We send birthday wishes to GM Neil McDonald born on this day (January 21st) in 1967.

From Wikipedia :

Neil McDonald (born 21 January 1967) is an English chess grandmaster and a player on the international chess circuit. He is an English Chess Federation coach,[1] who has trained many of the country’s strongest junior players. McDonald is a regular coach of the English junior team and was Head Coach of the English Chess Federation team at the Greece World Schools Championship in 2013.[2] He regularly escorts blind and partially sighted chess players to international World Championship events and is also a chess writer.

McDonald authored the French Defence monthly updates on chesspublishing.com from October 1999 until March 2009,[3] 1 e4 … updates from November 2009 until January 2010,[4] 1 e4 … from June 2014 until February 2015[5] and returned to 1 e4 … in March 2017 until January 2018.[6]

Neil shared first place in the 1986 GLC Masters with Jonathan Levitt, was outright first at the Elekes Memorial, 1995, first at The Leinster IM Tournament in Dublin, 1997, and other tournaments since. Neil plays for Wood Green in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL).

He became an International Master in 1986 and was awarded the Grandmaster title in 1996.

McDonald obtained his FIDE Trainer qualification in 2016.[7]

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IogslcWxKEc[/embedyt]

Neil is a prolific and successful author, most recently with

and prior to that “Coach Yourself”

but also thirty eight titles for Chess Press, BT Batsford Ltd. and Everyman Chess Books.

[pgn]
[Event “Hastings op 8889”]
[Site “Hastings”]
[Date “1988.??.??”]
[Round “?”]
[White “McDonald, Neil R”]
[Black “Gufeld, Eduard”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “B60”]
[WhiteElo “2375”]
[BlackElo “2485”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “73”]
[EventDate “1988.12.??”]
[EventType “swiss”]
[EventRounds “10”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[SourceTitle “EXT 1997”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “1996.11.15”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “1996.11.15”]
[SourceQuality “1”]

{[%evp 0,73,16,12,56,47,39,44,2,32,52,61,34,73,87,80,56,42,41,46,35,24,21,18,6,
13,20,13,22,-16,6,-19,-7,5,68,93,106,42,36,8,9,28,44,9,51,-97,-159,-150,-116,
-181,-97,-75,-73,-78,-99,-174,-145,-209,-155,-155,-85,-85,-55,-59,-66,-53,112,
112,313,313,566,566,29989,29990,29991,29992]} 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4.
Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 d6 6. Bg5 Qb6 7. Nb3 e6 8. Qd2 Be7 9. Be3 Qc7 10. f3 O-O 11. g4
a6 12. g5 Nd7 13. h4 b5 14. a3 $146 Nde5 15. Be2 Rb8 $15 16. h5 b4 $2 (16…
Re8) (16… Nc4 17. Bxc4 bxc4 18. Nd4 Ne5 $15) 17. axb4 Nxb4 18. Nd4 d5 19. f4
Nc4 20. Bxc4 dxc4 21. g6 fxg6 22. h6 $2 (22. hxg6 h6 $11) 22… gxh6 23. Rxh6
e5 24. fxe5 Qxe5 (24… Bg4) 25. O-O-O Rf7 (25… Bg4) 26. Qg2 Bf8 27. Rh4 Qa5
28. Qh2 Rbb7 29. Rg1 Qb6 $2 (29… Rg7) 30. e5 Na2+ $2 31. Nxa2 Qxb2+ 32. Kd2
Qxa2 33. Rxg6+ $1 Rg7 34. Rxh7 c3+ 35. Kd3 Rxg6 36. Rh8+ Kf7 37. Qf2+ 1-0
[/pgn]