Gabriel Mirza rated 1514. Gabriel played a very offbeat opening in which he was very cramped. Gawain grabbed space, broke through, won material and the game. I on the other hand was playing on Board 6 (to my surprise) and had the white pieces against Barry Foran rated 1466.…
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Norwegian Open – The Finale
Round 8 I played White against the solid and well prepared Michael Richter. I’d looked him up and seen he had recently gained a lot of rating points and was now closing in on the GM title so I knew the game would be tough. I decided to surprise his French with 3.Nc3 (rather than…
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Norwegian Open Rounds 5+6
Apologies for no update yesterday, I found myself snowed under with work (checking the English for the ChessVibes Openings (check www.chessvibes.com) and then I had a deadline for ChessBase to annotate a couple of games from the European Championships. I eventually finished the work at 2.30am! Round Five I was paired with the scarily improving…
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Norwegian Open – Rounds Three and Four
Today was a double round day so up and early for a 9am start. I was paired against another Norwegian 2100, Victor Hansen. After a rather offbeat opening (1.Nf3 d6 2.c4 e5 3.d3 f5) I equalised comfortably and could have taken the advantage before things again started going wrong. I set up this tactic (cheapo)…
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Norwegian Open – The Arrival Round 1&2
We ended up home around 2.30am from the simul at the RAC club. Luckily Sue had thought ahead (as always) and packed for me so I could curl up and get a quick couple hours sleep before getting up at 4.30 to start my trek over to Norway. Actually the trip was quite painless (except for…