Before the start of the first round there was a nice opening ceremony in honour of former FIDE President and World Champion candidate Fridrik Olafsson, who this year celebrated his 80th birthday and was awarded an honorary citizenship of the City of Reykjavik, an honour bestowed only 5 times before. It is amazing how he doesn’t look his age, his movements are smooth without the jerkiness that you can see in old people, his posture is straight and his face shows no signs of aging at all. Perhaps the secret is the total absence of stress in Iceland?

The other guests of honour were FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and ECU President Zurab Azmaiparashvili. Iceland was supporting Kasparov in last year’s elections and this is Ilyumzhinov’s first visit here, so perhaps the mispronunciation of both Zurab’s and Kirsan’s surnames on more than one occasion by the speaker was a result of a lack of practice.

I played with black in Round 1 and the game was rather easy, against a 1937-rated opponent, but I should have won faster. Just take a look at the position after my 19th move:

I won after 45 moves in a rook endgame. Tomorrow’s a double round, the first one starting at 10am, so it will be a long day.