Tag: slider
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Tata Steel Masters, Rounds 1-5
Wijk aan Zee is a small village which hosts the first major “super tournament” of the year. It’s normally held in January and overlaps briefly with the strong open, The Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival. Closed tournaments for 2650 Grandmasters are hard to come by, so when you get such an opportunity you really want to grab it. At…
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Tata Steel Opening Ceremony
There’s something nice about being near the sea, though it would be even better if it was summer time! Oh well. This tournament is seeped in history and for many reasons players keep coming back to play in Wijk. It’s quite a special place with a great chess atmosphere. The playing hall “De Moriaan” transforms…
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Hello 2018! 🙂
What an incredibly busy year it has been for us. I’ve played 8 tournaments last year as well as playing in the 4NCL (UK League) and Landesliga (German League 5th Division). Gawain has been of course even busier than me also playing in the World Cup and the European Individual. We are now in Wijk…
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European Teams Chess Championship
We’ve been back home now for just over a week since coming back from Crete and weather wise it’s been a shock to the system! Though Crete was not as warm as I had hoped it to be, it was still mostly t-shirts and shorts kind of weather so once we got back and I…
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English Women’s Championship.
Last weekend I headed to West Bromwich to play in the English Women’s Championship. I was 2nd seed in a tournament with 11 players. Last year I think there was only 6 players so the number of entrants had definitely improved. It was strange having a swiss with so few players as 4 players ended up getting…
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European Teams Chess Championship, Crete.
I’m so glad to announce that both Gawain and I have been selected to play for England at the European Teams later this year. The tournament will be held late October until early November. You can check out the official regulations here. It’s normally a very strong team event because, unlike the Chess Olympiad where you…
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2017 British Chess Champion
Before the tournament we were lucky to have GM Nils and WFM Ellen visiting us. It was a relaxing way to spend a few days. We played a lot of tennis, did lots of walking and introduced them to the “British way of life”. I’m so pleased to say that Gawain is the 2017 British…
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European Individual 2017, Minsk
Gawain left Sheffield on Sunday to head down to London to catch his direct flight to Minsk, Belarus. Over the weekend we saw the mess that BA had and we were very glad we weren’t flying that weekend. His trip on Monday went smoothly and he arrived in a new country. So far no complaints except that…
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4th Purtichju Open, Corsica
I’m pleased to announce that we will be heading to Corsica in July for some sun and chess! Gawain has played in Corisca 4 times also playing previously in the strong rapid knock out tournament in Bastia. You can see the starting list for the main tournament here. Or you can check out the official website…
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The Ups and the Downs
I feel like this is a subject I can write about. If you don’t know much about my chess abilities then I’ll start with the history of my chess career. I grew up in NZ and my dad Temu played chess and still does. He’s about 1700 on a good day! I learnt relatively late…
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Reykjavik Open 2017
After a relaxing Easter Break at home we went on to Reykjavik. While at home and looking at the calendar Gawain said “It feels so strange to not be playing chess over Easter” and I jokingly replied that “I’ve signed him up to play at the chess club!”. On our train to Birmingham Airport we received…
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Dubai Open Champion
Round 2 was a good day in our family as we scored 2/2. Unfortunately in Round 3 we didn’t do so well with Gawain playing GM Alan Pichot again and I played our friend IM Lorin D’Costa, one of four English players here! There was a 750 rating points difference between my opponents between the…
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Dubai Open
After our time in Sharjah we were glad to have a change of scenery as we moved to the next hotel, the JW Marriot in Deira. It’s in a different part of Dubai to where I stayed last time and there are definitely more people living around here.We also had the weekend off from playing…
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Sharjah Masters Final Report
In Round 4 the two separated pairing groups joined and that meant the top boards had players from my group that were between 2100-2220. Gawain had a very long game against a 10-11 year old Mittal Aditya. A very sweet looking boy. His game was 87 moves and his young opponent defended exceptionally well and only…
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1st Sharjah Masters
After a few relaxing weeks at home, we flew last Wednesday to Dubai to play in the 1st Sharjah Masters. We will head next to the Dubai Open with one rest day in between. We arrived at Dubai Airport around midnight Thursday and headed straight to the hotel which is right next to Sharjah’s airport.…
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Summer Holiday: Indonesia, Part Two
After a lovely week in Malaysia we headed with my aunt and cousins to Yogyakarta on the island of Java. I was slightly nervous about flying there as I remember seeing in the news the Air Asia crash but my fears were unfounded. Occasionally I think about plane crashes when we are flying but I…