London Chess Classic - Day 3 - You put your left pawn in, your left pawn out...

Tell me again how did you miss 60.f4?

I have just received a picture from my sister back in Glasgow.  I am supposed to be travelling tonight. 

As usual it is snowing.  There is a common thought that Scottish people are preoccupied with the weather.  Let me tell you that it is totally correct. There is a reason for it.  Only in Scotland is it possible to experience all four seasons in a day!

Back in nice, warm London, where I am not needing to wear my jacket, it has been an interesting morning.  Alex, in his own words, has been trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs.  There were two of us on the Arbiters course.  Both of us are very experienced.  That has to be a nightmare to deal with

This morning I was not woken by my alarm, but by a call from the Wife, she had anticipated when I was going to get up and had called a millisecond before.  I'd love to know how Women know how to do that.

This week has been interesting, I am scared to look the wrong way as there is a camera crew here doing a documentary.  Everytime I look up the damn camera is pointing at me.  I want to scream...

Live chess is having a bit of a flakey and is refusing to FTP.  I will need to have a stern word with it.  We are definitely going to have to upgrade to gerbils, these hamsters are no good at all!

Was told something rather odd.  Apparently during yesterdays game some moves were transposed by the board.   I have head of that happening with the wireless boards but not the wired ones!

Watching the games today I think it is fair to say that Nosher was well and truly noshed by Aronian.  That was something special!

On the way to Euston tonight one of the train guards came up to me and mumbled something that was supposed to be English, he was looking for my ticket.  No problem and handed him my oyster card.  Next to me was a shifty character who was looking nervous.  No wonder, he didn't have a ticket.  Out of nowhere came 3 of the biggest guards I have ever seen and removed the gentlemen from the train. Was amazing!

Sitting down to oatcakes and cheese with a beer chaser.  Total bliss.  Now for some serious revision for my FA exam on friday!

London Chess Classic - Day 2 - Oh where oh where have our servers gone...

"Ye Cannie break the laws of physics" - Scotty on the Starship Enterprise

Whomever said that chess was not a popular sport is either deluded or a liar. Servers that have never budged an inch when in use are melting at the sheer volume of people who are wanting to watch these games.  Chess is a minority sport?  Try telling that to the millions we have logging onto our websites to see GM Aronian et al do battle with the royal game.

Life can be quite funny sometimes.  With me leaving early next week I won't be seeing Lara until after Christmas so we all went out for a meal last night.  I was waiting outside after with David Clayton when a couple of youths approached me, clocked the camera and asked if I was waiting for someone famous to come out.  Oh the temptation to say yes and kid on that our lot were pop stars!

Alex and Tim memorise their lines for Panto

Today has been interesting, we came in early to set up the wireless boards so we could make sure we had finally licked the issue with interference.  Glad to say it is working and we are kind of broadcasting the Open and Womens.  I say kind of as we are uploading but the server has gone into HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLP!!!!!111111!!!!!!WTFBBQ mode

Albert checks to see if he can begin forcibly removing the pesky photographers

David Sedgwick spoke to me this morning.  How would you like to take your FA exam on Friday 10am.  This will be an interesting conversation with my boss on Weds.  "Hey boss, you know how I have been helping this place out for months now.  Can I please have the favour returned so I can sit an exam..."

My perverse sense of humour surfaced again today when we received a mail from Chessbase offering to take some of the load on their servers (and really nice it was of them as well I should say).  I could not resist replying in German to confuse them!

This afternoon I think I died and went to heaven.  Albert came up to me as we were approaching the first time control.  There were three games in trouble and would I mind assisting?  I'll tell you something.  It is not easy doing that in front of an Audience here and an audience in the millions who are watching it live on the video streams.  I loved that experience.

I was originally covering the David Howell v Michael Adams.  David paused his clock and asked me to get an arbiter....  I went and took over the Nakamura v Aronian game and left Mr Sedgwick to sort that one one.

In the words of McDonalds "ICH LIEBE ES!"

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...

London Chess Classic - The set up

I am so tired.  It has been a long day today.  Sleeper arrived late after there was a signal failure in Carstairs.  2 hours we were there (apparently).  This meant that I faced the daunting prospect of crossing London with 8 sensory boards, 8 clocks, 8 sets, 8 wireless tranmitters, the batteries, 2 laptops, a camera and my clothes, all in all about 70Kg+ weight on a sturdy trolley during the rush hour.  Simples....

Ok maybe not so simples.  Euston station did not have a lift so I walked over to Kings cross.  Member of staff would not let me through so I demanded they get their supervisor.  He objected to my trolley saying it was not allowed.  I simply put it on its end and used it in the vertical mode it is capable of and the argument was ended.

Finally got over to Earls Court station.  There was no lift between the underground and the surface, even worse, it was stairs.  It is not often that I am grateful that the trolley has a stepper on it for stairs!

Arrived frazzled.  Dave and Steve were delighted to see me as were Albert, Adam, Tau and Malcolm.  I seem to have made an impression here before!

Something new for us to do this year.  A twitter game.  The GM's took on the world.  Honestly it was hilarious.  I was standing there assisting with the technical aspects of it with tears streaming down my face.  We really have to try this again, it was brilliant!

Do you think they really know who they were speaking to

 

In the end we have a scoresheet that was signed by them all that will be signed for a charity auction.  Roll on tomorrow and the start of the competition proper.

Oh and as a closing comment.  One famous person at the press conference today, seemed to think that there were 8 rounds in a 9 player all play all.

London Chess Classic 2011 - The calm before the storm

"The wave harmonic theory of historical perception, in its simplest form, states that history is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and that time is an illusion caused by the passage of history" - Fit the Eighth.


I don't believe I have gone over a month without a blog.  What am I thinking??  Well I am excited today, not because we are in December and Christmas is approaching, not because I am not at work today but, I am travelling down to the London Chess Classic for the third year running to setup and work the live boards. 


I will be there from tomorrow and back on monday travelling by sleeper.  I am so looking forward to this!  


Our wireless boards will be featuring, speaking to DGT, this will be the biggest tournament that they have used them in.

Unlike last year, I have not had to battle through snow and the sleeper is here.  I am currently sitting in the first class lounge enjoying an ice cold beer.

The prices are incredibly good.  £2.30 for a beer.


There is something scary about wandering around with £10,000 worth of equipment.  Call me paranoid but my muscles clench when someone looks at me the same way.


I am so looking forward to this.

Lothians Congress 2011 II - Where are all the photos gone?

2011 will go down in chess history.  We had not 1 but 2 Lothian Congresses in the space of 10 months!  Was it a good idea to switch between the Allegro and Congress?  Personally I liked travelling to the congress without Mike skidding all over the road scaring the Bejezus out of me!

This was a congress with a difference.  This was the first weekend congress that I was finally going to get to fulfil both one of my ambitions and one of the targets I had set myself as Executive Director. 

We were going to broadcast the congress live on the internet (well 8 boards).

I am so grateful for Alex and Lara (and not forgetting Dave Clayton and Donald) for realising I was going to melt down and helped out.  It is my first time doing the dual role and I'll not lie, I was tired.  It was hard going and hard to keep my concentration, it is going to be a steep learning curve.

Unlike the old days where I would have had to be there at least 4 hours before hand to set up a wired network and fret over who would trip over the cables, this time it is all wireless and took about an hour to set up the 8 boards.  Unfortunately one of the board modules had a fault, Murphy had to strike somewhere...   Peter Woods swiftly removed the offending item and it is currently en-route back to DGT with a brand new one steaming its way over there.

 

So what is so difficult?  Well the software like to let the hardware go missing and occasionally likes to ignore moves which means you have to be on your toes ready to put them in (or dash off to the board if you miss them!)

 Round 3 was a real pain.  There was 30 minutes between Round 2 and Round 3 and I just did not have enough time to do it.  In the end the broadcast started 15 minutes late but we still managed it.

It was worth it and I really look forward to doing this again at other congresses this season.   Just need a couple of volunteers to come along and learn how to use kit!

Grangemouth Congress Part II - Things we said today...

This morning was interesting.  We had a reporter here.  Not just any reporter, but one from a National Newspaper.

Lets be perfectly honest, reporters at chess events are like the fabled "Stool from a rocking horse".  We have our own outlet through the Caledonian Mercury http://caledonianmercury.com/ where David Hewitt publishes chess stories over the year, but to have a real reporter from a national newspaper??  Fantastic!

One of the real pleasures I have had is watching how the dynamics of the Chess Scotland Directorate has changed over the last 5-6 years.  When I first became involved with chess, I was aware that the directorate on the whole where people who I did not know, had never seen, and had no idea as to who they were.  Taking this congress as an example, we have the President, Exec Dir, Home Director (Junior) and Scottish Championship Director all acting as officials at the event and we have the Marketing Director and International (Junior) Director playing.  We would have had the Home Director (Open) playing but he is currently in Rhodes playing in the IBCA World Championships.  Looking around the room I can see most of the individual members of the council here as well!

I think this is fantastic and is something that we should be celebrating.    It was something that I mentioned to the reporter as I think it shows a real openness.  It means that at any time, anyone can come up to us and ask us things (in fact I would go as far as to encouraging it!)

The reporter spoke to most of us and was genuinely interested in how things are done and congresses and such like.  I hope that this will spark off an interest in the Chess Scene in Scotland.  Despite the prophets of doom and gloom things are getting better.  We are seeing more congresses and some of the old ones are reappearing.  Perth is back this year and in the space of a year we have seen 4 new congresses spring up.  Dunbartonshire, Lanark, Prestwick and Renfrewshire have all appeared on the calendar and are a welcome addition to the congress family.

Well enough of my rabbiting on, what is happening at Grangemouth this year?  Firstly we have 3 prominent junior performances,   Shivan Murdochy beat IM Roddy McKay, after day 2 we have Andrew McCusker leading the Minor with Fergus Skillen just behind, and Maryann McDonald leading the Major.  Mark my words, the juniors are getting better and better!

I wandered upstairs to take a look at the junior tournament and found Kirsty McCusker giving a masterclass in cool finishing!

1..Qa1+ 2. Kd3 Ne5+!! 3. Ke3 Nxc4+ 4.Kd3 Qd4#

Wonderfully calculated finish and Kirsty got her reward for some excellent play.

  
Back to the main hall and we are reaching a climax.  At the time of writing there are a handful of boards remaining to play.  In the words of Meat Loaf,. we are "two down, no score, nobody on, at the bottom of the ninth!".  Who will win is anyone's guess, but if it is anything like the play I have seen over the last few days, it will be a really good exciting finish.  Keep an eye on the CS noticeboard and website for details of the winners and the photos

Well done to Donald for a really good tournament this year!!

Grangemouth Congres 2011 - A new season dawns

"Earlier on today apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she had heard that there was a hurricane on the way.  Well if you are watching, don't worry there isn't,"

One of the Met Office's finest moments back in 1987.  I still remember it well as I was at School in England and was woken up by the fire alarm in the middle of the night.  A hurricane alert had been issued in the area and we were all moved into the centre of the School for safety.

Fast forward 24 years and I am sitting in a car with Michael Hanley driving to Grangemouth for the annual congress.  We can see the car in front if they have been bothered to put their lights on.  The rain is so heavy the windscreen wipers do not have a chance.  We had a little diversion in Cumbernauld as the road layout has changed and we could not see the signs!  The car aquaplanes and Mike (who was driving) asks me what that was.  Sometimes walking is safer than being in the car with Mike!

Welcome to the Grangemouth congress, located as it is in Grangemouth Town hall.   Grangemouth holds something specials for me.  It was the last Weekend congress I played in before my enforced semi-retirement to be become an Arbiter!

There was a slight disappointment this year.  My toys did not arrive in time so I was not able to use the DGT boards here.  Real pity as I was looking forward to it!

First 3 rounds have gone without incident.  The introduction of digital clocks has meant that Arbiters are now able to do much much more than they were before (as we are not having to jump up and down all the time to change analogue clocks!) and it is not uncommon to see us sitting in front of laptops working on something.  No time scrambles and no draw claims as yet.

One of the winners from the Junior event

I often wonder why we are seeing less and less draw claims.  We have all spoken about it and no one can fathom the reason.  When I first became an Arbiter, we had on average 1 per round.  Now you are lucky to get 1 per tournament.   The most interesting idea I have heard so far is the reason for it is we now use digital clocks meaning players can use their time more effectively. 

The one thing I love about tournaments is the camaraderie we have with the players.  There is nothing better than trying to get from the desk to where the results are on the wall and every 5 metres is someone who wants to stop and have a chat!   Scotland is blessed with some excellent characters on the chess scene, both young and old.

Long may that continue!

Scottish Championship - It's all over for this year

"It's all over and I'm standing pretty in this dust that was a city"

Believe it or not, there are 2 boards in there!

24 hours have passed since the incredible ending to this years Scottish Championships.  I think very few people would have imagined that this years event, which was criticized on the noticeboard, would be one of the best events we have broadcast in Scotland.

Personally I think this format works.  I can see where people are coming from with respect to holidays, I also have to take a week of work as would any other Arbiter who helps out who has not retired.  Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, I love arbiting and doing all the other bits I do at the Scottish.  This is my third Scottish as an Arbiter and it is the highlight of the season for me. 

Highlight for me has been the way Clement, Anthony, Andrew and Jonathan Scott have played, they really took the tournament to Keti and Craig.  Also the reaction of the staff to how the players were in the centre.  I was given fantastic feedback on us and they staff would love to have us back

The lowlight was missing round 2!

Everything is now done, grading sent off.  Final games are uploaded.  It is really over for another year.  Hope to see you all next year at the 119th Scottish Championships!!

We are the champions - Part 2

Finally it is over and we have a winner.  Firstly can I thank Lord Kirkwood for agreeing to present the prizes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, can I introduce to you, the 2011 Scottish Chess Champion Grandmaster Keti Arakhamia-Grant

In joint second place, we have  IM Craig Pritchett, Clement Sreeves, Jonathan Grant, Anthony Dempsey,

Grading prize and the Scottish Boys Champion, Jonathan Scott

Girls Champion, Alice Lampard

Player of the Year, FM Alan Tate

Cherie Booth award, Aly Roy

 Weekend Open Winner, FM Neil Berry

 Weekend Major winners Jannic Konarski  and Iain Campbell

And finally Weekend Minor winners Kathleen Rutherford and Jamie Underwood

Scottish Championships Day 9 - There can be only one!

"With heart, faith and steel. In the end there can be only one."

 In just under 6 hours time, one of these four people will be crowned Scottish Champion 2011.  Who will it be?  The maths is like something out of a Higher maths exam.  

For Anthony to win, he must win his game or draw with Jonathan winning

For Keti to win, she must win her game and Jonathan and Clement draw

For Jonathan to win, Keti must win and he wins against Clement

Finally for Clement to win, he has to win with Keti winning, or, and I really need to double check this, draw and the top board draws.

It's close, It's tight and there is next to no chance of a quick draw in these games, they are going to the wire folks!

We had a visitor today, another one of those shady characters who are involved with Rampant Chess.  I wonder if he also has a list of all the people in Scotland who have not bought one yet?

This morning we had to use the main hall for the weekend congress.  I decided to put the Minor on the electronic boards and broadcast the games.  I don't know about you, but I found them great fun to watch and far more enjoyable than the quick draws we have seen this week at times.  I wonder if this is the way forward to market chess,  Ignore the strong players and show the masses.  There is a perverse logic in that.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been following this blog during the Scottish.  I started it as a bit of a joke and I now have over 400 people reading it each day,  which for someone who failed O Level English the first 2 times he sat it, is something my teacher would never have believed!  (For those who are not familiar with O Levels, I think they are called standard grades now).  I'd especially like to thank the people who have taken the time to speak to me to tell me they enjoy it (both by e-mail and verbally) :D

Plan is for a winners blog and I'll follow up with a review of the week.  

Enjoy the chess

Andy

Scottish Championships Day 8 - That Arthur Daley moment...

Beware of this man.  He is a smooth talker and can sell both snow to an Eskimo and sand to an Arab.  You want proof I hear???

His latest victim caught in the act of purchasing the dreaded "Rampant Chess".  He has the name of every chess player in Scotland who does not have a copy and he will hunt you down mercilessly...  You have been warned...

 Speaking of suspicious characters...

What do you think they are up to (answers of the back of a fiver to the usual address please!)

We had a scare at the start of the round.  We thought we had a players strike!!

Lots of defaults under the FIDE rules (showing of course the folly of such an idea!).  Turns out most of the players were downstairs watching the Weekender!

This is an unusually close Scottish, 2 rounds to go and it can be anyone of the top 9 boards who can win.  Who says the Scottish is now boring!  Result I don't want is a draw on board 1 and wins on 2, 3 and 4.  Will be a nightmare to determine the winner if that happens!!

Dave is away home and I am the resident teccie, Sitting here with 3 computer screens looking more and more like the Phantom of the Opera!  Just watch out for the Chandeliers!