First off, sorry for not being able to get online more often and post my games and results from France. Just how it is for this one. But I do have a chance to post one of my games now, and it's quite an exciting one!
My goal coming here was to pay one beautiful game; and during and after playing this game, I was so engrossed in it, and so excited at all the lines I looked at, that I considered that I had probably achieved my objective. But I just went through the sobering experience of typing the game in to chessbase, and just playing out my variations, I saw all kinds of miscalculations on my part; also I realized that almost all the excitement in the game was in variations I calculated, not in any moves actually played in the game. So perhaps not everyone will follow my enthusiasm for the game.
I made a pretty combative and unconventional decision in the opening when i took on a pawn weakness to stress my development lead and looked for a lot of ways to keep the initiative and try to land some blows on the opponent's king. But my opponent was very alert; in the post-mortem I could tell that he saw basically every threat I came up with. And so he bobbed and weaved, and left all my hoped-for-hammerblows beneath the surface. However, I don't have many regrets, it was a very satisfying game. At some point, in the heat of battle, my opponent and I suddenly happened to look up from the board at the same moment, and smiled at each other; I knew immediately he was having similar fun as I.
As for results, so far I drew round 1 vs a 1900 rated player, then won in rounds 2 and 3, and that last game was round 4. 5 more games left; I'm feeling good, and hopefully I will have one beautiful game by the time I come home.
Sam Shankland has 3 wins and 1 loss.
The top boards are broadcast live through http://www.sautronechecs.fr/content/view/283/2/
Rd 5 is tomorrow at 14:30 French time; looks like I have black vs a strong player. I better go look at a few games before I collapse.
Standings and pairings can be found through: http://www.sautronechecs.fr/content/view/284/1/