2016 Seniors World Championship, Czech Rep

[Jonathan Livingstone]

An alternative to the other World Championship!

Starts today at 2pm UK time. 7 Scots to support. The website is excellent, everything is on there including the tournament results/draw for today. There is a sizeable amount of live games for all events, so should be able to follow some players every day.

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The schedule is:

* CZECH TIME - UK time is 1hr behind *
Saturday 19th November 15:00 1st round
Sunday 20th November 15:00 2nd round
Monday 21st November 15:00 3rd round
Tuesday 22nd November 15:00 4th round
Wednesday 23rd November 15:00 5th round
Thursday 24th November 15:00 6th round
Friday 25th November 
free day - trip to Prague, rapid tournament
Saturday 26th November 15:00 7th round
Sunday 27th November 15:00 8th round
Monday 28th November 15:00 9th round
Tuesday 29th November 15:00 10th round
Wednesday 30th November 13:00 11th round

[Jim Webster]

All the tournaments have high numbers of players:
The O65+ has 3 playing halls in one hotel and one in a hotel a10 minute walk away
The O50+ is split between 2 hotels

Open 65+ 265 Players
(SCO: - Craig Pritchett, Philip Giulian, Douglas McKerracher, Jim Webster)

Open 50+ 162 players
(SCO: - Johnathan Grant, Ian Robertson, Rosie Giulian)

Women 65+ 18 Players

Women 50+ 25 players
(Some Scottish interest here as Helen Milligan is playing in this one)

Live games can be found here:
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Pairings & results are here:
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[Jonathan Livingstone]

The Scots games I managed to view this afternoon were good...

Rosie played a good game in her draw with a 2300 IM. She now plays a 2400 IM in Rnd 2.

Craig used some nice tactics to get an advantage in his game, which culminated in a forced smothered mate in 5 moves mate (nice of his Danish opponent to play it out).

Douglas although he lost, did well and got edged out of a Q+P's endgame against the FM.

Impressive to see so many live boards.

[Alan Borwell]

Really interesting games today with Craig winning impressively whilst Philip looked on course for a big scalp but was just a move late in race to convert passed rook's pawns. Douglas McKerracher has just won today against a much higher rated player to reach 2/3pts in the 65+ tournament. This is a tough long event with a large entry.

[Jonathan Livingstone]

Did Philip miss a good winning opportunity against the 2 time champion? The extra piece for the 2 pawns looked very decent and I thought he was going to win. That board very frustratingly crashed around move 42 I think it was, he played 42. Rd4 if I recall correctly and I didn't think that was such a good move. They probably corrected the game later, but its no longer available.

Craig has been very good so far in all 3 games, best have seen him play for a while, lets hope he can keep it up.

Good to see Douglas getting another win too after the disappointment of losing that tight Rnd 2 game against the IM.

[Craig Pritchett]

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See above: far and away the best overall report I've seen so far on an event that went, on the whole, quite well for Scotland. Jonathan Grant's excellent debut in the 50+ Open Championships (7/11 plus many gained ELO points) doesn't gain a mention but for the purely 'technical' reason that he didn't quite squeeze into the prize-list. He finished top 'British' player in the 50+, ahead of GM Keith Arkell, a half point behind (though purely due to the vagaries of such open Swiss events, the latter did meet, it should probably be said, a rather higher-rated field).

Phil Giulian's remarkable game against defending 65+ champion Okhotnik is paid very close attention ... I believe we will have Phil's own take on the game in a forthcoming CS magazine in 2017! To look forward to!

Season's greetings!