Scottish Championships 2013 - Days 1 to 3. A welcome Visitor

Good afternoon and welcome to this years edition of my Scottish Championship Blog.

Due to a Murphy load of problems this year, we are a wee bit behind and I am now on the catch up and finally getting round to writing the blog (albeit on the train home!)

The first three days have certainly been a technical challenge.  Alex gave us the target of broadcasting 25 boards.  Well we have gone one better and we are broadcasting 26!

As it stands at the moment we have no one on 3 out of 3 and the field is bunching up on 2.5.  I feel sorry for David Oswald as he is the only non titled player in the leading bunch which means they will be out to get them!

 

I could not believe it today.  Sitting there on board 4 playing a Grandmaster was my friend and clubmate Alan Jelfs!!!  Great achievement to be so high up at the moment in that field and I hope he continues to have an excellent tournament.

Our norm chasers are doing fairly well, most sitting on 2/3 and if they continue in this form then we may see that elusive IM norm for one of them.  I really have lost count the number of times they have just missed out!

Yesterday we had a very welcome visitor.  Many at the tournament will have noticed we are a man down.  Not just a normal man, but Donald Wilson.  Donald decided to step back from chess for a while back in February and we were delighted to see him pop in and say hi!

Donald in usual position!

Tournament is shaping up really nicely and apart from the Centre Court esq heat the conditions are not too bad at all  I have heard lots of good things from the players about Helensburgh, it is a nice place!

Murphy has made several spectacular entrances this tournament and none were so brilliant as today.  We arrived early to try out an experimental setup to get the TV's going.  Got everything working and just had enough time to set up for play when the main computer bluescreened.  I hate Bill Gates.  Guess what I am going to be spending several hours tomorrow fixing...

I can't finish this blog without mentioning Andy Murray

In my limited years as an arbiter, I can never remember so many games stopping to watch a game of tennis.  I know of two players who lost as they were more interested in the match.  When it got to the final game, Alex and I considered stopping the clocks as there was only two people sitting at the board, everyone else was crowded around Alex's computer!

Well done Andy!  Just remember that it has now been 78 years since an Englishman won at Wimbledon...

Ich komme wieder!