Four tournaments

There are four tournaments coming up in the next five weekends, and things kick off in a few hours with the Huddersfield event, followed by Coulsdon over Easter, then a trip to see Michelle in Berlin and then two more tournaments - St Albans and finally Hereford where I will be going with Colin at the end of April. Then that's more or less it for the season, with only the Grange-over-Sands tournament at the end of June to go until things start again in September.

So a lot of games and work coming up in the next month - in fact, 18 games by my calculations. Added to which, the tournament limits suit me - Huddersfield this weekend is an under-110 tournament and both Hereford and St Albans are u-120s, so it shouldn't be such hard pounding as my recent tournaments (Kidlington was a u-145 for example). So I really should have some chances to do well, if I can follow the precepts and get a bit of luck.

The omens aren't too good at Huddersfield - this was the event where, last year, I managed 0/4 after finding an absolutely superb real ale/World Beers pub 10 minutes from the venue, and I must endeavour to postpone its charms until after the games this weekend. It has to be one of the best pubs in the world, and only half an hour from my house, but chess and 10% Belgian Tripel Ale don't mix too well.

I tend to find that doing badly in a tournament one year doesn't augur well for later years, but I will have to hope that I can put that behind me. I also have the "first round" hoodoo to contend with tonight - I am only scoring around 25% in the first rounds of tournaments, probably because of the pressure of expectations. And there's also the fact that in my last three tournaments (Gonzaga, Kidlington and Doncaster) I've only managed 1 win, 3 losses and 7 draws, though it must be remembered that the sections I was in were harder than the one I will be in today.

History seems to be against me, then, but I will have to do my best to overcome these hurdles.

Dave Stephenson is playing this event too, though he is taking a bye tonight. The other news is that Chris Welch is going to be making his tournament debut in this event. He is a friend from work who has been playing online and is now going to make the step up to serious tournament chess. Some of you may recall that I stayed at his parents' house in Preston when I played the tournament there last November. He cooked me a superb omelette for breakfast. Well, on that occasion he seemed to catch the chess bug, and now he's competing.

In fact he's going to be arriving at my house shortly for a quick pre-tournament briefing on tournament stuff like writing down the moves, etiquette etc, so I'd better get moving.