Ginger GM/Drunken Knights (non London) merge into one for me as two very important men are central to both groups! Si Williams aka Ginger GM and Gary O’Grady are the support for it all. Both these guys alongside their support crew have worked extremely hard to produce the best DVDs available and in no way am I biased having a husband film his first and only DVD with these guys. They know how to do fun with a capital F!
The Christmas Party was held the day after Gawain’s birthday and so we took the train down along with our flatmate IM Tom Rendle and friend from New Zealand Bill Forster. Once arriving into Godalming, I was in heaven! Such a pretty place with lots of little shops. No huge Westfield or hoards of tourists but instead a quaint village/town with 4 pubs. Walking along the high street we happened to pass the Classical games shop which is managed by Gary and where we got Gawain’s latest favourite board game 7 Wonders. Heading over the the pub, The Rose and Crown, we assumed people would be running late but we were pleased to see everything in full swing. I don’t drink so a free tab doesn’t really appeal to me but I could see a lot of chess players making use of it!
After playing some Perudo (also known as liar’s dice) we headed to the Christmas Blitz tournament, to make it fair between the GMs,IMs, WIMs and unrated we had a pawn handicap. GMs gave everyone except IMs two pawns and IMs gave everyone 1 pawn. I got on the board quickly by beating Gary O’Grady and our friend Bill from NZ but then disaster struck twice in a row after Si had to give me two pawns and I was thinking way too positionally for a 3 minute game and I lost! I also drew with Ga 2 pawns down, quicky giving back (him winning) a pawn before heading to a drawn endgame. Funniest thing to happen with me against IM Simon Ansell who gave me a pawn and I gave it back straightaway to outplay him. I probably shouldn’t have asked for odds… lol
Before Si made his speech, the Rose and Crown had it’s weekly pub quiz. We joined forces with Gary O’Grady and his lovely partner Marina but could only manage 2nd out of 3! Massive fail on our part and the quiz wasn’t the most difficult.
Here’s a group photo below, see who you can spot. I am behind the camera and still very sober.
