Edmonton International - Side Event #2 - Lazaro Bruzon Simul

Lazaro Bruzon of Cuba is the highest rated player in the International tournament, just ahead of Nigel Short by a few points.  Twenty-two players took on the challenge of trying to take a point from the grandmaster.

Early in the opening phase.  (notice the high rated spectator)

Nigel Short strolling around the boards.

I make my move 7...Ngf6

...thinking..

...after a few seconds...

...and he replies

7.Ned2

My game.  I noted the time of every move.  You can see the first moves took about 4 min for Lazaro to make it around the room.  Then it was up to 15 min and as players dropped out he was coming around every minute or two.

When I finished there was one game remaining.  They placed a clock with 10 minutes next to the board and the game continued. The young junior Lenard Grossman lasted the longest but he quickly lost a piece and was down to a lone king within minutes.

The last game to finish.

Edmonton International - Side Event #1 - Nigel Short Lecture

The Nigel Short lecture was well attended with players ranging from age 10 to 70.  Like all good chess players he was a couple of minutes late.  His excuse was that he had taken a half hour nap at his hotel and didn't wake up until 4 hours later.  He was still a bit jet lagged having just arrived from Tanzania!?.  He had found that tournament on Facebook and decided to try playing in East Africa.  I think he holds the record for winning tournaments in the most countries.  Maybe he's trying to make sure nobody beats his record.

Assembled crowd waiting for GM Short

Micah Hughey introducing the Star

Short was awarded his Trophy for winning last years tourney

Lecture (after 10...g6)

 

At the critical position (prior to 15...d5)

His lecture was about a game from the previous tournament prior to the one in Tanzania.  His opponent was Loek Van Wely and the tournament was the 21st Sigeman & Co in Malmo, Sweden.  I found the game in chessgames.com and tried to annotate it with what I remembered from the lecture.