From Our Nottingham Correspondent (1)

Rob Reports:

Hi Colin,

I'm doing great in Nottingham, thanks. I finally got married a couple of weeks ago, and just back from the honeymoon today.

The chess isn't quite so good, though! I thought I might do a blog on my performance in the Nottingham congress, but I had a bad cold for the weekend (and afterwards) and played pretty poorly. I scored 2.5/5 despite being the highest graded in the section (134 in a U135 section!). I played the first few rounds of the Gambit club championship before we went away (the final three rounds were while I was on holiday) - it's a rapidplay with the times determined by grading difference: the whole game is 50 minutes, with 25 minutes each for players within 20 points of each other, 30/20 for a 21-40 point difference and 35/15 for a 41+ difference. I managed to fall for a trap in the Caro-Kann in the third round and resigned after 6 moves! If you'd like to post the game to the blog, it went like this:

1.e4 c6 2.Ne2 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nd4 Bg6 5.e6 c5? 6.Bb5! - white wins a piece and black has an awful position after ...Nc6 7.Nxc6 Qc7 (...bxc6 loses the queen after 8.Bxc6+) 8.Ne5+ Kd8 9.Nxg6 fxg6

Apparently 2.Ne2 is a some-time favourite of Nigel Short against the C-K.

However, it's the Nottinghamshire County Championship in a few weeks (it's run as a five round swiss congress here, over one weekend) so I promise a blog on that, whatever rubbish I play!

I joined Gameknot a couple of months ago, but the site has barred me now because I use ad-blocking software. It'll only let me continue if I pay for a premium membership. I'll see if I can set up another account to get round that, and I'll contact you on there if I can.

Good luck in the cups and county championship!

Rob.



Congratulations from all at the Heathcote.