Guernsey Chess Club and Federation Reports
Report from 12th Avoine Open, Loire Valley, France 9 - 11 March 2012.
Toby Brookfield and Fred Hamperl travelled to Avoine to play in the Open tournament there, Alison Hamperl came along for the holiday.
The Avoine approach road had a chateau turrent which reminded me of a rook.
The playing venue was a centre of culture.
Playing venue foyer; drinks and food were on sale.
Playing venue hall; was spacious, but the wooden floor creaked really loudly.
Toby prepares for his round 4 game, will it be a King's gambit? (He did get one in round 6).
IM Vincent David in his favourite chair (for the last time). I managed to beat him with a reversed Dutch opening, see interesting games. this is the first IM I have ever beaten, my previous strongest opponent I'd beaten was rated 2308 in Cappelle La Grande in 2008, Vincent was 100 points higher at 2409. He had won each of the last 3 Avoine tournaments with 100% score so he was always sat at board 1 and that must have felt like his chair. It took someone from les Isles de la Manche to topple him and pinch his chair, he was on board 3 the next morning.
An old building was being demolished opposite the venue, when we all arrived just before the first round the walls were being ripped down with a lot of noise and dust.
We all stayed in Chinon, Fred and Alison were in the Best Western in the main square.
Third time lucky! We had booked a superior 20 square metre room, when we arrived late we had to get our key from an envelope on reception and show ourselves to our room, the first room was definitely smaller size. The next day they showed us to a new room of similar size. It was only when I showed the photo of the room we'd booked on my laptop that they found a much larger room in the new back part of the hotel. The problem must have been that it was off season and they didn't want to heat the other part of the hotel with the larger rooms and they couldn't do discounts because we'd booked and paid online and the taxes had been sorted in advance.
Third bedroom view.
Toby was staying at a hotel nearer the river. The first day or so he barely saw the hotel owner, but on the last night he went back a bit earlier and found the guy was a chess player (he was a previous organiser of a local chess club), he enjoyed his hospitality into the early hours playing some games.
Chinon approach to main square.
Chinon main square.
Chinon typical street.
Chinon river and bridge.
Chinon view from opposite bank.
We tried a really local looking restaurant (outside the main square) and had the recommended 4 course meal, every course was really awful, the eel course particularly so, we all agreed we should "never leave the square" again.
Chinon pizza meal much nicer (was basically in the square).
There was a glass lift that went up from lower Chinon to the Chateau.
Chinon chateau.
Chinon chateau re-enactment (outside the toilets!).
Chinon main square, "cat up a tree".
Chinon cat up a tree close-up.
We left the square and went into a bar for a drink, it only had belgian beer, it was awful. Toby left his Leffe. "Never leave the sqaure".
Dog behind the bar in the Belgian yucky beer bar.
Chinon cat pondering which tree to go up today on our last morning.
We both finished early in the final round but we had to wait for the junior tournament prize giving to finish before we could get our bottles of wine prizes and arrange for my share of first place to be sent to me.
We then drove to Rennes and had a really nice evening meal in our favourite restaurant there L'os ou L'arete. It took us over an hour to find our hotel after that, but c'est la guerre. We got to St Malo in the morning and back on the boat home via Jersey.
Tournament site
Results
Written by Fred Hamperl, March 2012.