English Chess Forum

David's 18....Bd5

3q1rk1/1B3pbp/1p4p1/8/Q7/4B1P1/bP3P1P/5RK1 b - - 0 18

...after two precious minutes thought was a Candidates or bust move.

How is that showing any signs of 'disrespect' to Wang? And David did not sit down to get Alekseenko
into the candidates, nor should one care about other player's feelings, David was trying to get himself into
the candidates and to do so if this meant 'distorting the 'natural' outcome of the game' then so be it.

If he had not gone for it he would have spent the next year wondering what would have happened.
With 'Hope and Glory' pumping through his veins and a clear disdain for the puritans of the game, the
roundheads who want games to follow the 'natural course', those who stare aghast at David's cavalier
attitude to his ratings, his clock, his bank balance their computer evaluations and other players feelings.

Good for him. He rolled the dice, it came up a double one - hard lines.
I and others of my ilk applaud this effort.

We will stand a tiptoe when this game is mentioned.
And those that saw this game today in old age will often speak of it
Those who are yet to be born will think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

(Wang spent 10 minutes on the reply 19.Rd1 )

How about this for a tournament?

Not every day you see a 2700+ player finish 114th in a swiss.

Some statistics...

154 players in total.
26 from Russia and 15 from India.

2 players on 8/11
6 players on 7.5/11
5 players on 7/11
29 players on 6.5/11
22 players on 6/11
40 players on 5.5/11

64 players scored above 50%.
104 players scored 50% or more.
50 players scored less than 50%.

841 games in total.
263 White wins.
441 draws.
136 Black wins.
1 forfeit

(I think the forfeit was in last round by Prithu Gupta, and the 5 byes and withdrawal of Elisabeth Paehtz not included)

Highest placed IMs were Sadhwani, Bjerre and Saduakassova on 5.5.

19 players went undefeated at this tournament. Two players (Van Foreest and Erdos) drew all 11 games!

These are the undefeated players:

Caruana (8/11)
Alekseenko (7.5)
Aronian (7.5)
Carlsen (7.5)
Nakamura (7.5)
Vitiugov (7.5)
Le Quang Liem (7)
Abasov (6.5)
Kryvoruchko (6.5)
Lupulescu (6.5)
Yu Yangyi (6.5)
So (6.5)
Svidler (6.5)
Robson (6.5)
Leko (6.5)
Korobov (6)
Eljanov (6)
Jordan Van Foreest (5.5)
Viktor Erdos (5.5)

Any updates on the norms achieved at this tournament?

Ah, the chess.com report (by Pete Doggers) covers this:

https://www.chess.com/news/view/wang-ha ... candidates

"The final GM norms for Jonas Buhl Bjerre, Raunak Sadhwani and Vincent Keymer; a first GM norm for Dinara Saduakassova; and an IM norm for Soumya Swaminathan."

Is a prize list available?

Prize fund is here:

https://iominternationalchess.com/info/ ... swiss.html

"All prize money is divided equally where players have the same score (after 11 rounds)."

Highest placed woman was Dronavalli on 5.5/11, which means the Open prizes all went to men (and grandmasters).

Top 30 is at 6.5/11, which extends down to place 42.

So the split is 2/6/5/29.

I make it the following:

1-2: Wang Hao and Caruana - $60,000 each
3-8: $27,667 each
9-13: $9,600 each
14-42: $2,276 each

If David Howell had drawn, that puts Caruana up to $70,000 instead, and splits a larger prize fund between places 2-9, so that would have been $28,625 instead of $9,600, so that loss cost Howell $19,025. I assume that all titled players still got appearance fees of some sort, or at least something covering costs.

EDIT: Other chess players in the final round had similarly large (if varying) amounts of money riding on their results. Wang Hao got an extra $32,000 by winning instead of drawing, and a win for David Howell would have seen him get $60,000 (i.e. over $50,000 more than he actually got). But both Wang Hao and David Howell (and the rest of the other players) were far more likely to be more concerned about the Candidates place on offer than the money involved. It does raise the question, IMO, whether prize funds ever distort competitions like this (by which I mean that some players would put prize fund share ahead of a Candidates place). It must have some effect, surely? Without knowing the level of appearance fees, it is difficult to judge.

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:20 pm

At the end of a long tournament a tired player made a bad blunder.

Nothing sinister and no story, in my opinion.

David Howell @DavidHowellGM 13h13 hours ago
Thanks to everyone for their support over the last 24 hours. Victory in the final round would have been life-changing, but it wasn't to be. As usual my nerves let me down. Congratulations to Wang Hao on qualifying for the Candidates. Well deserved.

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:46 am

Two players (Van Foreest and Erdos) drew all 11 games!

The full Giri

Mick Norris wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:42 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:46 am

Two players (Van Foreest and Erdos) drew all 11 games!

The full Giri

Heh. I believe you have to draw 14 games in a row at the Candidates to do the full Giri. But yes, those streaks of 11 by those players deserve to be up there, along with the 12 draws by Caruana (did he draw others either side?) and the run of 21 consecutive draws by Carlsen (though that was in separate events).

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:31 pm

Mick Norris wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:42 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 22, 2019 11:46 am

Two players (Van Foreest and Erdos) drew all 11 games!

The full Giri

Heh. I believe you have to draw 14 games in a row at the Candidates to do the full Giri. But yes, those streaks of 11 by those players deserve to be up there, along with the 12 draws by Caruana (did he draw others either side?) and the run of 21 consecutive draws by Carlsen (though that was in separate events).

Yes, but I can't recall exactly how many......

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:49 pm

R1 Here are the England GM matches:

Jobava Baadur (2617) v Howell David (2694)
Jones Gawain (2688) v Abdusattorov Nodirbek (2608)
Yilmaz Mustafa (2595) v Mcshane Luke J (2682)
Arkell Keith (2447) v Oparin Grigoriy (2654)

And our final scores were:

David 7
Luke 5.5
Gawain 5
Me 4.5

I was the second oldest of the 154 players, and believe I played more moves than anyone else. But no rest for any of us, as David, Luke, Gawain and Jovi play in the EUROPEAN TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP in Batumi tomorrow, while I play in the «1st INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT LARNACA 2019» the day after!

All the very best to our Men's and Women's teams.

Keith Arkell wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:57 pm

(...)and believe I played more moves than anyone else.

Alas no, Lupulescu was the winner of this honour according to the Deputy with enough time on his hands to do such a calculation.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:47 am

Keith Arkell wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:57 pm

(...)and believe I played more moves than anyone else.

Alas no, Lupulescu was the winner of this honour according to the Deputy with enough time on his hands to do such a calculation.

Stop press, you were actually fourth, behind Cheparinov, Lupulsecu and Solomon; but ahead of McShane in fifth. Lupulescu was leading after either Round 9 or 10, and the data hadn't been updated.

At the other end of the scale, the top 5 in terms of fewest moves were Safarli, Nakamura, Mamedov, Svidler and Anand. Safarli came in below 30 moves per game, which is interesting given the 30-move rule!

Haha thanks Alex. The easiest way to find out whether you have a record is to just randomly claim it. Doing so seems to have been successful (so far!) re winning the same Open event 25 times.

And that is hilarious about safarli!

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:08 am

Stop press, you were actually fourth, behind Cheparinov, Lupulsecu and Solomon; but ahead of McShane in fifth. Lupulescu was leading after either Round 9 or 10, and the data hadn't been updated.

At the other end of the scale, the top 5 in terms of fewest moves were Safarli, Nakamura, Mamedov, Svidler and Anand. Safarli came in below 30 moves per game, which is interesting given the 30-move rule!

Keith Arkell wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:41 pm

And that is hilarious about Safarli!

I wondered whether Safarli might have had a lot of decisive games, but no: +1 =9 -1.

It was a tough tournament for Solomon, who made the third highest number of moves and finished last (apart from Paehtz, who withdrew after Round 6).

Its been announced that they are taking a year off and there will be no tournament in 2020.

Returns in 2021

The World Chess Federation has accepted a bid by the Isle of Man to host the 114-player FIDE Grand Swiss on the Isle of Man from October 25 to November 8, 2021. The event will now select two Candidates, one more than in 2019, though if it goes ahead as scheduled it’s likely to finish before the previous cycle is complete, with Magnus Carlsen’s next World Championship match also pencilled in for late 2021. The Grand Swiss will now be joined by an inaugural 50-player FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss, with a combined prize fund of $550,000.