Hello, ahoy, privet! The image for the blog this week is a throwback to last summer in Riga, when I visited Mikhail Tal's monument - good memories! Hope you all are doing great. I have had another one of those "same, same but different weeks. ...
Hello World, Chess still clearly enjoys massive amounts of attention both thanks to Queen's Gambit series and general spike in interest for the game. Now that stars have aligned for chess, it is us, the chess players, whose responsibility it is ...
Hi All, Hard to believe how quickly we are approaching the final weeks of 2020. Without exaggeration I have to say that I have no idea where has the year gone! It certainly has been one of a kind in so many ways. With everything going on over ...
Hi All, Here comes this week's blog where you can submit your games for Master Analysis of Your Games session #9! Last few weeks we have looked at a fair share of interesting games and the interest in the show is growing rapidly, which I'm gla...
Hi All, Some of you may wonder why sheep is featuring this blogpost, and no, the answer is NOT that I have turned into a sheep, but I just looked through some old pictures from travels and thought this was a picture which hopefully will bring so...
Hi All, Nudged by high demand we are back with the series "Master Analysis of Your Games" - episode #7! What has happened since last session? Well, there is a bit of news - finally FIDE approved my IM title, so I can officially call myself an ...
Happy weekend Everyone! Can't believe we are already in October. Christmas is merely 2.5 months away! Doesn't feel that way, but it's true! It's refreshing to see Carlsen, Caruana & Co playing OTB chess again, this time in Norway. From tou...
Ahoy All, Hope everyone is doing alright and staying healthy. UK/Scotland are ramping up the Covid restrictions as we are slowly entering the winter/hibernation season. Thanks everyone who submitted their games and participated in last week's ...
Hello Everyone,Hope you guys are doing well in these consistently strange times. I have had a fair share of adventures over the last few weeks, which in short can be summarized in the below bullet pointers - Traveled back home to Latvia ...
Hello Everyone, Hope you all are staying safe and healthy as the world seems to be in a mad state at the moment. That being said, chess is really seeing an uptick of attention, which is a really nice side-effect to everything else. For me Augu...
Hi All,Hope everyone is safe and healthy, and enjoying the chess boom! A couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to take a little break of business as usual and head to Copenhagen, Denmark for a bit of rest. It was really refreshing to see life...
Hi All,It is already July - time flies indeed! While this is a cliche thing to say, over the last few weeks that is exactly how I have been feeling. Monotonous every day with work, sleep, eat, chess, shower, repeat.. - that's how days, weeks, mont...
Hi All,As I have got a tad more time on my hands this weekend, I decided to go through my 4NCL games so far this season, and share with you some of the impressions/analysis.First of all, as some of you may now, I represent Celtic Tigers at the str...
Hi All,Here comes the final part of blog series where I share my experience at this year's edition of Gibraltar Masters tournament (You can read part 1 here and part 2 here). Off the board.. While I was quite seriously preparing for the gam...
Hi All, Thanks for tuning in for Part 2 of the review of my games at Gibraltar Master 2020 (you can read part 1 here if you haven't done so already). So just to quickly recap, after first 3 rounds of the tournament my result was not great,...
Hi All,It's been a couple of months since my last blog post, as since playing in Corsica (which you can read all about here), I was preparing for the big bang or the central event of 2020 - Gibraltar Masters tournament in January.As you can tell b...
Hi All, A week ago I had the pleasure to take part in a blitz and rapid tournaments held in Corsica, Bastia. Me and my girlfriend decided to take a little trip to South of France and then spend a couple of days on the beautiful island that Co...
Hi All, The last couple of weeks have been a proper autumn here in Edinburgh, Scotland and so today I decided to re-live the happy sunny days I had in end of August in Sicily, Italy. Between 23-24 August I was taking part in 5th Chess Festiva...
Hi All, After a wee bit of a delay here comes the Part 3 (out of 3) of my blog series covering my experiences at this year's Scottish Championship held in Edinburgh, Scotland (If you missed the previous posts you can find them here - Part 1 a...
Hi All, Hope you have had a fantastic weekend and so here comes the continuation of my blog series on Scottish Championships 2019. (You can find Part 1 here) So after the first 3 rounds I was standing at 2.5 points out of 3, which is not...
Hi All, It's been a couple of months of peace and quite on my blog, but this is not because I have given up on chess just yet - I have been busy playing tournaments, working with Riga Magicians PRO chess League team towards qualifiers, and life ...
Hi All, Here comes the final part of the blog-series "Ritvars adventures in 4NCL strongest league with the Celtic Tigers". The final weekend of the league was really important for the Tigers - we needed to score some wins to stay in the highes...
Hi All, This is the 3rd part of blog series were I describe my experience in 4NCL playing for Celtic Tigers. You can see the first two parts here and here. So going into the final weekend of the regular season we still had chance...
Hi All, Finally I have pulled myself together to write another blog-post to share my experience in 4NCL. You can see the first part of this blog-series here. P.s. thank you for your comments and messages regards the first blog-post. Your...
Hi All,It's been a while since my previous blog posts - other things got in the way, hadn't been really playing much nor working on my chess really, hence nothing to write. However, over a year ago I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland and this made...
