We have been granted use of the City Quay apartments again this year - cheap but good quality accommodation in a quiet area close to Dundee City Centre. The ground floor room has been taken but three double-bedded rooms are still available. Full details at http://www.dundee-congress.co.uk/cityQuay.htm.. Please email me - <!-- e --><a href="mailto:director@dundee-congress.co.uk">director@dundee-congress.co.uk</a><!-- e --> - if interested.

Just to be clear, the prices are not per night but for the two nights of Friday and Saturday.

We have decided to extend the discounted period for entries, which means you can enter this year's event for only £25 up to midnight tomorrow, Monday 11th. Entry will be £30 thereafter and you can still enter up to Wednesday 27th August.

Accommodation at the venue is still available and we have several twin rooms and one triple in our allocation, with B&B only £29 pppn.

We look forward to welcoming you all to Largs!

Starter for 10 (interview is in English...) http://www.vgtv.no/#!/video/86046/sjakkp...romvesener

Pretty stormy meeting. Makes ours look tame in comparison.

Greetings from Tromso (I wish my luggage could say the same, last time I checked it was still in Amsterdam!). Looks like I am going to be wearing my shoe and sandals to the GA!!

I have uploaded the Director Reports received, Motions etc

Please note I am not back until Friday evening and I really don't know how much time I am going to have to upload anything between now and then. I will try my utmost to update is any other reports come in.

If I am slow to respond to you, please forgive me.

I will update the Exec Dir report at the end of the week to cover this week as well. Too important to wait until next year

Tomorrow I have the ECU GA, meeting of Zone 1.1 Delegates, Monday thru Thursday is the GA. I will try to let you know as soon as I can who won. Speaking with Garry's people tonight, they are very confident!

ATB

Andy

Andy is having problems connecting to the noticeboard. I will try and sort it out for him at the weekend when I see him. He has asked me to post the following (I will continue to post his updates as he sends them)

1, mens and womens teams at separate hotels. Two andrews sleep on couch\fold--up beds , 6 people in 4 bed flat, however not affecting chess and currently doing ok
2, I offer to do a 3 hour free saturday training session going over games,and my training course for 25-30 people if somone organises a date and venue
3, Rumours are that Garry will lose election due to bribery by KI.
4, I cannot logon to noticeboard.

Tried to watch the first round games today.

At the time of posting, the open team are in the process of scoring a comfortable 4-0.

Seems to be some technical glitches in the reporting of the women's games. At one stage it had the Scots losing heavily, but I didn't believe that for a moment. Sure enough, the score was later amended, although the games still were showing wrongly.

Equally I don't believe some of the other results showing e.g. Australia losing 4-0 to Kenya or Denmark likewise to Palestine. There are many other clearly wrong results which also confused the video commentators.

Altogether I found the website glitchy, unresponsive and difficult to navigate. I hope they get it sorted soon or it won't be much use.

By the way, ex-Scot (now NZ) Helen Milligan played Tanya Sachdev (also well known to us!) today...

Dougie will post my reports to the front page. This thread to be used for any discussion on the Scottish Women's campaign.

Scotland's women (seeded 52) start their Olympiad campaign later today (Saturday) against Mozambique (119) in round 1. MOZ are relative newcomers to the Olympiad debuting in 2010 at 112th and finishing one better in Istanbul 2 years later. Full draw here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://chess-results.com/tnr140381.aspx?lan=1&art=2&rd=1&fed=SCO&flag=30&wi=821">http://chess-results.com/tnr140381.aspx ... =30&wi=821</a><!-- m -->

Our team of Keti, Elaine, Ali, Carey and Joy have all arrived safely and are settled in Hotel Viking a mere hop, skip and a jump from the venue. There are much fancier hotels but none closer and we received a friendly welcome. So good to try the fresh waffles they make each early evening after our long journey North. There is a massive entry of 136 in the women's section alone so every spare room in Tromsø is occupied by chess players, captains and delegates. Our two teams are in different locations but will eat in the same places.

Tromsø may only have a population of ~70k but has the infrastructure more commonly associated with somewhere far larger. It is the capital for the region, situated partially on an island. Arriving at the airport is spectacular. Snow capped mountains rise from the fjords and the runway is adjacent to a sound covered by Sandnessund Bridge. Reminiscent although smaller and no less impressive, in context, than the connection between Denmark and Sweden so familiar to viewers of BBC4's scandinavian crime noir "The Bridge".

If the televised Opening Ceremony is anything to go by this will be a fantastic Olympiad. Speeches and interviews were short, to the point and demonstrated a remarkable grasp of chess and what it means with an absence of tired cliches. Norway has embraced our sport in a huge way and Magnus is the catalyst. His "lone wolf" appearance on stage along with the Norwegian team displayed dark humour and steely determination along with his usual laid back joviality. Traditional singing from a Sami woman, a blockbuster number from "Chess the Musical" and local folk rock heroes Violet Road showed off the local culture. However the nice touch was to flash all nations's flags on the big screen and announce the countries in alphabetical order. As each appeared its nation's players would rise and make some noise - the Africans were just so much better than everyone else at celebrating their appearance on the world stage. And that's what this global event must be - a celebration.

This one is hopefully just for discussions on the events taking place over the board in Tromso, with a few topical points of interest thrown in.

The old thread can have the rest.....

Hi everyone

Little bit of technical expertise required again I'm afraid

My Chessbase figurine fonts have gone a bit wonky after installing CB on a new laptop (a Slovakian laptop if that might make a difference to what follows).

It seems to read some of the pieces correctly (knight, rook and pawn) but the others have been replaced with silly little symbols.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I can't output the games as they are which is a serious problem.

I have take a screenshot, but not sure how to upload it here so you can actually see what I'm talking about.

Cheers,
Andy Burnett