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Lord Kirkwood has very generously donated £250 for a best game prize at the Scottish Championship. I have been asked to select a winner. I hope to be able to post some daily comments about the games that I have enjoyed and get some feedback from other people. If you see a game that you think is particularly worthy then post a comment and I'll give it special attention. Before the Championships start I'd like to pose a question
What qualities should a best game have?
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We are going to try and get the games up as quickly as possible. Please bear with us. There will be rather a lot of them!
"How sad to see, what used to be, a model of decorum and tranquility become like any other sport, a battleground for rival ideologies to slug it out with glee"
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It sounds as if Andy Burnett wants the best game to be the one that is the most exciting. Is that right? What if a few mistakes have allowed these amazing Queen and Bishop sacrifices, does that still count as the Best Game?
I think Andy probably has a point about the 'no endgames' rule. Organisers tend to want a best game to be publishable, so 120 move epics tend not to fit the bill.
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I've just very quickly played through the games from the live boards. Congratulation to Martin Mitchell; Mark Hebden has a vast wealth of experience in his openings and it is very, very difficult to catch him out. As is customary with most events the first round tends to see the top seeds easing into the competition. However, I particularly enjoyed Gretarnsson demonstration of good Knight versus bad Bishop.
Nice to see Donald Holmes competing at the top level again, he had a crazy game against Jonathan Hawkins. I assume that Donald was doing very well at some point, but wasn't quite able to see it through to a win.
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Quite a lot of insipid play today. A very nice win by Michael De Verdier against a higher rated opponent. Paul Cooksey also executed a very good attacking game. it seemed a little strange that so many of the top players settled for a quick draw, I wonder what they view as a winning score?
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A lot more action today and I especially enjoyed a couple of players really taking the fight to higher rated opponents. Iain Swan played a great game against Hera and he must have made his opponent very uncomfortable. I thought Hera really showed his class to come through in the end.
The standout result of the round has to be young Conor O'Donnell defeating Ketevan. Ketevan seemed to almost invite the attack in the opening, but Conor really took his chance and did well make sure to convert the ending.
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just played through most of the non demo board games for round 1. Just a couple of quick observations
1. This Iain Swan is pretty useful
2. Alan Tate is highly regarded as a very attacking player, but he got a touch of his own medicine in the first round; Well played to David Vincento, there was no messing around in that one, he certainly got with his attack.
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A real mixed bag today on the demo boards. I thought Hera really showed his class again and he seems the player the others have to beat. Robert Ruck seemed to skillfully outmanouvre Colin McNab, but then he drifted and could make nothing of it.
Sengupta made short work of Paul Cooksey, as Jacob Aagard did of Donald Holmes. Both were interesting games, but it looked like the defeated parties really hit the self-destruct button.
Clement Sreeves has a good result against a GM opponent, but in truth it seemed it was Teterev who was fortunate (possibly even very fortunate) to escape with half a point.
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There were a lot of short games today games and I wondered if the players were getting a bit tired? Thorfinsson and Ruck both leapt on small inaccuracies by their opponents to really stick the knife in.
I thought de Verdiers played very nicely against Clement Sreeves, parrying Clement's attack expertly.
