Thursday 12 January 2012

A travelling man

I'm heading off to New Zealand tomorrow, to be on of the arbiters at the Queenstown International. I'm assuming I'll be able to access the net at various stages of the journey, so hopefully blogging will not be interrupted. I am actually planning to try the whole social media thing, with Facebook/Twitter/Blogging all on the go at the same time. I'll also be equipped with a video camera and an iPad so hopefully there will be youtube as well.
In terms of the tournament, entries have passed to 140 mark. Li Chao is the top seed, with honorary Kiwi Gawain Jones seeded second. Indian GM Surya Ganguly is the third 2600+ player in the field, I expect the winner to come from this group.
The other thing to note, for participants anyway, is that cold weather is predicted for the first few days. However for the sizeable Canberra contingent making the trip across, this is not so much a worry as last night was the coldest January minimum on record, with the temperature dropping to 1.6 degrees!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I honestly feel sorry for chessplayers who's highlight of the year is a chess tournament in 'God forsaken' New Zealand (sic) It's the same faces year after year at Queenstown, N.Z.
Playing in an Open tournament in the sprintime in Prague, or an experts tournament in France is a joy that most of our local "Aussie" players will never know. They are like some wierd masonic clique or herd, they follow each other around. The same rancid and pathetic hierarchies, the same people to suck up to, year after year after year after year.....
"Aussie Chessplayers" show some originality, please! There IS life outside the herd.

Anonymous said...

wtf.

Anonymous said...

good luck shaun!

Anonymous said...

"Weird Masonic clique" " As a freemason I call that statement balderdash ! Stay safe Shaun...:-)