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Southend Easter Congress
I promised to write up my experience in Southend, particularly the incident in the last round. I delayed publishing it online as I wanted to give the organisers time to respond. Below is the letter I sent them which outlines my grievances around the last round. Dear Sir, I am writing to complain about the…
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Malaysia.
Thursday 22nd of March at 10pm was my flight time from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur. I had booked my ticket in December with air miles (thanks to me flying from here to NZ), I got my flight for £350 (which are just the taxes). It was a bit touch and go whether I’d actually make…
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Newham Chess Project Lauch Sponsored by East Village
The joint operation from Chess in Schools and Communities, East Village London, Newham Council launched a programme which aims to introduce chess into every school in the borough. On Wednesday 13th of March, we woke up at 4am to be driven to East London where Gawain, Malcolm and Sabrina were going to be live on BBC Breakfast at Ravescroft Primary…
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Back from holiday
Since I last wrote on the 17th of March so many things have happened. Gawain wise, he was the star player at an event which was held to celebrate the launch of an Urban Chess funding initiative from London’s newest neighbourhood – East Village, in partnership with the charity Chess in Schools and the Communities…
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Bundesliga Round 11 and 12
Gawain is at Bundesliga again, today he had a boring draw today against his last FIDE rated opponent from the Icelandic league (also a draw), Tomi Nyback who is the top Finnish player. Gawain is playing for Solingen who unfortunately lost today’s match to Werder Bremen It was a very close match with the final…
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Work work and then “play”?
For the first time in a while I worked a full day and then played a game of evening league chess. I do have a very great lifestyle (Thanks hubby) which allows me to work part time and occasionally full time but it’s been a while since I’ve done a 7am bootcamp, an 8.5hour day…
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Icelandic League Final Weekend
I left you on Wednesday with the completion of the Reykjavik Open. We went out for a nice meal at Gandhi, an Indian restaurant (obviously) followed by a few beers in the English Pub and Obladi-Oblada, a bar with three chess boards and clocks which were obviously used for some wind down blitz. Thursday was…
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Reykjavik Open 2013 – Round up
This is my third time playing the Reykjavik Open and we again played in last year’s impressive new venue: Harpa, the picturesque concert hall in Reykjavik’s harbour. I remember last year noise was a bit of an issue but the organisers seem to have done a good job and there was only one day with…
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Reykjavik Open
The Reykjavik Open started yesterday and there were quite a few upsets! The young Norweigen Sebastian Mihajlov 2059 held GM Ling Diren 2709 to a draw after the Chinese GM missed a win in the middlegame. Some other upsets include Ingibjorg Birgisdottir beaing IM David Miedema a 581 point difference. Gawain started off yesterday with a win…
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The Stronger Opposition
You’ve just arrived at your board and look up at who you hope to be your next victim only to find that it’s a Grandmaster. Do you A) freak out with fear and start to sweat or do you B) feel no pressure and think you have nothing to lose? Many chess players, whether they are…
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Gibraltar Masters
Sue’s been writing so magnificently on the website but I better write a post or two or we should change the address to suemaroroa.co.uk 🙂 Hastings went very well for me and I managed to get 7.5/10 with the old Soviet model of drawing my blacks and winning my whites (with one exception, beating Vocaturo…
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Bundesliga
After Gib, Gawain flew into Heathrow where I managed to see him for 2 hours then he was off to Dusseldorf for Bundesliga. Unfortunately, he loss yesterday to an up and coming junior. Sometimes things just don’t click. You can follow the live games here. He plays for Solingen and is Board 3 against Polischuk. Games…
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A Sleepless Night
I know this is Gawain’s website and being a professional player most of our readers will probably just want to hear the insights to a life as a professional but I, as his wife most of the updates and now I’m on a mission to improve myself as a player. I started playing chess when…
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Gibraltar Chess Congress
Rd 1 started yesterday and even though London had (some) snow which caused major transport problems, Gawain after a delay in his flight made it into Gib yesterday afternoon. I’m still not sure why this country is ill prepared for snow and their were major disruptions at Heathrow with lots of flights being cancelled but…
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4ncl Round 3 and 4 Update
We left Friday evening to make it up to Daventry but while we were on the train we realized we weren’t sure which hotel we were going to. Since we don’t have smart phones we couldn’t just google it so we had to call up our flatmates and learnt it was the De Vere hotel…
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2013 Tradewise Gibraltar Festival
Gawain’s heading over to Gib for this year’s Tradewise Gibraltar Festival from the 21st-31st of January. Entries for the Masters are now closed as it has reach it’s capacity. If you haven’t heard of this tournament it’s one of the Must Do Tournaments (along with Reykjavik, Queenstown,Bangkok e.t.c).Gib is at the Southern tip of Spain but…
Got any book recommendations?