London Chess Classic - Day 1 and I am getting nervous

I don't know what it is about doing this but there is always that butterflies in the stomach feeling just before play starts.  There are 101 things that can go wrong, from a blown network port (twice this morning) to a broken cable.

I love doing this event.  This year sees the top 4 in the world playing, in Glasgwegian it is "scary biscuits".  David is through in the Open section familiarising himself with the intricacies of the wireless boards.

It is now 15:50.  I have been through the mill.  Malcolm decided that he wanted the first move to be played by guests on all the boards.  Thankfully it was just the one that we had to take back.  So far so good in the Main tournament, we had to swap the clock on board 1 as it was not displaying correctly to the masses.

In the Open and Womens invitational, however...

The work area

 Things were not going so well, the computers are situated near a corner which blocks the signal to the wireless boards.  As a result we have only the bottom three boards going out.

Will reposition tomorrow and try again :D

Now I know my long suffering wife, Karen is going to laugh at this, but I have just been filmed as part of a documentary on Magnus Carlsen.  Anyone knowing my hatred of cameras will know that I didn't like it one bit.

In the end it was a fantastic day with a brilliant game from Magnus, we were all watching the monitors and collectively gasped when we noticed he had missed a mate in 1.  It was only then that we realised that was because he was in check himself :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know what I am doing...

Finally, I give you the only person in the world that could beat every one of these players, blindfolded and playing the pieces with his teeth...