Congratulations to Quality Chess’s own IM Andrew Greet, who was first outright in the Dundee 150 international tournament. His 6/9 gained plenty of rating points, but was not quite enough for a GM norm. GM Colin McNab started well, but sadly faded to finish on 3/9. Full results here.
Congratulations also to 16-year-old Murad Abdulla who became Scottish Champion and looks to have gained enough in rating to become an FM. This makes Murad the second-youngest-ever Scottish Champion – GM Paul Motwani was also 16 when he first won, but a few months younger.
The Scottish Championship was held as part of an Open, so I will complete my congratulations by saying GM Andrei Maksimenko of Ukraine won the Open, but was of course not eligible to be Scottish Champion. Full results here.
Update: Dundee Chess Club have very helpfully put a link to a report that was broadcast on the Scottish TV programme ‘STV News’. It’s just 2 minutes and worth a watch. Spoiler: as Colin is on-screen, the reporter says: “If this was football, you’d be watching the equivalent of Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Congrats Andrew. Does this mean we can expect a comprehensive 3-volumes book from Andrew in the immediate future published by QC: 1) Training regime to get from IM to GM; 2) Rep for White towards the GM title; 3) Rep for Black towards the GM title.
Plus a chess memoir on “How working for a chess publisher helped me towards the GM title”.
Thanks! Unfortunately my result, excellent though it was, was not quite enough for a GM norm and my rating will only be 2460 on the next list. So I won’t be writing any such books for a while.