As mentioned in Simon's write up, I attended the immensely strong Isle Of Man International last week. If Oct the 31st is a time when scary things come at of the dark, only a few days ago, there were some frighteningly strong chess players participating at the Villa Marina in Douglas. In fact, the only reason Carlsen and Caruana were not in attendance was that they have a WC match in a matter of days. Still, the amount of titled players playing seemed almost endless, and almost anybody who is anybody in the chess world was competing.
However, whilst I was not playing in the Masters, I was competing in the almost as monstrously strong major section, with an FM, a CM and a WFM competing.
After losing my opening game to the top seed, I was able to muster 5.5 points out of the remaining 6 games, to finish in a 3 way tie for first place. The two players who shared the spoils with me were Jason McKenna (rated 2095), and CM Kenneth Norman (rated 2083).
I'd say my best results were drawing with the candidate master, and beating a player graded 207, which I don't do very often.
There were quite a few interesting and curious incidents, which would take to long to talk about here. A couple of these involved local player, Henrik Fabri, who, anyone knowing Henrik, will not be surprised to hear this. He's quite a character in his own right, and not a bad player either.
So, that's it from the IOM for this year, but I plan to return again next year. It's a great tournament, even if the Masters is too brutally strong!
