Mastering Chess

I HAVE been awarded the Correspondence Chess Master title by the Fide-recognised International Correspondence Chess Federation.

My medal

It came for scoring eight points in the 15-player Peter Gibbs Memorial Section A, where I still have two games remaining.

Naturally I am pleased, but it has been a bizarre tournament, in which I started by blundering a piece on move six in one game.

Since then I have gone +5=6-0, which looks impressive, except three of the wins came on time, and in only one of them was I on top - positionally winning, according to Stockfish16.1 and Dragon1 - when the default occurred.

Still, the medal looks nice on my mantelpiece.