Today is the first round of the Tradewise Gibraltar Masters. This is such a strong event and it seems to get stronger every year! Gawain is 28th seed and is sharing an apartment with GM Nils Grandelius & GM Erik Blomqvist from Sweden. This is such a fun tournament to visit as a spectator and I’m lucky I’ll be visiting on the weekend.
Here are the pairings for the masters. There are so many things to like about this Congress. It’s in a mild place (for end of January/February), people speak English there, there are many other tournaments you can play in including pairs blitz, the masterclasses and of course the commentary. I hope viewers at home will enjoy this tournament!
After a delayed flight yesterday (3hours+) from Heathrow yesterday afternoon Gawain landed in Gib about 8pm local time. We played 4NCL over the weekend and a combination of jetlag and a cold meant that Gawain wasn’t able to calculate as well as he normally can. He managed to get 1/2 (like me) after being worse in a game against IM Harriet Hunt. Then in his Sunday game against FM James Jackson, Ga went into a drawn endgame and blundered a pawn and was most definitely lost but he fought on and managed to get a position where he had N+P vs Q+P but he was holding! I on the other hand kept blundering on the Saturday, my opponent played very well when we went into a minor pieces (him with R+B+N+K and me with R+R+2 pawns) endgame. I managed to start dropping my pawns and had to resign. On Sunday I played a KID and managed to get a position I knew a little about. I then hung my rook but it seems I had compensation and it was probably a draw by perpetual but instead I managed to hide my King in the corner and with no checks I had a mating net.
