Sunday, February 28, 2016

2016 Gibraltar Masters - Game 1


The first game in the Masters was at 3 p.m. the same day as Round 2 of the Challengers A.
While all the Challengers and Amateur games were played upstairs in the room you saw in the Challengers Round 2 post; the Master's boards were spread over two floors.  Boards 1 - 75 were played in the well-lit upstairs room, whereas  boards 76 to the end (approx 130)  were played a couple of floors below street level in an area that is normally a restaurant (from what I gathered). The lighting here was objectively hit or miss, but it did not affect me. Fellow Canadian, FM Michael Dougherty who had played in Gibraltar at least once before, dubbed this floor, "the Dungeon", and the objective was to escape and play upstairs

My opponent for round 1 was Spanish IM David Martinez (2407)

















A nice touch by the organizers was the name card pre-placed at your board for every game, including the Challengers and Amateur. 

About the game.  I played a dubious positional idea in the opening. David spent a lot of time deciding how to exploit my weaknesses, and with surgical position executed. I resigned on move 21.

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