Andy Howie in Canada

[amuir]

Thanks to commentators , arbiters and players for great entertainment. Any of the top four could win over the weekend.
If Ding Liren refuses to defend his title then 1st and 2nd could play off to be world champion.

[Andy Howie]

It is going to be an amazing next two and probably three days. Really looking forward to it!

[amuir]

Team lightning started 3.55pm .Watched 2 rounds then left 4.50 pm to watch candidates instead.

[Andy Howie]

Not surprised, that was some day yesterday. Still can't work out how Caruana did not win that!

[Andy Howie]

I can reply to this now the tournament is over. Was prudent not to while it was.

So from where I am situated, I can hear everything (including the damn fan zone downstairs at times). With it being an old building, the floors were creaky, we did try to mitigate as well as we could but all the players were taking care not to make too much noise. That particular round Alireza for some reason was very noisy, it was disturbing me and I kept looking up to see where it was coming from.

There is a balance we have to strike between disturbing one player or disturbing them all, at that point we were not sure if it was just us being disturbed or the players. Nijat called Aris over to complain that he was being disturbed, he could not see who it was. At that point, the calculus changes and we now have the players disturbed so Aris quite rightly waited until Alireza engaged with him to speak. He did not go charging in and did not as was reported demand he stopped walking or immediately change his shoes. Alireza was not happy about it but for the rest of that round was more mindful of his walking. As we know, he posted on social media which pretty much backfired on him.

Interestingly in round 13, he was being quite noisy again, he walked up to my desk and I just gave him the "MacFarlane" look and he stopped.