Hereford part 1

Preparation for Hereford was somewhat marred by the fact that I went to Liverpool last night to see friends and it ended up being a bit of a pissup - I had intended to make sure I had an early night so I could drive down here to Hereford and play OK, but in the end we were on the beers until 2am last night. We had some very nice curry and then went to a couple of good real ale pubs and a rather dubious pick-up bar. And when we got back to my friend's house we cracked open the wine...

Consequently, I didn't get up this morning until 9.40 and I didn't leave until gone 11. Being a bank holiday weekend , the roads were a bit rammed as well, and so I was starting to think I wasn't going to make it to Hereford on time. I texted Colin, who is playing in this tournament as well, and discovered that the game didn't start until 3, so in the end I wasn't all that late.

The event is being held in a school here in Hereford, and its quite a good venue. Nice grounds and a pleasant hall. It's quite a small tournament and seems well organised.

I turned up 15 minutes late and found that I was sitting next to Colin so I could watch his game. I was playing against a woman with a very low rating. It turned out afterwards that she had several family members in the tournament and they were all camping in a camper van in the car-park. Colin was up against an old chap who played a very boring opening.

My game went pretty well - the opening was dull but I got a good enough position out of it. Then she missed a tactic. All my recent tactics work must have paid off because I saw it and managed to win a piece and from then on it was all over fairly quickly with an efficient win. Not the hardest game I've ever played but wins like that are good for the confidence. Colin got into a good position, thought he saw a winning tactic but missed a saving move for his opponent and so ended up losing unfortunately.

We had a little walk and a talk and then headed to the hotel. We got ourselves sorted out here in this hotel which is very nice and then headed to a Thai restaurant round the corner where we had a nice meal and played through the games. I had a pork stir fry curry dish. After that we hit a couple of pubs. In the first one i had a pint of cider. There was a retriever with a teddy bear in its mouth and the clientele was a bit rough and ready so we moved on. The next pub was nicer. There was a singer who sang a lot of gay anthems, so much so that Colin became convinced that it was a gay pub. The beer was nice - they brewed their own. We had 3 games of chess and piqued the interest of the girl at the next table. We were both in quite good form and the games went well.

And that was that - now we are back in the hotel room and its time for bed. At least it was quite a good start to the new season, getting an efficient win under my belt.