Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 3 - Did I really say that?

To quote from yesterday "Overall not a bad day at all.  No real disasters and everything running smoothly.  It won't last :D"

Hmm, to quote from one Rudyard Kipling (no not the one who makes exceedingly good cakes!)  "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposers just the same..."

I don't know where to start.  Headed to the venue with cables for the boards and a cable for the TV so we can show the games within the venue.  Wired it all up and...

No boards

90 minutes later and several cables thrown across the hall in complete temper and we have

No boards

"Ok, lets go back to the set up from yesterday and just use that" I think in desperation.  It would have worked had I not been ripping cables out with reckless abandon...

16 boards now down to 11.  But hey at least it is 11 boards!  I noticed one of the wireless boards battery packs charge level was lower than I felt comfortable with.  I had a full set completely charged but in my idiocy, grabbed the still hot ones out of the charger and changed them over completely forgetting the simple law of physics, hot metal objects expand.  The batteries cooled in the pack and yep you guessed it, just as play starts, popped out of the connector meaning we are now down to 10 boards.

And to make the morning really complete, board 1, the top board decided to disconnect at the start of play.  *sigh* Not my finest morning.  I got 9 boards going in the end!

In true Murphy style, the day finished as it started.  Alex, Ken and I did the draw, I put it into the computer to upload but thankfully checked for any anomalies.  There is was, I had marked the score on two of the pairing cards 0-0 and of course it affected most of the draw.  Redraw time...

I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue :p

Star of the day has to be Lukah Connolly-Sams.  Sitting with 2/3, half a point behind the leaders with a performance of 2149.  His grade is 1498 and today he drew with an IM!!  Lukah is 1/2 v 2100s!!  A simply outstanding performance.  His prize is a game against a 2200 and having seen him play the last couple of days, I fancy his chances!!

The 7 day event produced something really unusual.  When arbiting you think you have seen it all.  When I was alerted to this I really had to share.

We start with the position here, black has just sacrificed the bishop for a pawn (Bxg4)

After hxg4, Qxg4 and now it is 2 pawns for the bishop

A few moves later, pawn #3 comes off with Qxd3

e4 Qxf3, Nxf3 and pawn 4 comes off with Nxe4

Several moves later, the 5th pawn comes off to Bxf4

The 6th to Bxa3

And the final one to Bxb4

7 pawns for a bishop!!!  I'll take that anytime (I think my record is 5).  I think someone has been reading "Secrets of Pawnless Engames" by Nunn

And finally...

It has to be frustrating when you take 2 byes at the start only to find you are playing your clubmate in round 3.

Yep it happened today...