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2011 Commonwealth Champion
Gawain Jones aged 23 from Yorkshire, England is now the 2011 Commonwealth Chess Champion. He ended up with 9.5 points out of 11 alongside former World Contender OBE GM Nigel Short but had a better tie break and hence won Gold Medal with Nigel coming 2nd with Silver. The Commonwealth Championship was held in Gauteng,…
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Round 9
Gawain is playing defending Commonwealth Champion GM Laxman but sadly the games have gone down so I can’t see what is happening. I’m pleased to announce that Gawain has crossed that 2600 barrier mark after quite a long time (probably due to me and us living in New Zealand). Here’s England’s Top 100 players. Since…
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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…
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Photos and Update in Italiano..
Check out this link and check out the photos or read it if you speak italian (google translate helps me!). Gawain has arrived safely in South Africa and is on his way up to meet the organizer Grahame Jurgensen and other players including our friend GM David Smerdon at a Safari Park. Hopefully he has…
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Return to Lucca (Part 1&2)
On Thursday morning I left rainy England from London Stansted and a couple hours later arrived in a roasting Pisa. An old friend of mine, Luca Bernardini, met me at the airport and kindly drove me what should be only 30km or so to Lucca. Unfortunately, whilst trying to avoid the centre of Pisa he…
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Campione di scacchi (de Lucca)
Gawain’s currently on a plane back home to London. Inbetween the final round (which he drew) and going to the airport I managed to have a quick chat with him and he duly informed me that he won the tournament – not with an outright score but tied with 4 others on 4/5. In Italy…
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OPEN A – XXIII° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE “CITTA’ DI LUCCA”
Gawain is currently on 3/3 in the Lucca Open. I have topped up my dongle so now I’m able to use the web freely until we get internet all set up here. I can’t seem to find a site with results and the Lucca website seems to have been infested with malware. I have seen…
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Lucca
Gawain left earlier this morning to catch a flight back to Pisa, Italy where he’ll be playing in Lucca. Please bear with me for the time being as we’re in the process of moving (who knew we had so much stuff) so updates may be infrequent. Gawain has very busy schedule flying back Sunday evening…
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Bundesliga
I am pleased to announce that Gawain will be playing for SC 1950 Remagen in this coming season’s Bundesliga. Players who played for this team in previous seasons include GM Vassily Ivanchuk and GM Sergey Fedorchuk. The team is based in Remagen (hence the name) which is 30minutes drive south of Bonn. Gawain looks forward…
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A Classical Trip
Hello again everybody. On June 1st I headed off to Greece to do some work and only got back yesterday evening. It was hard work but enjoyable and hopefully it’ll come in handy. I only got out a couple of times but I managed to see a few sights. Shortly after arriving we went…
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Chesspublishing
I’m sad to announce that the June update will be my last 1.e4… until at least February 2012. I hope all subscribers have enjoyed my column as I throughly enjoyed annotating the games. The reason behind my depatures is my need to focus on my own chess (novelties, playing e.t.c) and unfortunately Chesspub is just too time…
Got any book recommendations?