I’m pleased to announce that after flying in from our Wedding week in South Africa, Gawain beat GM Robert Hess in their head-to-head with a score of 17.5-13.5. The match started off shaky for Ga but he managed to bounce back with the faster time control to score a decisive victory. Ga would be the first to say that by the end of the match the quality of the game declined and at the end he was quite exhausted.
Just saw in the news today that Gawain has been named ECF Player of the Year. I’m very pleased for him as he’s has been working very hard on his chess and it’s fantastic for him to be recognize. He had some tough competition this year as Luke McShane the World’s Strongest Amateur took 2nd place! Luke has just been playing in the Tal Memorial and manage 3 wins in a row against Morozevich, Aronian and Kramnik but unfortunately he lost the last round to this year’s winner Magnus Carlsen.