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…

I am taking a week out to visit Lucca, where we used to live, to hopefully catch-up with some good friends.

Sunday 27th July – Saturday 9th August See the official pairings and results here: www.britishchess08.com

A full account is available here: reports.chessdom.com/doeberl-2008/final-report

October 2006, Calvia Chess Festival, Mallorca, Spain. Went to this tournament with Thomas Rendle, another young English IM. It was nice to get away from the cold to this warm venue 🙂 I was pleased with my performance (2595) but narrowly missed out on a 9 round gm norm. I need a 10 round gm…

October 2006, European Club Championships, Fuegen, Austria. An exceptionally strong tournament with many of the best players in the world playing. I was top board for Slough Sharks and managed 5.5/7 achieving my 2nd gm norm and my highest ever rating performance at 2673. Our team also finished above our seeding on 3/7. We rented…

October 2006, Galway Congress, Ireland. I returned here as joint winner from last year and went into the last round in the lead again but lost an interesting game to Alex Baburin and finished on 4.5/6, half a point behind the leaders. Another enjoyable weekend though.

September 2006, European Union Championships, Liverpool. 2nd= and my 1st gm norm, only need 2 more 🙂 The official website is http://www.liverpoolchessinternational.co.uk/. My favourite game was my round 6 against Klaus Bischoff, check it out! I also managed a draw with black against Nigel Short who won the tournament and gained 21 rating points.

August – September 2006, Hereford International, England. This was a closed tournament with gm and im norm chances. I came 2nd with 5.5/9 losing only to top seed Danny Gormally who won the tournament. This was Max Devereaux’s first tournament as an organiser and it went very smoothly. The website is: http://www.deversoft.co.uk/hict/

August 2006, British Championships, Swansea, Wales. Here I managed my best ever performance in the British and came 3rd= with 7.5/11 and also won the U18 title (due to a recent rule change I wasn’t able to win the U21). I started off slowly with 3.5/6 losing to GMs Nick Pert and Jonathan Parker but…

June 2006, South African Open, Port Elizabeth. This was my first tournament after my final Leaving Certificate exams and my last days of school ever! I went to this tournament more for a holiday than for the chess. I travelled over with a couple of friends and we managed to see some of Africa, a…