Gawain will be playing an early morning last round tomorrow in the Spanish League, I think it starts 9.30am (!!) local time. His team Sestao Bizkaialdehas won the title with one round to spare. You can watch the games live on chess24. Gawain headed to Linares last Sunday and we went via London where we played tag rugby. We had lots of fun playing but I was very rusty and I paid for our efforts the next day with very sore thighs. I’ve only just managed to recover!
Whilst Gawain has been in Spain, I’ve been cycling around the Peak District in preparation for my 60km Slow Up cycle in Switzerland. Gawain get’s back on Monday when we will catch up on Game of Thrones and then he will be in work mode for the World Cup which starts 2nd of September. In the first round he plays the young, strong Peruvian player Jorge Cori who is also playing in the Spanish League.
The World Cup is a knockout event like Wimbledon but instead of there only being 32 seeds, everyone is seeded and so 1 plays 128, 2 plays 127, 64 plays 65 and so on. It’ll be Gawain’s second World Cup and his first time to Georgia. Hopefully we will both be there next year for the Chess Olympiad. Depending on how things go in Tbisili, we are then schedule late in September to play in the exceptionally strong open, the Isle of Man International Masters tournament.