Christian Laverton

My best tournament last year was definetely Bondeofferet 2008, a rapid tournament where I scored 6 out of 6! Before this year’s Bondeofferet I was joking that I had to score 6 out of 6 again, but I didn’t really believe I would make it. As it turned out, I came really close! Read on…

The first real challenge came in round 2, when I played Håkon Haugsrud, rated same as me. After a great opening, I messed up and equaled the chances. However, Håkon returned the favour and allowed a few blows resulting in mate. After this, I continued playing relatively solid, and was able to convert advantages in each of the following games. Before the last round I had an impressive 5 out of 5, and the tournament program showed that I was secured first place! Håkon could also get 5 points, but would be behind on quality.
Unfortunately I messed up the last game, and failed to score 100%. But I can’t really complain, winning the tournament!

The crosstable is here

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Since I’m in a bragging mood (see previous post), I want to tell about the computer I bought a few months ago. For many years I’ve been sceptical to buying computers from Dell, HP, Compaq, etc…, and have chosen to assemble all my computers from scratch. But in this case I was talked into buying a Dell Studio XPS, and so far have not regretted it even a little bit!

First of all, the computer is very quiet, which is a big plus when you spend a lot of time on it. Second, with the new Intel i7-core processor and 6 Gb RAM it really has all the power I need for my work. It’s not the best gaming-computer, as the graphics card is very cheap, but I don’t really do a lot of gaming anymore. For heavy multi-tasking it’s great!

Also, the 23″ widescreen LCD is great!

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Just now I set a new personal best in the 5-minute pool on ICC. So, why not brag a little about it I achieved my new rating of 2125 after beating two IMs in a row. The first win was well deserved, the second a little lucky.  2000-2100 in the 5-minute pool on ICC is quite respectable. At this level, quite a lot of the players are titled players.

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Thursday we went to see the FA youth cup quarterfinal. Tottenham played Arsenal at home, and it only cost £3 for the ticket, so why not. Youth here means U18, but you would be surprised to see how good the football is. I’d compare it to the lower teams in the Norwegian Tippeliga. That’s why an impressive 19,084 attended the game. Unfortunately Tottenham lost the game 1-3 after being up 1-0.

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Wednesday was matchday, and we were both nervous and very excited! Unfortunately, Tottenham tend to lose fairly often, so coming all the way to London to see a game is risky business. But, read on…

We left for London around 2PM, taking the underground from Debden to Holborn. At Holborn we changed to the Piccadilly line, which we took to Wood Green. There we took a bus to White Hart Lane. We later found out that it’s simpler and faster to change at Liverpool Street and take the railroad to White Hart Lane.

At White Hart Lane we first visited the Spurs Shop. I bought the home shirt and got the away shirt for free! Edward bought some training equipment. The funny thing was that Edward asked the shop staff for “knickers”. This would sound alright in Norway, but it turns out that this means ladies underwear in England…

After shopping, we went to Bricklayers, one of the best supporter pubs. Here we met quite a few Norwegians also travelling to see the game. After a beer (or five), it was finally game time.

Our seats were in row 3 at East lower. We sat almost at the corner flag, at Tottenham’s attacking end in the first half. The game started with chances for both teams, and as my brother said, all chances seem a lot bigger when you see them live compared to on the telly. To our surprise and great joy, Tottenham scored the first goal!!! From a corner by Luka Modric, Robbie Keane put the ball in the net, making his first goal after his return. What a great start, but more was coming!! Just a few minutes later, Pavlyuchenko made it 2-0! Me and my brother could hardly believe what we were seeing. Our friend Petter later told us “you picked the right matchday”, and we sure did… Before the first half was over, Aaron Lennon made it 3-0 after a great pass from Robbie Keane.

The second half had less action, but Tottenham defended well and even got a 4th goal scored by Aaron Lennon. After the game we had a Spurs beefburger and then went back to Bricklayers to have a few more beer before heading home.

You might wonder why I called this post “Yid army”. It turns out that some time ago the Arsenal fans started calling the Spurs fans “yiddos” or “yids”, because quite a few Spurs fans are jewish (yid is a slang jewish ethnonym). This was of course meant as an insult, but the spurs fans started calling themselves “Yid army”, defusing some of the insult’s power. So before, during and after the game, Spurs fans (including us) shouted Yid army!!

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I’m sorry I haven’t blogged for a long time, I’ll try to improve

Me and my brother Edward are now in England! We arrived at Stanstead tuesday morning, and took a taxi to Pyrles Lane, Loughton, where our grandparents live. The main purpose of this trip is of course to visit them, as I haven’t been over here for over 10 years! But also, we wanted to see a Tottenham game, which I’ll write about in the next post.

Not much has changed in Pyrles Lane. My grandparents are of course getting old, but they’re still doing alright. Yesterday me, Edward and grandpa went to PCWorld in Harlow to buy a new computer. The old laptop spends 10 minutes opening Internet Explorer, so….We bought a £400 Compaq workstation with a 19″ widescreen. It’s a good computer, not too expensive, and more than powerful enough for my grandparents’ needs.

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Me, Anders Rundgren and Bent Hestad are now in Serbia playing an international tournament. The tournament is in Obrenovac, a town 30km outside of Belgrade.

In the first round, I faced a very tough opponent. FM Ivan Martic played the King’s Indian defence against me, and was able to get a decisive advantage in the early middle game. Today I will meet an unrated player, so it’s hard to know how difficult it will be.

Bent struggled against a 2100-player, but certainly had drawing chances. Unfortunately he didn’t find the right moves in the rook endgame. Anders played very well, also against a 2100-player, and won!! Today he faces a strong IM

Our Serbian friend GM Mihajlo Stojanovic is also playing in the tournament, but he spends a lot of time to help us feel at home and to improve our chess. He’s a fantastic person and a great chess teacher! So far we’ve had a great time down here, and believe that our chess will improve a lot.

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The match between Mid-Norway (Trøndelag) and Mid-Sweden (Jämtland) has become a yearly tradition, and the 2008 edition was played this weekend. I participated for the first time for the Norwegian team, and was able to draw my game against a higher-rated opponent. But unfortunately the Swedish team beat us 13-7. This came as no surprise though, as the home team usually has an advantage. It is hard to convince the best players of the club to travel all the way to Østersund in Sweden to play a game of chess.

On sunday, a rapid chess tournament was played, with 15 minutes per player per game. With 32 players, there were quite a few strong players in the field, and I knew that getting a decent result would be a tough job. However, I got off to an amazing start, scoring 5 points on the 5 first rounds! This included wins against strong players such as Lennart Burman, Terje Lund and Ulf Persson. But my winning streak came to an abrupt halt when I faced Kjell Arne Lilleløkken. In the last round I got paired against Christer Mäki, the same player I met in the match the day before. Christer slowly outplayed me. Maybe I struggled to shake off the loss against Kjell? But when everything looked completely lost and resignable, my opponent made a terrible move, capturing his own pawn with my pawn! This is of course not a valid move, and because we were playing with blitz rules, it lost him the game. Christer was very disappointed, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair the result was. However, this was quickly forgotten when I was handed the 1st prize trophy!

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Despite the warm weather, I decided to go to the cinema today with a friend. We saw Batman - The Dark Knight, and what a movie it was!

Earlier today I had noticed the incredible 9.4/10 score it has on imdb. I thought maybe this rating was a little biased, because most of the people who have rated it so far are probably Batman-fans. Thus, it might even out after a few weeks. But, the movie really lived up to the expectations. Especially Heath Ledger impressed me in the role of The Joker.

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What to do when you lose a game of chess? Well…

For more funny use of English, check engrish.com

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