Days 1 and 2 – Sulfuric loathing
Unfortunately, things have not gone according to plan.
It all started going downhill when I was asked to do the toss for colours, breaking with the tradition of the top seed doing the coin toss. I usually lose coin tosses, so I was very excited to win – until I discovered this meant that top-seed Zong-Yuan Zhao had white in round one, and I black!
I tried to restore some Karma by volunteering my services to the appeals committee, but we all know how much trouble I’ve had with Karma in the past. I really should have known better.
Round one saw all the top seeds win…except me. I didn’t actually do anything wrong, and full credit must go to my opponent, Ivan, who played some extraordinary chess. Nevertheless, a first-round draw was not the start I had in mind. My house finished with three draws among hte six of us and only just managed to finish above parity, in fact, with Casper the only one to lose.
Today was a killer of a day, with two five-hour games destroying what post-Contiki energy I had left. And, unfortunately, I dropped another half point in the evening round three, this time to housemate and good friend Tritty. It’s quite difficult to deal with underperforming against a mate, as it’s hard to find someone to bitch to about the game afterwards! Seriously, again credit must go to Tristan, who has moved to 2.5/3 and has set himself up nicely for what could be a super performance.
Back to the top of the leaderboard, George Xie faltered in a big way against Canberran pseudo-junior Andrew Brown, sending him back into the pack with me on 2/3. Zhong continues to impress, and if he keeps up this form, he’ll be hard to stop. Meanwhile, Gary Lane is one to watch after jumping out of the starting blocks with a flyer.
In the women’s, some rather soft play from the top seeds, including a reported five move draw between Irina Berezina-Feldman and Biljana Dekic, has failed to get the spectators jumping. Hopefully things heat up tomorrow.
The only other thing of note so far is the widely variable temperatures in the playing room. In fact, even within just round three, the mercury seemed to go as high as 30 and as low as 15. I’ve heard reports that conflicting parental complaints have sent the Millennium hotel in opposite directions to adjust the thermostat, but that may just be gossip. In any case, the same advice applies to participants as it does to any tourist visiting New Zealand – ‘Pack for four seasons in a day’.
Probably no need for an umbrella, though.