Scottish Championships 2016 - Day 5 - A slip of the tongue!

I knew today was going to be different.  It all started when I woke up and was totally convinced it was Tuesday.  I always seem to suffer a strange time dilation during the Scottish.  Dropping the kids off at my parents, my mum warned me to my horror that I had split my shorts.  No time to head home and change and the only shop I can think of to buy a pair is Marks and Spencer (that legendary pairing Alex and I have been trying to get in the Scottish for years). Now I am not the smallest of people so finding shorts my size is usually a frustrating task.  Doesn't help when the shorts they had were either a size too small or a size too large.  Thankfully I found a pair that were the right size and the players were spared the sight of me walking around with masking tape covering an area they would not want to see (and as it turned out, the masking tape disappeared so would have been even more embarrassing!)

I like my designer clothes.  My brand of choice is George from Asda :p

I had an interesting conversation today with someone who will remain unnamed. They were trying to describe a form of chess and could not remember the name.  The comment "I am thinking of womens knickers" was made and we all melted.  Wasn't quite what they meant to say (We were talking about Basque Chess)!!!  They will not live that one down for a while.

I do like it when players give us feedback, both good and bad.  Take for example today.  One of the players mentioned they could not get the games to display on their Ipad as it does not have flash.  As quick as a flash (sorry) we put links up so they can be displayed on Ipads.

I have been trying to get photos of everyone who is taking part.  I thought I had succeeded until  David Watson mentioned to me today that he was missing but he was glad.  I really need to redress the balance so here is David playing today

So what happened on the chess front?  Well firstly the boards behaved themsgame of elves again and I am thinking of putting another one on tomorrow.  On board 1 not a lot happened.  Draw in 16 moves.  The first (and hopefully last) in the tournament so far.

The rest of the games were hard fought and we saw some really good chess.  My game of the day was  another draw, this time a 74 move cracker between IM Douglas Bryson and Richard Birkett.

We join the game at move 60.  Douglas has an "Interesting" pawn structure

I don't know what I expected here, I certainly did not expect the Bxg5 that was played!  The plan is simple, white liquidates the black pawns leaving g3 and h3.  The question is can white actually win from here.

The answer is yes if black does not play accurately.  I was following the game using tablebases so could see what was happening,  The only chance that Richard gave came on move 62.

Richard has just played Kd5.  This was the only mistake he made.  It left a mate in 26 left on the board.  I challenge anyone to find it (I will put the solution at the end of the blog).  This is why I love increments.  The quality of the endgames is a joy to behold.

Keti and Andy gave me a scare today.  There is a wee bug that can happen in the wired boards where the previous game gets played.  I scanned through the games quite early on and saw this

There is a distinct lack of pieces and not what I was seeing on the other boards.  Thinking the bug had struck, I searched the boards memory to restart the game in the correct place.  To my relief this was the correct position!

We also had our first 100+ move game of the tournament.  The temptation to tell Alex that the board had failed and he was going to have to type it in!

Here's hoping the chess tomorrow is just as good and we have as many fighting games as today

Mr Knight says "No more short draws!"

(Solution to mate in 26  63. h4 Nf7 64. h5 Kd6 65. Kf6 Ke7 66. h6 Kf8 67. h7 Ne5+ 68. Kf5 Kg7 69. Kxe5 Kh8 70. g4 Kxh7 71. Kf6 Kh6 72. g5+ Kh7 73.Kf7 Kh8 74. Kg6 Kg8 75. Kh6 Kf7 76. Kh7 Kf8 76. g5 Ke7 77. g7 Kd6 78 g8=Q and white can win at worst 9 moves later)