Category: Updates
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at prize giving 🙂
Prize giving has just started. gawain if you watched had a mammoth game of 144 moves and 8 hours!! After a night of relaxing in dheffield nightlife we were promptly kicked out around 2am! And off to sleep we went. promise to write a proper update soon, once we get a breather!
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British Championships – Round Ten
Success! Black against Aaron Summerscale was always going to be difficult. He’s a very solid player and has a fairly low rating simply due to drawing with too many lower rated players (and full time coaching in schools tires one out). Last time we played he defeated me in the British Rapidplay after I overpressed…
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Round Nine – British Championships
Today was a little disappointing. After following Howell-Adams for the first 14 moves I couldn’t remember any more theory and my plausible move turned out to be an error which left me suffering. Hawkins pounced on the error, sacrificing a pawn to destroy my pawn structure and gaining the bishop pair. I was forced to…
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British Chess Championship – Round 6
Ok.I apologise in advance but I’m typing this during a very bumpy taxi ride out into the countryside. Terry Chapman had kindly invited us to dinner at his hotel this evening along with a few other chess players. All participants won their games with the host Terry drawing with GM Aaron Summerscale – good luck…
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British Chess Championships – Round Four
Hey everyone. I’m writing a quick update personally while I try to get Sue interested in Les Miserables 🙂 My game against Susan Lalic went well today. The opening was an Advanced Caro-Kann and quickly an interesting imbalance emerged with me having the bishop pair but doubled c pawns against her central pawns. It was…
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British Championships
As I write this I’m on the train (First Class! Having such an organised manager to book all my tickets a long way in advance certainly helps) to Sheffield where the chess starts tomorrow. It’s a very strong British this year, much stronger than any I’ve ever played in before and perhaps the strongest ever.…
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Place your bets..
Ok – well if you know me, you would know that I’m not the kind of woman to bet and if you know my husband to be, you’d know that he’d bet on anything and everything (with my watchful eye hovering over him of course). Here’s Simon Williams interesting odds on who’s to win the…
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Commonwealth Championships Roundup
Hello again dear readers. Again apologies for the delay in uploading. The internet in South Africa was a bit temperamental, in the end I got online with a 3G usb modem but had to be a bit careful with my limit. Anyways, as you have seen the tournament was a success and I managed to…
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Simultaneous Exhbition
Gawain is back (YAY!) and has a pretty cool trophy which I can take a photo and upload later. Right now, we are in Lincoln, Lincolnshire for Gawain to do a simul which coincides with the Lincolnshire County Championship. There are 28 players playing and will take place from 4:30 pm and will run for approximately…
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Review: Bobby Fischer against the World
A while ago, Gawain and I went to see a preview of the new Bobby Fischer documentary “Bobby Fishcer against the World” in which we met fellow chess player GM Carlsen who Gawain had a quick fire interview with. Here below is Gawain’s review on the documentary which is having it’s London Premiere as we…
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South Africa Safari Part Two
After lunch we drove over to another lodge owned by a chess enthusiast. It was a wonderful place with 5 big double bedrooms, a pool table and even its own bar! The view was stunning, straight across the river into the park and we saw hippos wallowing in the glorious mud (see Flanders and Swann).…
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Round 7
Gawain had a flying start with 6/6 and facing the young and talented IM Sahaj Grover in the 7th round with the white pieces. Gawain’s position looked good but Sahaj defended well and the point was split. The next 2 boards were also drawn and now Gawain is leading with 6.5/7 with four rounds to…
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Safari time – Pre tournament preparation!
The journey to Heathrow during the day is definitely a lot easier than coming back from Stansted at night, and I was at the terminal within an hour of leaving the house. As I arrived to check in for my 18:50 flight to Madrid I was told that it was running late and so was…
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Lucca Finale
The start of the game against Efimov didn’t bode well for a decisive result. As black I countered 1.Nf3 with …e6 when he played 2.e4 and offered me a draw. Such a passive way of playing doesn’t make sense; granted I’m top seed but he’s got White and a GM himself, while a draw would…
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Round 5
You can watch the Round 5 games live here. There has been a few upsets but there are still 17 people on 4/4. Gawain this round is playing WGM Subbaraman Meenakshi from India. Pairings are available from Chess-Results. Gawain has now received a dongle (mobile broadband stick) but there was a problem with setting it up.…
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South Africa Open Blitz Champion
After a few days of safarying (and without internet or mobile access) Gawain is now back in Johanneburg playing in the Commonwealth Championship. He started off with an 100% score with 1/1 in the main draw and 9/9 in the blitz, including beating GM David Smerdon, IM Sahai Grover. The blitz was a marathon event…