Many people are surprised when they look at my FIDE Rating and then see I have won over 120 UK Opens - The reason is The Sniper is excellent against players under 2300 okay against 2300-2500 and not ideal against 2500+ - 1.e5 or The Slav is best. The problem with those openings are that they are too solid and increase drawing chances for both sides and to win a swiss you need 2.5/3 with Black or more. As there is hardly any opportunity in North East for FIDE games I have to get my Long Play experience in none Fide rated events - I have 2 IM Norms but the difficulty for me is playing one or several in a row - I have fixed this by building my own FIDE Long Play Every Week Tournament - details of this (starting 1st week in September 2014) will be available soon via www.GrandMasterVideoCourse.com.