English Chess Forum

This starts tomorrow (Tuesday 26th Jan).

Veteran English IM, Robert Bellin, gets the short straw, or prestige pairing of being Black on board 1 against Hikaru.

http://chess-results.com/tnr202897.aspx ... d=1&wi=821

It's not accelerated, so the top half cutoff is at 2350.

I think there's an element of random pairings, as one or two of the players below him in the draw are above 2350.

The top five boards are done by a random draw from the top 10 players (or more) from the bottom half of registered players at the opening ceremony

live games and commentary

Also live games TWIC and chess24live

2 pm start

Juan Bellon probably took longer to colour in his scoresheet than he did to play his game today:

[Event "Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2016 "] [Site "Gibraltar"] [Date "2016.01.26"] [Round "1.119"] [White "Bellon Lopez, Juan Manuel"] [Black "Kristinsson, Magnus"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A00"] [WhiteElo "2376"] [BlackElo "1776"] [PlyCount "17"] [EventDate "2016.01.26"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 e6 3. e4 Be7 4. Bd3 d5 5. e5 Nfd7 6. Bxe7 Qxe7 7. Nc3 O-O 8. Nh3 a6 9. Bxh7+ 1-0

White's eighth move sets a rare trap. I could only find two examples, one from 1893 and the other from a more recent junior tournament. In both cases, Black was alert enough to spot the problem, playing 8. .. f6 in 1893 and 8. .. h6 more recently. Perhaps because of the transposition from the Tromp, he wasn't as aware of the threats to h7 as a regular French player may have been.

See Anand drew with white, as did Ganguly - Yu Yangyi drew with black

Mick Norris wrote:Anand drew with white

The commentators were making the point that Anand hadn't played in an Open Swiss since the Biel Interzonal in 1993 or thereabouts.

But what about last year's London Classic Rapidplay? That was even more "Open" than Gibraltar, by virtue of not having parallel sections for lower rated players.

Code: Select all

Date 	Round 	WB 	Score 	Opponent
06/12/2014	1	W	1	276643H	Karia, Rishul	*138A
06/12/2014	2	B	1	299607J	Prill, Daniel	*214E
06/12/2014	3	W	1	289779K	Hamitevici, Vladimir	
06/12/2014	4	B	½	299600F	Stopa, Jacek	*229E
06/12/2014	5	W	1	292035K	Dale, Ari	*235E
07/12/2014	6	B	1	129715G	Pert, Nicholas	256D
07/12/2014	7	W	½	118403K	Sadler, Matthew D	276D
07/12/2014	8	B	1	112455K	Hebden, Mark L	262B
07/12/2014	9	W	1	188586J	Howell, David WL	264D
07/12/2014	10	B	0	259052K	Nakamura, Hikaru	294D
Played: 10.   Won: 7.   Drawn: 2.   Lost: 1.   Total: 8.   Percent: 80

Roger de Coverly wrote:The commentators were making the point that Anand hadn't played in an Open Swiss since the Biel Interzonal in 1993

Yes, I was in Biel for a weekend and called in at the Interzonal - saw Ivanchuk out for a walk on the Sunday morning

Biel 1993 was a swiss, but it wasn't an open!

Jonathan Rogers wrote:Biel 1993 was a swiss, but it wasn't an open!

I imagine you had to qualify through Zonals. The Dublin Zonal tournament of 1995(?) was a breakthrough of its era in being a genuinely Open tournament. That was shortly before Kirsan scrapped the whole concept of Interzonals and Candidate matches. European zonals lived on, before being replaced by the notion of an open European Championship to act as a qualifier for the knock out World Championship, later downgraded to the World Cup.

Jonathan Rogers wrote:Biel 1993 was a swiss, but it wasn't an open!

It was the last FIDE Interzonal results

Adams won 5 games in a row

Roger is correct that the Dublin zonal earlier in 1993 was part of the qualification process

Gibraltar today has Fodor - Nakumura on top board

round 2 pairings

Mick Norris wrote:See Anand drew with white, as did Ganguly - Yu Yangyi drew with black

He was probably expecting an easy round 1 game like this one
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018027

I see Stewart Reuben is making a guest star appearance as a filler part way down the draw rather than at the bottom of the draw. Presumably this is because there was a last second withdrawal or no show?

As a follow up, is Gilles Suez-Panama (http://chess-results.com/tnr202897.aspx ... 21&snr=217) a real name? One for the pub quiz specialists.

Challengers Round 3. Milnes-Severijnen. Wild King's Gambit.