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!"