It’s hot and I’m chilling out. Everyone’s on a vacation, but the summer circuit is in full swing, with opens in Spain and Greece being the most numerous. From the elite chess, things are slowly warming up with the Russian Superfinal as a prelude to the World Cup in Baku in September.

The British Championships ended with a victory for my team-mate and defending champion GM Jonathan “The Hawk” Hawkins, who beat our team-mate GM Keith Arkell in the last round to clinch the title. Our team Cheddleton is due to play in the European Club Cup in October, so it’s good to see the players in good form. Congrats to Jonathan, a successful defence of the title is more difficult than winning it for the first time!

Here’s some great opening preparation from Peter Svidler, who employed a weaker move to surprise his opponent – instead of following the engine’s first choice, which he already played before, he deviated with the engine’s second choice and that was all that was necessary to throw Motylev off balance – he went wrong immediately and had to play for a draw from that moment onwards! This just shows the importance of surprise in elite chess, where everybody seems to know everything.

I will end this post with the first verse of George Gershwin’s Summertime:

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…

Hear the rest here.