I visited The Tournament yesterday, a giant chess set by artist Jaime Hayón installed in Trafalgar Square as part of the London Design Festival. Simon was playing Black against Alexander Cherniaev, the game was agreed drawn shortly after I arrived. Below are three poor quality photos I took with my phone (click for full-size). Look out for some exclusive video footage soon!
I am going to stick with games that I played at the British as I had a number of exciting encounters. This next game was played in the last round and my opponent was Stephen Gordon. A very talented and young player who is improving at an alarming rate.
There was extra pressure as it was the last round and this was shown with some of the moves played. The last round is always a difficult one for professional chess players as it can make the difference between them paying the rent or not! Luckily I was just about ok for a couple of months after this game. The opening was interesting and we will take a look at it in this the next video instalment.
I had a fair few interesting games at the British Championship this year, the most painful of which was my loss to Lawrence Trent. Lawrence is a very talented player and came up with a great defensive idea. Most onlookers I spoke to after the game thought that the plan was just plain crazy but it turned out to be a stroke of genius.
I have attempted to analyse the game via video. Just enter this post and press play and hopefully you can see my analysis. Please bear with me as this was my first attempt so it has been a learning curve but if it gets a good response I will post some more in the future. Please leave your comments!
I am sure that many of the readers of this Blog have come across the story about top Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev having a little nap at the chess board the other day.
This story, not unlike the Gormally-Aronian incident, has thrown chess 
into the media spotlight again. You can find it reported in most of the English broadsheets and tabloids (see links at bottom of this article).
There have been differing views on the topic. Some people have been disgusted whilst others have commented that any press is good press.
I have found the story quite amusing and tend to be in the second half of the above group. To get any real money into chess its profile needs to be raised. And like it or not the above 2 incidents have had more impact in the press then any great game or tournament result that a player has had in recent years.
