BRITISH CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS - THE GAMES

[Simon Ansell]

I just made the.same points to Stewart Reuben, who I bumped into in my hotel bar. With the exception of.boards 1 and 3, the draw for tomorrow is very similar to an unaccelerated round 1.

Tomorow there are only 3 pairings titled player vs titled player. Someone please enlighten me as to what advantages accelerating the draw has had.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Tomorow there are only 3 pairings titled player vs titled player. Someone please enlighten me as to what advantages accelerating the draw has had.

To be fair, the top four boards would likely have been all titled players. You can't legislate for a non-titled player on a good run of form getting to 2.5/3 as Chino Atako has done. Of the seven players in the top two score groups, six are GMs, which leaves Atako in very good company. Or are you saying the acceleration has led to this, as the round two pairing of Atako (1) vs Webb (0) is presumably due to the acceleration. The strange thing is that Andrew Ledger went from drawing with Short (2687) to drawing with Atako (2110), so if Short had beaten Ledger (did Short miss a clear win?), that might have had a knock-on effect.

Anyway, best of luck to Chino Atako. Best not to think too much about the 605 Elo rating difference.

PS. Anyone want to pick a winner from the top board clash between Howell and Gordon?

[Carl Hibbard]

PS. Anyone want to pick a winner from the top board clash between Howell and Gordon?

No, very quick draw on that one

[Christopher Kreuzer]

PS. Anyone want to pick a winner from the top board clash between Howell and Gordon?

No, very quick draw on that one

No head-to-head stats available?

The GMs began meeting in round 3. I forgot to ask for head-to-head stats between them:

(1) Conquest-Jones was a draw - had they played before?
(2) Adams-Gormally was a win for Adams - had they played before?
(3) Summerscale-Short was a win for Short - had they played before?

In round 4:

(4) Howell-Gordon - have they played before?
(5) Short-Conquest - have they played before?

Hmm. More GMs met in round 3 than in round 4? Hopefully things will pick up a bit from round 5 or 6 onwards. With 12 GMs in the field, you would hope the leading GMs after 11 rounds would have played at least 7-8 other GMs. Though that depends on the GMs playing like, well, grandmasters.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"A small word in support of Chino Atako, a former club colleague of mine until he moved to London a few years back. I must concede that I'm hugely surprised to see him 2.5/3 in the British, and facing Mickey Adams too. He's a fabulous bloke, a sadly rare example in this country of a player of African heritage playing the game at a high level. But when he played for Atticus, he was never more than 140-150. Moving to London obviously suited him because he moved ahead to 180 or so. However he seems to have found yet further resources, not least in holding out against Andrew (?) Ledger today. Indeed I thought he had a big plus at the end.

So hats off to Chino, a decent club player trying his best. OK, it's not a great advert for the draw. But I do hope people don't spoil Chino's big moment by carping about technical procedures. Not much Chino can do about it."

Chino has been playing at and for Redhill for the last few years. He did suddenly improve after his first season and become rather dangerous, and has produced some really good games at Redhill. I'm not surprised he is doing well. The club is cheering him on and offering helpful advice. Hope he doesn't get confused by it all! He is a great guy and deserves his success.

The acceleration may not have worked perfectly at this event so far, but how often does any Swiss system do that? I'm a bit puzzled that if you look at player details it claims misleadingly that Chino has floated twice, whereas surely he was accelerated?

I'm open-minded on the Accelerated System but would probably only use it if there were too many players for the number of rounds.

[John Wright]

The pairing system has certainly opened itself to questioning; For example I'd be interested to know how Susan Lalic has had to play four Gm's in 4 rounds while Jovanka Houska has yet to face anyone over 2203.

[Simon Ansell]

Tomorow there are only 3 pairings titled player vs titled player. Someone please enlighten me as to what advantages accelerating the draw has had.

Or are you saying the acceleration has led to this, as the round two pairing of Atako (1) vs Webb (0) is presumably due to the acceleration.

I was on the next board, Lawrence somehow contrived to lose a completely drawn rook endgame. It's not any particular pairing, just that any system that, barring an exceptional set of results (there haven't been), results in the top two seeds on the same score playing two opponents 400 points apart, is fundamentally flawed imo.

Now we go back to a normal swiss system and it's not clear what effect, apart from some players being randomly advantaged/disadvantaged, acceleration has had. Maybe I am missing something, but in my entirely unscientific survey of talking to the other players, I'm yet to find one who has anything good to say about the pairing system.

Anyway, this is a thread about the games so I shall leave it at that and try to play a good one today

[Alex McFarlane]

In round 4 the average rating difference for opponents is 210. A seeded pairing for rd 1 would have given an average rating difference of 299. I know we are entering into the realms of lies, damned lies and statistics here but it is safe to say that in general the pairings are closer than they would have been. There is one obvious exception. Unseeded round 1 would have produced 2 pairings with an ratdif of over 500 points.
So far the average ratdiffs have been 193, 210, 202 and 210.
Still to look at individual players.

With regard to the different opposition of Lalic and Houska, this is partially explained by the score they were on when being paired and partly by the point Stewart refers to occasionally where your position in the seeded rankings can produce a considerable difference in the ratings of the opponents that you face.
Jovanca is pin 18 and Susan 31.

[David Shepherd]

If the top players want chocolate and are given cabbage eventually they will go to the shop that just sells chocolate, although being professionals they will munch their way through quite a lot of cabbage first if the rewared for doing so is sufficient. The experience will not have been so enjoyable though and in this case it is very questionable if the cabbage is better for them.

[andrew martin]

Game of the Day : Howell v R Pert is now posted. I hope you enjoy it!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkXfzKAnAns

[Gavin Strachan]

Is is obligatory for good players to play badly v really good players? Summerscale and Buckley kind roled over to Adams and Howell playing the type of game you would not want to show your kids.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Is is obligatory for good players to play badly v really good players? Summerscale and Buckley kind roled over to Adams and Howell playing the type of game you would not want to show your kids.

Probably psychological (not sure you got the names right there either - didn't Summerscale lose to Short, Adams crushed Gormally). BTW, what is the best resource to get head-to-head stats? I might use chessgames.com, but if someone with a really good games database is willing to give recent head-to-head stats for the GM clashes, I won't bother.

[Adam Raoof]

If the top players want chocolate and are given cabbage eventually they will go to the shop that just sells chocolate, although being professionals they will munch their way through quite a lot of cabbage first if the rewared for doing so is sufficient. The experience will not have been so enjoyable though and in this case it is very questionable if the cabbage is better for them.

They will be a lot healthier and leaner as a result though!

[Roger de Coverly]

BTW, what is the best resource to get head-to-head stats? I might use chessgames.com, but if someone with a really good games database is willing to give recent head-to-head stats for the GM clashes, I won't bother.
Post

You can use the free version of ChessBase Light 2009 to access the ChessBase collection. Provided that events put the games up on their website reasonably promptly, then ChessBase will collect them. Slightly surprisingly it didn't find any previous clashes between Short and Summerscale or between Adams and Gormally.

I suppose we get back to Morphy numbers. How many people in the British have previously played Short, Adams , Howell or Jones? Adams played a lot more British congresses in his younger days than Nigel and Jones played a fair bit of 4NCL.

[Sean Hewitt]

Slightly surprisingly it didn't find any previous clashes between Short and Summerscale or between Adams and Gormally.

According to Danny, he hadn't played Mickey before.