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4NCL Round 3 and 4 This Weekend
Follow the live boards at the main 4ncl website. Gawain’s team Guilford is in Division 1, Pool B. Here are the pairings below. I on the otherhand will be playing in Division 2 for North East England. A lot of female players play in Division 1 as the rules state “In Division 1 each match shall be…
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Hastings Chess Champion
If you haven’t heard by now, I’m pleased to say that Gawain won the Hastings Masters outright with 7.5/10. 8 other players followed in 2= with 7/10 which shows how important converting points are at the top. Gawain’s decisive result was in the penultimate round against the Spanish GM Daniel Alsina Leal where he ground down Daniel…
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Happy New Year/Hastings Round 1-5
Happy New Years to all our readers. Hope you enjoyed having your holiday break and had lots of fun. Ga and I had a quiet night in as guess who was lucky enough to get the norovirus! Yes, us two. I got it first and unfortunately passed it on to Ga who managed to draw…
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Hastings International Chess Congress
Today is the first round of the 88th Hastings International Chess Congress held in the seaside town of Hastings. This is my second time in Hastings and I’m looking forward to playing some good chess. For some reason they have accelerated the pairings (where the top of the first quarter plays against the top of…
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Merry Christmas
We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas! If you will be travelling back during this busy period we wish you a safe journey. We hope if you are in the UK the flood hasn’t affected you. We will see some of you in Hastings staring a few days after Christmas! Here is a lovely…
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London Chess Classic – A personal retrospective
Now we’ve had a bit over a week since the end of the London Classic I decided it was the right moment to look back at the tournament and take stock. My final score was somewhat disappointing; my aim was to pick up at least one win and, while I knew it would be difficult…
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Ginger GM Christmas Party
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…
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Chris Dossett
Ga played 448 moves which averaged to be 56 moves per a game. And our winner Chris Dossett gussed 444 which wasn’t such a bad guess. I’m going to try and write a final update on the classic before we head of for a much deserved Christmas break. This is a hectic time of year…
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Happy Birthday to Gawain and Vishy
Today Gawain turns 25 (halfway to 50) and Vishy turns 43! Last night we were out celebrating the end of the LCC with a dinner at Simpson’s full of potential donors and the players. The players did a simul with ended 12-6 in favour of the other players (I personally blame a certain World Number…
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Round 4 &5: World Number 1 and World Champion
Gawain’s score from these two days were 0-2 but Gawain played “proper” chess which unfortunately is quite doubled edged. Against Magnus as I mentioned, he sacrificed his queen for two pieces which with accurate play would have put any player under pressure but unfortunately short on time Gawain choose the wrong course. Of course, if…
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London Chess Classic 2012 Signed Tournament Programme
So today is the rest day but I already here Judith is hard at work doing a radio show. I’m not sure about the rest of the players. Gawain as you know played a very practical queen sacrifice but got very short on time and lost to Magnus Carlsen. I hope to write more tomorrow…
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Round 3: The Defender King!
I’m now back at work so my updates may be briefer than normal but I did manage to be at Olympia for the start of the round and took some photos. The light in the auditorium isn’t fantastic so my photos are a bit dark. I don’t know much about photography but my camera is…
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Round 2 – 313 moves. You’re getting your money’s worth 🙂
All games were still playing at 7.30pm and I was getting very nervous and hungry. Gawain’s opening didn’t go to plan as such and he’d been defending a worse position for the majority of the game and I feared déjàvu especially when Judit started to repeat position twice several times but Gawain held the position…
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Round 1 – Explosions and two very long endgame.
For the opening ceremony, we had two musicians,Jason Kouchak on piano and Alf Wilheim Lundberg who played an eight string guitar, played some lovely tunes for us. I figured out that Alf’s interpretation of a Christmas song was “Silent Night” where as Gawain thought it was “Away in the Manger”. The ceremony was broadcast live this year…
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London Chess Classic
Yesterday, all the players alongside Chief Organizer Malcolm Pein came to Olympia and attended the press conference. There were questions from the floor as well as questions submitted online. Ga was asked “What is your expected score” and his answer was something along the lines of “Just wanting to play proper chess and hopefully…
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Kilkenny Masters 2012
Last weekend I made my usual November trip to Ireland to play the Kilkenny Masters. As there had still been no decision on Sue’s appeal, she still had no passport and thus was unable to accompany me. However my Mum came out of chess retirement and played her first tournament in 18 years – competing…
Got any book recommendations?