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May 2011 Rating List
GM Matthew Sadler pops into 4th by playing a few games in the Dutch League. I believe he is also making a long play tournament comeback by playing in the Oslo International. Gawain is still yoyoing having gained 17.5 on the last list but 4NCL will be rated on the next list and at the…
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Pride and Prejudice, Winners of the Four Nation Chess League
The final round of the 4NCl was a close match between the top 2 seeds Pride and Prejudice and Wood Green Hilsmark Kingfisher. Whilst watching the game, the wags and our spare GM Chris Ward (over) analysed each board and all sorts of variation. A combination of nerves and uncertainty was felt but our feelings were quickly…
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4ncl: Round 9 and 10
Gawain as semi predicted played IM Richard Palliser (yes- the organizer from the York Simul) and although the game looked shaky, Gawain prevailed to take the full point. Pride and Prejudice beat White Rose 7-1 with 2 draw including my fellow Kiwi FM Nic Croad(White Rose) drawing with GM Glenn Flear(P&P). Yesterday the team played…
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York Simul and 4NCL Final Weekend
Gawain played 32 people and finished with 2 loses, 9 draws and the rest wins! This was a tough field considering they were all club players and roughly around 1900 (ELO) strength! The weather has been lovely over Summer and that day in York was no different. Gawain is originally from Yorkshire and is proud…
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London League versus Kings Head
In the lovely weather, Gawain decided to walk over for his London League game on the 27th of April against Kings Head. He was a bit sore all over due to us visiting our friends FM Manuel Weeks and his lovely girlfriend Brigitta Holland as well as GM Stuart Conquest the day before where we…
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Norwegian Open – The Finale
Round 8 I played White against the solid and well prepared Michael Richter. I’d looked him up and seen he had recently gained a lot of rating points and was now closing in on the GM title so I knew the game would be tough. I decided to surprise his French with 3.Nc3 (rather than…
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Norwegian Open – Round Seven Black vs Leif
Not much to say about today’s game really. Black against Leif Johannessen a Norwegian GM, he surprised me in the opening playing the Four Pawns Attack against my Kings Indian playing in a positional style with capturing on c5. Actually I played a move order that I thought prevented this but couldn’t remember my analysis…
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Norwegian Open Rounds 5+6
Apologies for no update yesterday, I found myself snowed under with work (checking the English for the ChessVibes Openings (check www.chessvibes.com) and then I had a deadline for ChessBase to annotate a couple of games from the European Championships. I eventually finished the work at 2.30am! Round Five I was paired with the scarily improving…
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Norwegian Open – Rounds Three and Four
Today was a double round day so up and early for a 9am start. I was paired against another Norwegian 2100, Victor Hansen. After a rather offbeat opening (1.Nf3 d6 2.c4 e5 3.d3 f5) I equalised comfortably and could have taken the advantage before things again started going wrong. I set up this tactic (cheapo)…
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Norwegian Open – The Arrival Round 1&2
We ended up home around 2.30am from the simul at the RAC club. Luckily Sue had thought ahead (as always) and packed for me so I could curl up and get a quick couple hours sleep before getting up at 4.30 to start my trek over to Norway. Actually the trip was quite painless (except for…
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Round 1
Here are the live games from the Open Norweigen. Round 1 started at 17.30 (local time) 16.30 (GMT)
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RAC Simul
Yesterday the RAC Simul took place, Gawain along with the other Grandmasters each followed a format of playing 3 teams (one after the after) each with 10 Boards. Ga was paired with quite a tough pairing ECF Junior Select (9.5) Oxford/Cambridge Varsity (9) and RAC 1 (8.5) with a total score of 27 and no…
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Gawain with Magnus and Bobby
A little on the low down but here is Ga and Magnus at a screening of the new Bobby Fischer doco – “Bobby Fischer against the World”. More information about the movie to come but it is a moving tale and I think even the non chess people in your life would enjoy it! 🙂…
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The Killer Grand Prix
Remember a while back I mentioned Ga doing a DVD for Ginger GM. The DVD will hopefully be released soon, but in the mean time you can pre order your copy and check out the trailer below!
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Bangkok Open
The Bangkok Open started on the 11th of April. We have never played but Thailand is such a lovely place, and we hope to play there in the near future. In 2009 we had a holiday (with no chess) in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand where we rode elephants all over the countryside! Thailand is a…
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RAC Simultaneous Exhibition.
The RAC 100 Board Simultaneous takes place this Saturday 16th of December at the RAC Clubhouse in Pall Mal. Gawain is participating alongside Grandmasters Mickey Adams ,Luke McShane, David Howell, Julian Hodgson, Nick Pert, Stephen Gordon, Jon Speelman, Simon Williams and WGM (IM) Jovanka Houska. Here is more information taken from the English Chess website.…
Got any book recommendations?