Commonwealth Chess Championships Day 3 - The Longest Game

168 moves!!!  Really 168 moves! Here is the proof

Still don't believe me?

Here is a snapshot of the start of the game

and another as they finished...

Alex was starting to panic, we had to be clear by 8pm.  Sleeping bags were called for!

What a day it has been!  Busy busy busy.  We found the following on 5 of the live boards

I suppose we should be grateful that they at least got it the right way around.  Not best pleased.  We are going to clean it off with some spirits (or was it we were going to drink the spirits and use sandpaper, I forget...)

We had a couple of visitors today, and one of them was seen to be doing the unthinkable!

Now I'm sure we all recognise the Gentleman on the left and to see Donald playing chess again is brilliant (he won by the way!).  In the other pic, we had the G'vnor of the College making the ceremonial first move!


Jamie has asked me to post a better picture of him.  I noticed that his pic has attracted more hits than any other of those taken so far. 

Glad to oblige :D

Apparently the Chess Journos are complaining that the pgns are a bit slow in getting out.  Didn't help that Alex's computer doesn't like uploading them and refused point blank to let us change one  with the correct one.  Had to log in with my pc to sort it and his pc is now been sent to the naughty step.  I am flattered that the journos have finally realised there is an event on, we have been telling them for the best part of 9 months but no one was interested...  Where were you then???

Ah well, back at the venue in 11 hours time.  Please everyone, no 100+ move games tomorrow :D

Commonwealth Chess Championships - Day 2 Fight! Fight!

I have competition and its not fair!   I am up against a published writer!  Andy Burnett is also publishing a blog on the championships!  Andy's Blog.

Beware of Bloggers!

I asked a few players what they thought of the idea.  I could not print what was said, but the looks say it all!!

To be fair, Andy is a terrific writer and I will certainly be following his blog (hence why I have given it a plug here!)

What can I say about today, well I can summarize it in three letters.  T, H and O.  I have been in some warm venues before but today really topped them all.  Trying to explain to our visitors that this is not normal for us and we are going to have a hosepipe ban soon unless it rains....

I asked Jamie what he thought.  He could not stay in the room for more than an hour (we were in 30 minute shifts).  Tomorrow will definitely be shorts weather.  Not managed to work out how to expain Taps Aff to our visitors, it is lost in translation.  It has to be bad when an Aussie can't handle the heat!

Jamie!

The coolest person in the place was our very own Principle Arbiter, Ken Stewart.  He never flinched and was probably the only person, player or arbiter who did not step out of the room for a blast of cool air!

Heat, what heat!

There was a disturbance in the force today, it was like two players having a loud disagreement in the middle of the hall at the end of a game...  I was sitting in the office cooling down when Alex popped in to tell me there had nearly been a fight at the end of a game.  Typical, wasn't in the room at the time :D

My hatred of computer pairings came to the fore today when in the U16 section it wanted to give a player a second bye.  Computers should not be allowed to do pairings! 

Well that's it for today.  Lets see what tomorrow brings (hopefully some cooler weather!)

Commonwealth Chess Championships - Day 1. Really??? This early??

I'm sitting on the bus home writing this musing over a hectic day.  Round 1 has come and gone with few if any incidents.  For that I am eternally grateful.

The day started at 5:30am, a wee bit on the early side.  The time was needed to get the boards cleaned up ready to let the Juniors loose on them.

8am and people started streaming in.  That is a novelty, at your standard Scottish Congress, 1 hour before play starts it is usually the Arbiter and Tournament Organiser, in fact if someone appears more than 30 mins before play, we are usually checking our watches in worry that we are running late.

We got all the Juniors onto live boards and with a bit of WiFi magic, managed to broadcast the entire competition.

Lets meet the Scotland Junior Squad!

Wait a minute, haud the front page.  What does it say on Stuthi's namecard??? 

 So we have a spy in the camp!  Need to keep an eye on that one :p


Last game finished just after 1pm giving us about an hour to get everything ready for the afternoon games.  I knew it was warm in there as Jamie (our resident Aus Arbiter) took his jacket off and for the first time since Friday, stopped shivering!

Must look out my thermal t-shirt for him...

Agent Murphy decided that he would take a hand and with 5 minutes to go we were missing boards 6 - 15.  Didn't matter what I did, they would not connect.  Thankfully Dave noticed I had kicked out the power supply!!!!  We got the links up as fast as we could but it was still a good hour before we had all 84 names on the boards!

One of the interesting aspects of the heat is the rate of discharge from the batteries in the wireless boards.  I am grateful I have two complete sets!   Definite proof of heat exhaustion.


To close this fine evening, here is the venue when it is full, I'm off to have a look a the PGN files as the noticeboard contingent have decreed that there must be files for everyone to look it.

Till tomorrow...

Commonwealth Chess Championships 2014 - Set up day

Hard to believe that 6 years ago I sat in an AGM and stated my desire to bring a top tournament to Scotland.  Even harder to believe in less than 3 days time it will have started!  Alex has worked so hard on this, I really want it to go well!

Today was setup day for the Championships. at the time of writing we have 154 in the open section and another 60 odd in the juniors.  What is really pleasing is the numbers from other shores.   If you are reading this, welcome to Scotland!

9am, I arrive at the venue and we begin the task of setting up for 160 determined chess players.  It isn't as simple as 80 boards and sets.  God I wish it was.  W  e have 8 wireless and 35 wired DGT boards available to us and getting all that working is a mammoth task.  To give an idea (and maybe dispel a few myths that it is easy to do this!) We have 5 computers driving the boards with a desktop driving the wireless displays.  It feels like there is about 2 miles of cable and 38 connectors each having to be tested lest it brings down that particular string of boards.


Here is what the playing venue looks like at the start of the day

Nice and easy :D  

When I arrived, I did a scan of the wireless frequencies to work out what channel to put the wireless boards on.  Here is what I am faced with!

The channels are Zigbee channels which use the same 2.4GHz as wireless.  Someone want to tell me where in the name of  Iris I am supposed to put the boards??  I did a waterfall scan for an hour and worked out 15 was the least congested and improvised an aerial!

Yep that is a basketball net.  Using this I can get about 15 meters range.  Just enough to get all 8 boards!   Phew!!

We have 5 arbiters this year.  2 from Scotland, 1 who is joint English / Scottish, 1 from Australia and 1 from India.  Jamie (from Australia) is complaining it is too cold, and there is Alex and I sweating in the heat!!!

We needed to be clear by 5, here is how it looks at the moment

 There is a mass of cables I need to tieup on Monday before play starts.  Last thing we need is people tripping and damaging the boards, I mean hurting themselves.  Will be in at 7am. 

As always will be doing a daily blog with my usual twisted sense of humour so tune in.

Hope you all enjoy the coverage and will "speak" to you during the week :D

Winter Chess Festival

I hate it when you have a song stuck in your head...  I do

"Oh Tweedle Dee Oh Tweedle Dum.
The tune McDougall always used to hum
While he was fighting his rival clan McGregor
Dishonour he would never the tartan of his clan."

Damn you Middle of the Road...

It has been far too long since I last put thoughts to paper and one of my resolutions for next year is I am going to do it more often.

This week I am at the Winter Chess Festival in Edinburgh.  This has to be one of the more strange tournaments I have done.  I have lost my voice!  Last two days I have had to get the TD to do the announcements for me (quite embarrassing).  His offer today was "Andy hasn't fallen out with you...."

Karen has been a star.  I was really ill yesterday.  She insisted on driving me to the venue.  I realised how ill I was when I fell asleep in the car (that never happens!)

Tournament has been really good and we have a couple of the players well on track to get an IM norm.  Will be brilliant if we get that.

Hope you all have a really good new year and will see you all in 2014!

Scottish Championships 2013 - Days 8 and 9. We have a winner and what was I thinking!!!

"To err is human, to really screw it up takes a computer"

I am sitting here, the day after the tournament totally exhausted.  I have to say it was completely worth it.  Lets review Days 8 and 9 and what will probably be the worst day of my Arbiting career!

Day 8 dawned with an air of excitement.  So many people still in contention to be the Champion, so much chess!  The weekend tournament was well underway, everything was working as it should do.  Absolutely perfect.

Dick approached me early on and asked if I could somehow get a picture of our player of the year, David Oswald, without him realizing why.  I am a really bad liar, people see right through me so I had to think of a way to do it that was not really a lie.  After a bit of thinking I decided to ask him to pose for the magazine, I just did not tell him why only I had been asked to get a picture for the magazine

Totally unsuspecting!!!

We worked out that there was a couple of players still with norm chances and hopes were high that one of them could come through.  The temperature was really nice, lower than the previous days and actually manageable.  Some excellent chess was played and at the end of the day, we had 5 likely candidates for the championship.  But which one would win!!!

Alex's new T-Shirt!

Roddy, Alan, Colin, Andrew and Clement were all chasing the title.  We would have to wait until the Sunday to find out who it would be!


Day 9, I am travelling to the venue taking a look at the tie breaks and to my utter horror I noticed an error in the draw!   Words cannot describe how I felt yesterday at the event knowing I had made a really bad blunder.  What I couldn't understand is how the computer did not pick up on it.  I asked Alex and I now understand why.

I just want to make one thing clear, that is the blunder was mine.  Alex very kindly apologized to everyone at the start of the round out our behalf, but the mistake was mine and mine alone!  Even today it is still bothering me.

I asked a few players what they thought of what I had done, well their reaction speaks volumes...

Gutted!

Well I am not finishing on a downer!  We have some winners to celebrate!!!

In 1988, A certain IM Roddy McKay picked up his 7th Scottish title.  I bet he never in his  wildest dreams imagined he would win again 15 years later!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the 2013 Scottish Champion, for the 8th time!

IM Roddy McKay

 The winners of the Tournament!

 The 10 way tie for one of the Grading Prizes!

Who's round is it?

 Winners of the Minor

 Runner up in the Open

 Grading prize from the Open

Well thats it for this year.  Time for a couple of well deserved days off.  Well done to Roddy and all the winners and well done to Alex for organizing another superb tournament.

Scottish Championships 2013 - Day 7 - The Longest Day & We have a Winner!

"The thing that's always worried me about being one of the few is the way we keep on getting fewer."

Today is the longest day.  Surprising, given that we are going to be here until nearly 11pm tonight, Alex and I are in good spirits and there is some serious banter taking place.  To anyone listening, you would think we are abusing each other.  Not Alex and me :D

This is it, this is the day we dread, this is the longest day of the tournament.  5 1/2 punishing hours in the afternoon then a nice serene 3 hours in the evening, all the setting up etc etc etc.  Is it worth it?? Hell yes!

Today also sees the conclusion of the Minor and combined oldies, I mean Seniors (thankfully I am at least 13 years away from playing in those) and U1750.  Both contests have been fought out with some astonishing chess, astonishing in both ways as we are finding out when we enter the game.  Maybe it is the heat!

Speaking of the heat.  It is the worst day so far, it is like a furnace and I am already on my third t-shirt.  Who would have thought that a high roof would mean raised temperatures?  On that basis, Westminster should be melting given the hot air.

I believe we may have caused the first case of Fratricide caused by a chess game.  One player was sitting when the delightful chimes of their mobile rang out throughout the hall.  It was their brother asking how they were getting on in the tournament.  Would loved to have been a fly on the wall for that one!!

Today means we have winners and we can crown the new Scottish Champions for 2013.

Starting with the Minor.  We had a guest winning it, so winning but not being Scottish Champion, Christopher Scott, all the way from Australia!

All this way and they give me a lousy cheque!

In second place, and by virtue of qualifying, may I introduce to you, the new Scottish Minor Champion, Adam Walkowiak from Edinburgh

On to the Seniors / U1750 We had joint winner, given one was a senior and the other not, it made some sort of sense to make it one gets each prize.  So winning the Seniors we have Peter Clarke of Polytechnic..

That's my Trophy, no it's mine...

I jest, winning the Seniors we have John McIntyre of Phones and winning the U1750 it is Peter!

Before I close off for the day, I want to share my little excursion with you.  I didn't realize quite how tired I was last night and accidentally got on the wrong bus.  Nice wee walk from Parkhead to Rutherglen at midnight to help me wind down!

Finally as two tournaments finish, two are started.  The weekend kicked off today in style, here are a few shots of the upstairs greenhouse