Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

[IM Jack Rudd]

Does anyone know the pairing rules being used? Casual observation suggests that in earlier rounds there have been more all female pairings than would otherwise have been expected. However, the just published Round 7 pairings do not seem to have followed this trend.

Given today's controversy, the question I asked in my post on Sunday was apposite. There was no answer provided on the forum. In the YouTube interview just released, Brian Callaghan, implies that the pairings were just a normal product of the program used - however, given my earlier observations, I'm not sure I believe that.

Well, you can check it. The pairings are available on chess-results, the FIDE pairing rules are also public.

[IM Jack Rudd]

If I understand FIDE's regulations correctly, it would be legal for a norm tournament to use a pairing system that took players' sexes into account, but this would have to be announced in the tournament regulations, and a detailed description of the pairing system would have to be published.

[Chris Rice]

Even if it was biased pairings why is Hou Yifan so upset she had to play so many women? There was a massive prize for the leading woman so she had a big say in who would win that prize. Her arguments make no sense at all, the claim that she threw the last round game for all women players is pathetic. I wasn't aware that any of the other women complained and I suspect the real reason she did what she did is that she lost to Ju Wenjun and couldn't take it.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Does anyone know the pairing rules being used? Casual observation suggests that in earlier rounds there have been more all female pairings than would otherwise have been expected. However, the just published Round 7 pairings do not seem to have followed this trend.

Given today's controversy, the question I asked in my post on Sunday was apposite. There was no answer provided on the forum. In the YouTube interview just released, Brian Callaghan, implies that the pairings were just a normal product of the program used - however, given my earlier observations, I'm not sure I believe that.

Well, you can check it. The pairings are available on chess-results, the FIDE pairing rules are also public.

How long would it take to check the pairings for the whole tournament: (a) manually; and (b) using a computer paring program (not necessarily the one used, but if they are programmed the same way it shouldn't make a difference, should it)?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Even if it was biased pairings why is Hou Yifan so upset she had to play so many women? There was a massive prize for the leading woman so she had a big say in who would win that prize. Her arguments make no sense at all, the claim that she threw the last round game for all women players is pathetic. I wasn't aware that any of the other women complained and I suspect the real reason she did what she did is that she lost to Ju Wenjun and couldn't take it.

I agree. Who did win the women's prize in the end? I can't find a site that flags all the women who were participating in the Masters.

(Are some of the games still going?)

[LawrenceCooper]

Even if it was biased pairings why is Hou Yifan so upset she had to play so many women? There was a massive prize for the leading woman so she had a big say in who would win that prize. Her arguments make no sense at all, the claim that she threw the last round game for all women players is pathetic. I wasn't aware that any of the other women complained and I suspect the real reason she did what she did is that she lost to Ju Wenjun and couldn't take it.

I agree. Who did win the women's prize in the end? I can't find a site that flags all the women who were participating in the Masters.

(Are some of the games still going?)

At a quick glance:

7 Ju Wenjun
6.5 Lahno, Muzychuk A, Stefanova, Zatonskih
6 Javakhishvili, Muzychuk M, Yifan,
5.5 Gunina (still playing)

EDIT: Gunina won to reach 6.5.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

So Hou Yifan threw that game to give other women more prize money? Yeah, I know, it's not that, but I'm not clear why. Has she given a clear and unequivocal answer? Presumably if she had won, she would have lost out on tie-break to Ju Wenjun. Are there any elements of internal politicking in China at play here?

[JustinHorton]

Why do we need to make up reasons for her? Why not take her grievance at face value? You're not obliged to agree with her, but dismissing her sincerity out of hand is a bit much.

[Peter Shaw]

Discounting the 1st round (clearly not 'fixed' as the players are obviously in rating order), and the game against Adams, all of Hou's remaining 8 opponents were rated between 2440 and 2600. I count 54 players in that range, of which 13 are women. Assuming I still know how to work these things out, the chances of meeting 6 women in those 8 rounds would be about 1 in 740. Unlikely, but hardly impossible.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Why do we need to make up reasons for her? Why not take her grievance at face value? You're not obliged to agree with her, but dismissing her sincerity out of hand is a bit much.

Has she given a clear and unequivocal answer? (I'm not questioning whether she has, just asking what it is.) Is there a transcript of the interview anywhere?

OK, this will have to do:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/gibraltar-flash

So she confirmed it was a protest about the pairings. I thought that had just been speculation, but I see she has confirmed it. I'll accept that at face value, yeah. Don't really understand it, but I accept that is her reason.

[Roger de Coverly]

Why not take her grievance at face value?

It's calling into account the integrity of the arbiters to be able to input and output the pairings data without tampering with it. Alternatively and possibly with some merit, it's calling into question the rules developed by FIDE and others for performing pairings.

Whether rightly or wrongly, pairing rules take no account of gender. That means that if a player gets a run of a opponents of a particular gender, that's because of their respective PINs (initial seeding order).

[Alan Walton]

Discounting the 1st round (clearly not 'fixed' as the players are obviously in rating order), and the game against Adams, all of Hou's remaining 8 opponents were rated between 2440 and 2600. I count 54 players in that range, of which 13 are women. Assuming I still know how to work these things out, the chances of meeting 6 women in those 8 rounds would be about 1 in 740. Unlikely, but hardly impossible.

If you actually look at all the rounds, and look above and below for the ratings; it looks like it is just a total coindicence, actually in some rounds the next player available above and below was another female

[JustinHorton]

It's calling into account the integrity of the arbiters

Well, that's been done before, and we've all managed to live with it.

[Roger de Coverly]

Assuming I still know how to work these things out, the chances of meeting 6 women in those 8 rounds would be about 1 in 740. Unlikely, but hardly impossible.

Pairings are deterministic rather than random. It's rather more a question that if you are the seed x, what are the chances of meeting seeds a,b,c,d etc?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Discounting the 1st round (clearly not 'fixed' as the players are obviously in rating order),"

Well, actually it is "fixed" (or maybe random) as the lower rated players on the top 10 boards are not in order. But they always do that apparently. There were some pairings at the bottom which didn't seem to fit, but I assume that was a case of pairing late arrivals? I think Yifan was sufficiently low down that she got the "right" pairing. Rounds 2 and 3 look right as well, I'll leave someone else to look at the rest.

I once played 4 women in the first 6 rounds in Warsaw, and once played all 3 Ledgers in the space of 4 rounds at a Rapidplay somewhere less exotic. I don't think it was a conspiracy.