Vegas Chess Festival National Open 2024

[LawrenceCooper]

1st Vasif Durarbayli 7.5/9
2nd= Daniel H Fernandez, Illia Nyzhnyk & Rahul Srivatshav Peddi 7.

https://www.vegaschessfestival.com/live/results/
https://www.chess.com/events/2024-vegas ... open/games

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Strange last round game by Daniel Fernandez:
https://www.chess.com/events/2024-vegas ... ayli_Vasif

[NickFaulks]

Strange last round game by Daniel Fernandez:
https://www.chess.com/events/2024-vegas ... ayli_Vasif

Extraordinary and yet somehow not surprising.

Financially, the upside from a win was double the downside from a loss. In any case, his opponent needed only half a point for guaranteed clear first prize, so was likely to accept a draw if White misfired and needed to bale out.

[Ian Thompson]

Financially, the upside from a win was double the downside from a loss.

More than that I think.

A win would have got him $10,000.

A draw was going to be somewhere between $2,300 and $5,000. With the actual results it was $3,334.

A loss would have been $1,100 with the actual results but could have been as little as $390, I think, if there had been a winner in all the games between players on 6/8 and 5.5/8.

None of that's the point really. What matters is how much he needed, or didn't need, the money. It reminds me of a Who Wants to be a Millionaire episode where there were teams of 2 - a university lecturer paired with a student. The lecturer wanted to gamble on a question they didn't know the answer to because the odds were in their favour. The student wanted to take the money because he was an impoverished student. I don't remember what they chose to do.