If you haven’t heard by now, I’m pleased to say that Gawain won the Hastings Masters outright with 7.5/10. 8 other players followed in 2= with 7/10 which shows how important converting points are at the top. Gawain’s decisive result was in the penultimate round against the Spanish GM Daniel Alsina Leal where he ground down Daniel in a Rook+2 vs Rook and 1 endgame, he told me afterwards he was trying to remember the Dvortskey theory afterwards as all other moves draw! If you haven’t seen the game try and do the puzzle below.
My tournament went very well and I’m gaining exactly the same amount I lost in the e2e4 Brighton 17.7 rating points to be precise and closer for me to reach my goal of 2100! 🙂 I beat Paul Tasma (2229) in round 7 after I blundered the exchange but had a very strong knight and I outplayed CM Felix Kwiatowski (2232) the next round in a Breyer.
When I last wrote, I mentioned an illness which I now suspect to be norovirus which was rampant through the chess hall. To think about the hygiene of those pieces isn’t something I like to often think about but now that we have had it, hopefully it won’t come again. A lot of people pulled out and it did put a dampen on the tournament especially as Gawain had it in Round 4 against Glenn Flear but he got through the rest event in true soviet style with 5 wins and 5 draws.
