Category: Updates

Staunton has finally finished and now we’re in Lucca, Italy. Tomorrow we’re heading over to Porto San Giorgio by train (a bit shy of 400kms!). The UK team won the match against the Dutch 26.5 – 23.5. Gawain drew the last round against Sokolov. Overall it was a good experience and Gawain was pleased with…

Week 2 of Staunton has proved to be a much better week for Ga! England is now leading 24-21 with one round to go. Gawain has been the best performer this week with 3/4 and he keeps telling me he wished he could put his performance in the first week of the British and this…

Yesterday Gawain gained a good position against GM Ivan Sokolov unfortunately Gawain panicked and faltered. In the morning we spent time with his grandparents walking through Hyde Park and past the Marble Arch. Gawain’s laptop had broken down a few days earlier which meant he had no computer to prepare with until I bought an…

We’re now in London for the Staunton Memorial Tournament held at Simpsons-in-the-Strand. Gawain had an unfortunate finish at the British going rom 6/7 to 7/11 but we’ll have to wait for next year. Congratulations to our friend GM David Howell for winning! He also won the U18 & U21 sections. It was quite a rush…

Sorry for the late update! It’s been over a week since we arrived in a wet England. We spent the first couple of days up in Stafford spent with Gawain’s family. Since leaving there we’ve been in Torquay for the British Championships (where our usb modem doesn’t like to work). Gawain’s off to a good…

We leave Thailand tomorrow to return back to Malaysia for a day, before catching our flight to London. From there we’ll go and visit Gawain’s grandparents in Stafford where his mum and brothers will be, before heading over to Torquay to play in the British. On Friday morning we decided to get a massage. The…

We’ve been and gone to Malaysia. We spent two days with my family with Gawain mostly doing his chesspublishing work (delayed due to the South African Open) and I mostly sleeping. We woke up again at our weird times and feeling extremely hungry. Lucky for us my family owns a coffee shop which opens at…

The South African Open has been and gone. We’ve packed all our belongings (including a duvet) and are now back in Auckland. Even though we’ve been checking the site frantically we aren’t sure what Gawain’s placing was.. though the organiser recalled outright 2nd. He faced FM de Villiers in the penultimate Round and was down…

It’s been 4 day since I last wrote. If you really would like to know Gawain’s score you can go to www.saopen2009.com and find results there. He had a draw with Amon though there was a bit of a commotion. Gawain’s opponent offered him a draw but he didn’t see the offer and made a…

The South African Open started last weekend.Originally we were meant to play at ours but our flatmate was hosting his 30th Birthday party here so we had to find an alternative venue. Gawain, IM Puchen Wang (NZL) and IM Mirko Rujecvic (Aus) agreed to play in this tournament online organized by ChessCube. These will be…

Sorry for the late write up. Last week was hectic being in the Gold Coast for the Oceania Zonal (20th-26th June) and after that the Gold Coast Open plus a couple of days extra playing tourist. We left Melbourne early Saturday morning and arrived to no sun, dark clouds and rain. For me the first…

This weekend was not quite as successful as we hoped. The Vic Open was held at Box Hill chess club which was quite a commute from where we lived. Over the weekend we played 7 rounds in total. Gawain blundered his queen unfortunately whilst in time trouble in round 4 and drew his last round…

Hi everyone, Time for another (slightly late) update! Last Friday we got an early flight to Auckland, New Zealand so early that we decided to pull an all nighter. Once in Auckland we went straight to the hotel/venue grabbed some Hells Pizza and L&P which had been sorely missed while away and had an early…

Hello Again, Last week was quite eventful as on the way to the supermarket Gawain managed to run into a height bar restriction thing coming out of a carpark at the bottom of our apartment block. His head ended up bleeding profusely so after walking back to our place to check on the injury we…

Gawain on an island in the Bay of Islands Us enjoying the sun 🙂 Gawain a bit too much… Cape Reinga – The northwesternmost tip of NZ. Te Paki Sand Dunes – people getting ready to sandboard Clean Green NZ…

Hello there, I’m Sue, Gawain’s girlfriend – Gawain isn’t the most let say hard-working guy in the world so instead he has me updating his blog as we’re usually attached to one another (I tag alongside him to various tournaments). Instead of being in NZ as we are supposed to be we’ve decided to reside…