Gawain Jones

Category: Tournaments

  • Corsica – Round nine and knockout

    Corsica – Round nine and knockout

    Friday morning I had White against Bulgarian GM Ivan Cheparinov. I again used the repertoire in my How to Beat the Sicilian. We actually followed a line from the first game in the entire book! He deviated at move nine but I followed the same plan. I reached a position with more space and a…

  • Corsica – Rounds Seven and Eight

    I was too exhausted to update after my round seven game. Black against Tal Baron, another young IM who has a rating above 2500. I expected him to play 1.e4 but he surprised me with 1.d4 when I decided to repeat the Dutch. He played the 2.Nc3 sideline but didn’t play the most critical move…

  • Corsica – Round Six

    A double round day meant not so much time to prepare and as my opponent seemed to play lots of different things I took it pretty easy. He chose 1…e5 and 2…Nc6. I decided to go for a Scotch and we followed the critical game Shirov-Kramnik from Wijk aan Zee in January. I deviated on…

  • Corsica Rounds Three, Four and Five.

    Apologies for not updating yesterday. I was simply too shattered after a 74 move game in the second game and only got back to the room at about 10.30pm. But let’s go in order. Round three I had Black against a Bulgarian IM, Radoslav Dimitrov. He played the English and I chose a sort of…

  • Corsica – Round Two

    Of course the big news of today was the Rugby. Glenn Flear headed over here early to join in watching the World Cup Final. To be honest, I didn’t think New Zealand played very well but their defences were strong and the All Blacks held on to defeat France 8-7 in a very tense game,…

  • Corsica – Round One

    This evening I played the opening round of the Corsica Masters. I was up against a kid from Switzerland: Alexis Skouvaklis, which sounds like he has Greek roots. I was Black and wheeled out the Dragon. This was actually my first pure Dragon since the draw with Mickey Adams at the British but I keep…

  • A return to Corsica

    I managed to catch a cold while in Germany, possibly from my team captain. A very short pause in my chess commitments meant I could have my first day off in a while on Monday (lots of board games with Sue and Tom – I may be addicted!) and generally relax and try to fight…

  • Galway Congress – A repeat success!

    I’ve just returned home from Galway. I believe the last time I played was in 2007 according to the trophy – I managed a win that time too 🙂 I arrived in Galway on Thursday and played an 18 board simultaneous display at the Galway Bridge club. As is customary in simuls, I had White…

  • Galway Chess Congress

    Gawain is currently on 3/3 with one more round to play today starting at 7pm local time. You can check out the live games here, though they are down at the moment. I can’t seem to find a results page but will try and keep you updated with what I know. It’s a tough schedule of 6 rounds…

  • Barclays International – Last Round and Round Up

    I arrived back at home in London at 1am this morning so this is the first time I’ve had to write an update. The last round was a 10am start, and after a few hours sleep, breakfast, a quick bit of preparation and packing I managed to arrive at the board just 15 minutes late.…

  • Barclays International Round 8

    Today I was up against Alexandr Fier, a GM from Brazil. He used to be over 2650 and I knew this would be a tough game. I decided to return to my beloved Dragon for this one and the opening worked out pretty well. He offered me a draw after 17 moves but I decided…

  • Barclays International, Rounds 6 and 7

    A familiar pattern seems to be emerging. Round 6 I was paired with Black against the Hungarian GM Lazlo Gonda. He’s a rather solid player, often happy with 1.Nf3, 2.c4 positions so I knew it’d be tough to get the whole point. I tried a new opening but he came up with a clever move…

  • Barclays International Rounds 3,4 and 5.

    The answer to my previous trivia question was 300 🙂 I left you after round two when I had had rather a slow start. I’m afraid the chess I played in round three wasn’t of the highest quality – after trying out the Big Clamp (1.e4 c5 2.d3) again I managed a pleasant edge but…

  • Round 1

    Gawain managed to drag our his winning position into a very long endgame and had to eat McDonalds for dinner! Today is a Monday so hopefully shops will be open and his game won’t last very long.. If you want to see the live games this is the best site http://raksy.dyndns.org/mato/vitinia/torneo1/turno2/webboard.swf although if you watch the next…

  • Barclays International Chess Festival

    Gawain left early this morning and he is now currently playing his 1st Round game against WIM Vesna Rozic is some kind of French. Live games are available to watch. The website is here and it should be updated in due course. Hope you enjoy the games 🙂

  • Round Seven – British Championships

    After a great evening at Terry’s we got up reasonably early on the rest day and played some tennis with him and Matt. It was good fun but I think we were all a bit slow after the previous evening! After that Sue and I walked over to the Botanical Gardens which were rather further…