Today we are off to Hungary and before you go thinking I’m not playing a First Saturday! I found the Zalakaros Chess Festival on the FIDE Other tournaments, it has a good prize fund and is very strong! The A Group is meant for 2400+ but I’ve asked the organizer if I could play in it and he has kindly obliged. The B Group is still strong though I would’ve been in the top half.
The tournament starts on the 23rd of May and finishes on the the 31st. Every round starts at 3pm (local time) except the last round which is an early 8.30am start. We’ll fly back on the Saturday evening as we have tickets to go and watch the Barbarians vs England on Sunday :-).
It’s held in a spa town on the west side of Hungary, we will fly into Budapest then take the bus down. I was also looking at flying into Vienna or Zagreb.
The tournaments field consists of mostly Hungarian players and Gawain is 4th seed. In a field of 66, there are 53 people rated 2300+ and only 5 untitled players. Here you can find list of players.
You can read more information here. I’ll try and update when I can but I’m hoping to relax, enjoy the sun, play good chess and do some exercise so we will see what time is left over for the website 🙂