26th Wine Tournament, Hourtin

                                                                   

                               I'm Back!😁

After an absence of many years, about five, I'm playing in an international open in France again. To be more precise, the Wine tournament in the Medoc region, where one wins wine, according to one's weight. The bad news is that I weigh considerably less now than five years ago. 

The road to Hourtin was long. I first flew to Milan took a few trains to St Tropez, stayed there a few days visiting family, then drove to Gueungnon to pick up my daughter who had just graduated from high school with brilliant marks. We then made another road trip, 600km, the next day to the Medoc.

This morning we headed to Montelivet where an annual Biker festival takes place. There were plenty of colourful Harleys on display, but I was more interested in the Cap Ferrer oysters. Nina discovered that she had lost her love of Oysters in the intervening years, so I had to eat most of them.

The Bikes are always worth a look.

Now to get to my first-round game. I have been teaching my students to create problems for their opponents early in the game. To constantly threaten and create problems. I must practice as I preach. I will post the game score here just in case the HTML doesn't work or disappears at some stage, which has happened before.

[Event "26th Wine tournament"]

[Site "Hourtin"]

[Date "2024.06.29"]

[Round "1"]

[White "Wohl, Aleksandar"]

[Black "Nawrocki, B"]

[Result "1-0"]

[WhiteElo "2332"]

[BlackElo "1768"]

[ECO "B06a"]

[EventDate "2024.06.29"]

1.e4 g6 2.h4 d5 3.h5 Bg7 4.Nc3 d4 5.Nce2 e5 6.Ng3 Nf6 7.h6 Bf8 8.Bc4 Be6 

9.Bxe6 fxe6 10.c3 d3 11.Qb3 Kf7 12.Nf3 Nbd7 13.Ng5+ Ke8 14.Nxe6 Qc8 15.

Ng7+ Kd8 16.Qf7 Bxg7 17.hxg7 Rg8 18.Rxh7 Nxh7 19.Qxg8+ Ndf8 20.Qxh7 Nxh7 

21.g8=Q+ Kd7 22.Qxh7+ 1-0

Although beating a player more than 500 elo lower is not something to brag about, I do feel that It showed the value of harassment. 2.h4 already forced my opponent to stop and think. 10.c3 posed problems and accelerated the collapse. In fact, on move 11... black tried to play Kc6, not really good, and not legal. He was clearly rattled. the rest was not worth commenting on. 

https://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game-replayer.php?id=119986

Lets see if this works, more tomorrow.