We carry on our examination of my games from the recent 2017 Limburg Open with brief episodes from 2 crucial games: my win against the Dutch IM Koen Leenhouts in the 5th round which took me to shared first, and the crazy finale to the tournament against Ivan Sokolov which secured me a share of …

From time to time, I get the urge to play online blitz chess. I’ve played on the Internet Chess Club for years but a few weeks ago my “Chess for Life” co-author Natasha Regan tipped me off about Chess24 blitz tournaments to which she was currently addicted! And indeed, I can say that I also spent much …

A rare tournament outing at the 2017 Limburg Open, a 7-round international open, was a reasonable success, ending in shared first place on 6/7 with GM Roeland Pruijssers (winner on tie-break) and GM Christian Bauer. I played with a lot of spirit, but I lacked some accuracy and calculation speed. That’s fortunate in a way …

My first game of the last 4NCL weekend was a fraught draw against Matthew Turner which fitted in well with the pattern of the match in which we scraped past the Barbican amateurs with a 4,5-3,5 win.   The game ended quickly, but after a quick swim to get rid of the frustration and tension, …

Perhaps my most interesting game was the long struggle against 3C’s Adam Ashton on the second day of the last weekend. During and after the game, I had a number of thoughts about the practical side of converting a slight advantage, and after writing them down, I thought it was worth sharing them with you! …