It's Friday....So.......

It's the weekend, time for some fun.

You could have blown be over with a feather yesterday, and probably Jonathan Calder as well, for the Metro had some chess stories. Yes I did use the plural correctly.

The first was saying how the youngest American to become Grandmaster, yeah even younger than Bobby Fischer was over for the return of the London Chess Classic after 25 years. Hikaru Nakamura seen in action below on the left in a 1 minute game, will be taking on some of the British GMs including Luke McShane and David Howell who I once sat at a competition board in the same room with, admittedly a long way down.



The other was thestory of two GMs Wang Yue and Li Chao who were thrown out of the World Chess Cup in Russia for returning late from a smoking break. For Li Chao it is an added danger to the peer pressure that smoking can exert, he only took it up to keep his fellow Chinese player company.

At least they didn't get into a fight with FIDE over the new rules. What many of you may not know is that former world Heavy Weight champion Lennox Lewis was quite a decent Chess player. Probably just as well he never took up chess boxing he may have been deemed a little too good at one of the disciplines involved.




So with Chess being the theme for the week I think that can only call for Murray Head singing a bit of Benny and Bjorn.

If at First You Don't Succeed Play On

This is a tale that is particularly relevant to Jonathan Calder and chess playing AM Peter Black but the lesson is a pertinent one for us all.

Looking at the 2nd Chess table below it would appear that I came equal second. The winner clearly won all their games and me and the other mid table sitter shared the spoils of our own encounters and beat the player who came last in both games.

However, this was a ranked tournament only for those with a ranking of 1500 or less. With the first round of online play now concluded I got the following email.

Congratulations on winning the 1st round of Intermediate Chess section, 55th GameKnot tournament! The player with the top score in your group has been moved to the next higher section due to their top rating in the past 90 days exceeding the rating limit of the section, so you will be advancing to the next round as the runner-up.

So the lesson is that though at times you may think you are fighting for scraps keep up the effort you may well be rewarded after you yourself had given up hope. Looking at the table above I'd need the victor to make some serious advances over the coming ranks for that feat to be repeated in the 56th Tournament as well.