33rd Open Andorra (3)

National sport in Andorra is rugby. In pizzeria Cerro Otto, the walls are covered with rugby memorabilia, and one can see that U-19 and U-18 teams of Andorra won EU championships. Curiously enough – Denmark was there!

 The two waiters' obssesion wth rugby in Cerro Otto didn't come from nowhere. They used to play rugby, and their photos are hung on the walls.

Next day ther was a bus for us who expressed wish to compete in Grand Prix Andorra blitz turnering. We took off 25 minutes later than planned. Tournament took lace in Municipal building of capitol La Vella. Or some bank, I don’t know. Strange sculptures of sitting, thinking men were high in the air on some pedestals. Spooky.

The referee was yelling all the time SILENCIO POR FAVOR! SILENCIO! SILENCIOOOOOO!!!!

I was struggling to get one of minor awards, 75 eur for best player under 1850 ELO. I had chance until last 9^th round. (For some reson I believed I read in the invittion there were 8 rounds…) Ok, I played against little sweet girl, like a little Red Cap innocency from fairy tale. In French defense she played 3. e5 and after I responded with 3. …b6, she began to think. It was surprise for her. (Never heard of  my idol, old bugger Romanishin.)

I felt sorry for her. “Why should I defeat this sweet girl who loves chess and plays so naïve??!” I won a piece and I was playing toward win and probably my first money prize in my chess career. I was already imagining how i will proudly write to my relatives in Netherlands, and how I will make a joke “this is even bigger  prize than ehat I got with my aunt Jelka in Scheweningen’s Casino…”, I was looking forward to gratulations from all of them, incuding Jako, who appreciates only winners. And  my heart was bleeding for little local girl. I noticed some woman (probably the girl’s mother) watching our game obliquely, but in fact very attentive.

I gave check-mate. It was supposed to be normal end of the game in which I had extra piece and attack.

I was imagining how I would get those money framed as Scrogge McDuck did with his first cent. Im my mind I was enjoying my firt chess prize...

And. But. And.

And then the girl gave me blunt look and showed on the table,  that she gave me check. I didn’t notice that. I wanted o move my King and to continue the game but the clock wa blocked. She did something with the clock.

(In one of previous games, one of my opponent also played after I checked him, but I corrected him and we continued the game.)

She jumped of the chair and ran after referee. Her mother did the same thing.

The referee gave me a look wit evil eye of a hagman  and informed me that “if I made an illegal move, I lose the game”.

I lost. Mother shone with pride.

And I thought: “You little bitch, you little witch, yoo little whore, you will torture your husband won’t you, you little evil bastard!?!?!”

And I took an oath: never ever never ever again feel sorry for anyone. Little creature. Ever. Never.

Fuck! All those kids with caring parents watching their games, and rule-abiding umpires. Fuck. Conspiracy against me.

 And I wasn’t Scrooge McDuck after all, but Daffy Duck or Donald Duck.

When they gave minor prizes for lower categores, that prize I was hoping for, went to a chubby local boy in sandals – he was bathing in gratualations of his family.

Damned.

We went back by same bus, and only 2 hours later it was 2^nd Round on the agenda.

I had time to eat something, take vitamines and change shirt.

33rd Open Andorra (2)

In the first round of 33^rd Andorra Open , I played Smyslov’s variaton in Grunfeld’s defense and everything went well – I was hoping to reach a draw comfortably and peacefully.

I saw that he couldn’t write my name on score-sheet properly: instead Crnkovic, he wrote “xxxCNTcccc”. I thought it was fucking vane and  cocky for a man who is wearing Olimpiakos shirt and has a name “Jerez Perez etc, something”, like Prezzos in Serbian Pereca Zeka Peka. Next to him there was sitting an old man, Pampliage was his name, and this player was expelling strange voices through his larynx, like sqeaking old dog who is about to die. In between those sqeaking sounds, he talked to himself like a netriloquist. Probably an obstructive bronchitis, which will bring him death in a few years, in nice state hospital with well paid nurses who won’t hate their patients too much.

I missed several opportunities for a draw in this first Round and I lost. After the game Jerez Perez and I analyzed the game. He turned out to be sympatico and cool guy. Which isn’t ofen the case with chess players. They are usually freaks, even when they win let alone when they are sore losers. He told me that he was terriffied by the noise that sqeaking man next to him had expelled all the time. We agreed that I missed a draw with Bc2…

 Jerez Perez

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. Bd2 O-O 7. Rc1 Nb6 8. e3 Nc6 9. Bb5 

I wanted to play Karpov's move 9. Bg5 from his blitz games but I simply forgot my preparations.

9. ...Bd7 10. O-O a6 11. Be2 Bf5 

Not so god novelty. 12. ...e5 is more challenging, and Gaponenko won one important game in this variation.

12. h3 e5 13. e4 exd4 14. exf5 dxc3 15. Bxc3 Bxc3 16. Rxc3 Qxd1 17. Rxd1 Rfe8

Not the best move.

  18. Bd3 

Neither is this.

18....Rad8 19. fxg6 hxg6 20. Re1? Rxe1+ 21. Nxe1 Na4 22. Rc1 Nb4 23. Bc2 

Blunder

23...Nxb2 24. Rb1 Nxc2 25. Nxc2 Rd1+ 

I missed this.

26. Rxd1 Nxd1 27. Kf1 Kf8 28. Ke1 Nc3 29. a3 Kc5 30. Kd2 Nd5 31. g3 c5 321. Kd3 b5 33. Ke4 Ke6 34. g4 g5 35. h4 gxh4 36. f4 a5 37. g5 h3 38. f5+ Kd6 39. Kf3 Ke5 40. g6 fxg6 41. fxg6 Ne7 42.g7 b4 43. Ne3 b3 44. Nc4+ Kd5 45. Ne3+ Ke6 46. Kf4 b2 47. Nf5 

A-ha, did I get away?

47...Ng8 Nop. 0:1

33rd Open Andorra (1)

This man in the circle is Senor Silencio. Silencio Por Favor. But later about Grand Prix Andorra blitz tournament, let's begin from the beginning, how I got in Andorra, little toy land neither on heaven nor on earth.
...

If you have to wait long time at Barcelona airport during summer, prepare windjackets: they make waiting room in big refrigerator. Worse still, when you enter Novatel bus for Andorra, you’ll be frozen meat. And there are 4 hours to this land in between skies and earth, France and Spain, KGB and MI 6, it’s forgotten oasis, valley of eternal middleageness, so no one dies and no one gets older. Or maybe it’s just hell for retired Western lower class?

I had terrible experience during those 4 hours to Andorra, with my sweaters and jacket being left in suitcace. First, the driver chose only one person whom he didn’t help put his suitcase in the trunk. Me of course. After we drove off, soon I felt something’s wrong. Then I saw figures on little display above windshield: Inside temperature 15, Outside temperature 35. And it never stopped to decline. After 2 and half hours, it was 12 degrees inside. The driver looked happy. One passenger put her jacket on. The other one – later I discoered it was highest rated player Thkalchiel /who looked like a Soviet gymnast though under French flag/ - left in short sleeves.

Then temperature sank to 10 degrees. I began to panik. I took a curtain from my window, torn it off  and used it as a cape. I took socks off and used them as a scarf, whilst I put an Andorra prospect into my tennis shoes. My teeths was clapping like castagnettes. When we arrived, people from next hotel defrosted os with hair dryers. I looks exactly as Eta Beta aka Eega Beeva, a Disney character from Mickey Mouse series: Eta Beta was once wearing a big drum on his head as a hat, he had floor scrubbers instead of shoes, around his belly he had cutlery – spoons, knives, forkds…. And he was wearing garden hose.

Andorrans use air condition insanly and savagely, like dr Mengele used heat and cold to perform his experiments. Andorra is ideal for preserving corpses.

Anyway, I somehow arrived, and reception at my hotel was empty. Ghostly empty. Living room was also wihout living soul,  filled only with tables on which I saw some children drawings. It appeared as if the place was urgently evacuated, due some catastrophy. It turned out though that I had to go to “main reception” in the “main building”.

At the reception there was one blonde nice girl wh showed me the way back and the elevator: without her I wouldn’t find it. No internet “in my block”.

Tourists, coughing parents with their bloody coughing kids, expelling bacteria and vira in all directions, not to mention unhuman noise and yelling. Caring mothers-in-law, who spring over line in delis because they need to warm up food for babies. Virulent youths with no empathy for other people’s needs, grampy oldies who hate everyone younger than 50. Fathers of blossoming daughters, jealous over each human with a penis. Sport teams on way back from a competiions – all in same silly shortses, laughing as imbecils to their own jokes. Old couples with their medicines. Businessmen with laptops on which they rule the world. Everyone can fuck, except a decent middle-aged intellectual who earns for living with honest work.  If he travels alone, he will be considered a pædofil or a general type of a maniak. Screwing is for minors and rich oldies.

In knæppevenlig Andorra, safe sex is with fairies in the mountains. Of course, everything else except sex isn’t safe: nature, bears, boars, avelanches, storms.

People in Andorra use drones as an advertising device to show pictures of their ready-for-marriage daughters to public. Like in Albania, driving in convertibles is dangerous due drones, which can all of the sudden blind you. Old grandmothers curse a lot, drink whiskey with tap water a lot, play poker in small circles, like Eurosong and adore latino soap operas.

Little dogs are often mixed with little kids.

It rains 4 times a day, since 17.00 til 23.00 sharp.

Nobody speaks English. If you ask anyone in English, they will nodd as they understood, but they understood shit. Be aware of that!

It is amazing how little of Catalan and Portugese sticks to my ears, and after several days I strangely enough grew nostalgia for English. In Netherlands on theo cable channels I could watch Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and similars shows in English. In Rome, same as in Andorr – when Omar Sharif died, RAI 3 showed Blake Edward’s spy film “Tamarind Seed” but dubbed in Italian.