Any chance of the getting the moves for this game? Sounds fun.benedgell wrote: Game 2, and both players arrived on time, and ready to play. It was Jai Stokes against Fernando Villasevil, and just to stoke up the rivalry, Fernando had brought along minature Spanish and English flags. It was a fairly usual sort of bishop's opening, with Jai having white when Fernado played ...g4. Myself and Stewart had been discussing the usual developing moves for black, and hadn't even considered it. "Okay, ...g4, threatening the queen. Well the queen can't go to, umm, oh crikey, that is sneaky" Yup, the queen had run out of squares, and we'd missed it. As I told Stewart "We're both as rubbish as each other" Jai had to give up his queen for just a bishop after which it was only a matter of time. He did manage to win the 'a' pawn, and we had good fun cheering on white's 'a' pawn as it went a2-a4-a5-a6, only to be stopped when black gave checkmate.
That opening sounds rather like The Lion system which I attempted to learn as a way to play a black opening against anything white would do. It never worked of course, but then I was unable to learn all the variations and could only remember the black moves! /rolleyesbenedgell wrote: Game 5, the last game of the day, and indeed the event, and ironically we were hoping for someone to drop out. Ryad Rizouk, an Algerian IM, had arrived during the previous game, and asked if it was possible to play. His wish was granted as once again both scheduled opponents failed to arrive. His opponent, Miles Shaw, was about 1900 strength, and promised to show us the new opening he'd been perfecting called 'The Back Jamaican'. It consisted of a somewhat- odd looking hippo type opening, where black developed the bishop to e7, played h6 and g5, and proceed to swing the queens- knight round to g6. If I'm honest it all looked a little on the slow side, and Ryad tore through with strong, aggressive play. There was a point where we thought maybe Miles had some chances, based on white's king being boxed in the corner, but Ryad had it well covered and won decisively.
I was there on Saturday and thought i saw Adam Raoof "assisting someone". Took some photos and moved on to sample the rest of the Design Festival. Ended up in Hard Rock Cafe instead and went home with a couple lovely cocktail glasses.benedgell wrote: So that's it. Hope you've enjoyed both the blog, and The Tournament for those of you who went to see it in person. It's been a tremendous learning experience for me, and also great fun to boot. It's got a lot of publicity for chess- we've had hundreds of people watching each game and countless media groups featuring it in newspapers and on television- and so all in all job well done.
Blog was great Ben and the event itself looked splendid. I would have loved to have played but only found out on the day that entries had to done in advance.
