One of the nice touches at the London Classic is the simultaneous display that accompanies the closing dinner: all the participants give a tandem simul making one move each in turn which leads to a happy kind of chaos. The event is quite competitive as several of the boards (each having 4 players consulting) have on their team a GM including Speelman, King, Rowson, Norwood, Watson, Keene and several other handy players; last year the tournament participants had a fairly heavy loss. Chess players are maniacally quite competitive and this year we were paying a bit more attention (whilst making sure not to miss out on their Yorkshire pud and glasses of claret). Malcolm Pein gave a running commentary on the mic, eventually he announced that the score was even at 8 all with just 1 game remaining, at this stage Magnus took over the game , a not unwelcome development that I wouldn’t have minded availing myself of on a few other occasions. Still the game seemed destined for a draw as there were only queens and a few pawns remaining, the Black players were the presidents of three federations :CJ de Mooi of the ECF ,Tomas Sielicki of the Polish Federation, Viktor Kapustin of the Ukraine Federation and Frederic Friedel of Chessbase fame who had put up stiff resistance in a Stonewall Dutch.
Magnus has just nudged his king forward to h4, a move which contained a rather vicious trap.
I hope all my visitors have had a happy holiday season – all the best for 2011!
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