Lucky for us there’s a direct train from Waterloo to Sunningdale taking a grand total of 50minutes. There we were with our luggage and supplies waiting to play our first games since Dun Laoghaire. Sunningdale is run by Sean Hewitt of e2e4 chess and there are various weekenders and congresses runnign through the year. The tournment consisted of 5 rounds  and we saw some familiar faces such as GM Simon Williams & GM Nick Pert there also was another kiwi in the field Nick Croad who is board 3 on the New Zealand men’s olympiad team. Round 1 got on to a good start for myself beating a 2200 with the good old Grand Prix (it really does  work!). Gawain had a slower round eventually beating his opponent rated 2090. Day 2 got off to a great start for Gawain who made it to 3/3 I on the otherhand suffered defeat and gained no points. That night we went out and had a evening meal wih Gary O’Grady, Marina, IM Richard Bates, IM Gavin Wall as well as Ginger Gm (Simon Williams) himself. The next day proved to be disastrous Gawain played the KID where Simon played a very interesting rook sacrifice which Gawain in time trouble failed to defend against. The last round Ga played against GM Aaron Summerscale and was unfortunately lost out of the opening with the white pieces. I finished on 2.5/5 gaining myself 17.5 rating points not quite yet breakin the 2000 mark. Gawain has now sent in a draft copy of his book to the publishers and we’re currently in the lovely city of Prague. This evening we’ll catch up with some teammates (Kanwal Bhatia and Ingrid Lauterbach) and probably head over to the to have a pint or two. Off to Siberia tomorrow so will update if there’s something to update about and fingers crossed about having some contact with the outside world.

Ciao

P.s Waiting for an update from Ga about the Staunton dinner.