Christian Laverton

I should probably have mentioned this before, but I’m actually playing in a tournament in Oslo now. Maybe I wanted to keep it a secret in case I played badly? Luckily I will never find out, since my performance has been above all expectations! My score is 3.5 out of 7, with 2 rounds to go, giving me an international rating performance of 2032 and a national rating performance of 1910.

I’m not sure what to say about the quality of my games. It seems that I often get very good positions out of the opening, but then struggle to make anything of the advantage in the middlegame. Actually in one of the games I lost and in two of my draws, I would say I had an almost winning advantage but failed to make any use of it. This indicates that opening play is one of my strengths, and that I should work harder on the middlegame phase and how to convert to an advantageous endgame.

The tournament is in memory of norwegian IM Svein Johannesen, who passed away earlier this year. The organizers have done a fantastic job so far, it has been a pleasure to participate!
I’ll try to write more about the tournament after today’s rounds. In the mean time, check the tournament blog.

Comments(0)

TSF arranged the rapid chess tournament Gamle Bybro 2008 yesterday, with 6 rounds of 30 minutes per player. My previous rapid tournament was a great success, where I won with 6 of 6 points. Because of this, I felt some pressure to perform well in yesterday’s tournament. But, the day before the tournament, Daniel Kovachev from OSS had signed up. He’s a 2250-player, especially strong in blitz and rapid chess. In addition, I went to a party saturday and drank quite a few beer.

Despite this, I played pretty decent chess and had 3.5 points after 4 rounds. In the fifth round I was paired against Kovachev with the white pieces. We played a classic Nimzo-Indian with 4. Qc2 0-0. As is usually the case for me in the Nimzo-Indian, I had no idea what I was doing. Still, I managed to survive all the way to an endgame where I should have held the draw. Unfortunately I’m far from a 2250-player in endgames, especially when low on time. 0-1 …

In the last round a relatively quick draw was agreed between me and Pål Andreas Hansen. I had the black pieces and was too tired to play for a win (although this could have given me the second place). So I ended up in third place, not a bad result at all!

My rating is now at 1709, which means it has increased 350 points in 1.5 year. Assuming my rating increase is linear, I should be 2000+ by the end of 2009

Comments(0)

My brother Edward and his girlfriend Trine are moving into my apartment. Today I helped Trine move her stuff, using a car from Rent-a-Wreck. The car turned out to be bigger than expected (a Mercedes diesel), so we managed to move everything in one go.

Although the car qualified to be called a wreck, it was fun driving. You get a “king of the road” feeling when driving such a big car.

Comments(0)