24 January 2010
Just 2 days ago Almira Skripchenko and I had a very good time in Monaco, giving a tandem simul for 46 players. Today we are in Brussels (Belgium), where we just gave one more duo-simul for 25 players. I have a special photo report for you about our trip to Brussels and of our simul “a quatre mains”.
The event in Belgium today January 23rd was sponsored and held by the Computer Profile company, whose managing director Pierre Mercier was the heart and soul of this event. We were treated like queens and would like to thank Pierre and his wife Teresa for their hospitality and the warmest welcome we received. You will see a little bit later in this post about the wonderful surprise-dinner they prepared for us after the simul.
The simul itself was held in one of the Horta’s house, which is just being renovated and thanks to the owner of this house Mr. Michel Gilbert we were able to play in such a historic place.
In order to get to Brussels, we first drove to Nice and then flew across the Alpes to Brussels.
In order to prepare for the simul we headed to… a hairdresser salon of course!
It was a very nice hair-dresser salon that looked more like a museum.
After our “home-preparation” we went to the house where the simul was going to be held.
We were greeted by nice flags and posters and…. the red carpet!
You see that the renovation works are still on the way.
When I was working on this post Milan Pein just sent me the link to the photos he took during the simul. You can view all the photos here. The photos are really nice and you see that a real professional took them. Below are my favorites:
The final result was +23=1-1. The only winner was Dirk Demarcke (2205, on the photo above), while Abelardo Rodriguez (1610) made a draw.
When we got back home we of course analysed the game that we lost:)
And then we were invited “à table”.
To finish this post just one photo of the main course meal we had during this amazing dinner.
I won’t tease you with the photos of dessert and will end my photo-report about the simul in Brussels. Tomorrow we will go by train to Paris and on Monday I will be flying to Gibraltar where I will take part in a very strong Gibraltar open.
Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women’s World Chess Champion
