English Chess Forum

The 22nd Open des Vins took place from 29 June 6 July in Hourtin, in the Medoc region of France, to the north-west of Bordeaux. This tournament is unusual in that there are no money prizes. Instead, the prizes are all wine, and for the first 6 places, the prizes are based on the player's weight. The winner gets their weight in 'bon vin du Medoc', 2nd place gets half their weight, 3rd place a third of their weight and so on down to 6th. This year's winner was local player FM Pablo Ollier who finished a point clear on 8/9, in a field of 63 players. The remaining prizes by weight were won by Eduardo Garcia Brion (Spain), Emile Vandewiele (Belgium), Pascal Depyl (France), Milan Ollier (France) and IM Tom Piceu (Belgium). IM Alex Wohl was in 7th on tie-break but won the veteran's prize by way of consolation. 2 English players took part, Barry Hymer, who scored a very creditable 6/9 and won the 1801-2000 grading prize, and myself, scoring 5/9. The tournament was organised by the indefatigable Rike Wohlers-Armas. Everyone is very friendly and I would certainly recomment it to any English visitors who might be in the area next year.

The worse your diet, the greater your prize. I suppose the players in contention train for the event by pigging out for the preceding 3 months

"The worse your diet, the greater your prize. I suppose the players in contention train for the event by pigging out for the preceding 3 months"

One English winner used his knowledge of physics to lean back as far as possible on the seesaw they use, to increase the apparent weight his side.

https://www.helloasso.com/associations/ ... s-du-medoc

Given a bottle of wine probably weighs about 1 kg, you don't need to be all that large to win a significant amount of wine. My question is how do you get it home?