FIDE Grand Prix 2014-2015

[Mick Norris]

Final round games into their second hour now
http://baku2014.fide.com/live/index.html

[Barry Sandercock]

Caruana and Gelfand 1st.equal 6.5/11. I don't believe there is a playoff.

[Mick Norris]

No points and prizes shared in the GP

Great quote from Grischuk

For me the tournament consisted of two parts. The first part I was completely struggling, playing extremely bad, but then I moved to the hotel with windows and it completely changed everything for me. I mean I just cannot live without windows. I just felt like I'm in a submarine or something for more than one week, when I was waking up I felt like I'm pregnant, I mean I was just feeling so bad every morning, the whole day, and my play showed it very clearly. And then I moved, of course I'm lucky that I won three games out of four after I moved but still the level of my play at least dramatically improved.

http://www.theweekinchess.com/chessnews ... grand-prix

[Mick Norris]

The third leg of the GP has been moved from Tehran to Tbilisi

http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... ement.html

Jobava replaces Ghaem Maghami, including in Tashkent next week giving neither him nor his opponents much chance to prepare

[Chris Rice]

The third leg of the GP has been moved from Tehran to Tbilisi

http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... ement.html

Jobava replaces Ghaem Maghami, including in Tashkent next week giving neither him nor his opponents much chance to prepare

Georgia seems to be becoming the centre of world chess these days. The issues are unclear to me.

Why was Tehran chosen in the first place? It must have been obvious to anybody that this was going to cause massive problems.

Why has it now been changed? Was it really over GM Ghaem Maghami's almost certain intention to default against Gelfand? I thought Gelfand had no intention of going to Iran in the first place for obvious reasons, had he changed his mind and decided to do so and force the issue with GM Ghaem Maghami?

Or was it some completely different reason? It's been suggested on the TWIC twitter feed that the real reason is that it's because the Fide vice president, Mohammad Jafar Kambouzia, is no longer the president of Iranian Chess Federation. But that still doesn't really clarify anything for me.

Whatever the reasons were Tehran was not an appropriate place to hold such an event at this time, that much seems clear. As for the actual reasons I guess only the FIDE insiders would know.

[John McKenna]

I hope someone will have a stab at answering Chris Rice's very pertinent and thought-provoking questions, immediately above.

At the risk of sounding impertinent I'd just add that if I were soheil_hooshdaran I'd be very disappointed - at the news of Tehran being dropped - but I'm not, so I'm just disappointed.

The Tashkent lineup looks good - Caruana, Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave & Giri, only three Russians - Andreikin, Jackovenko & Karjakin, with Kasimdzhanov, Jobava, Gelfand, Radjabov & Mamedyarov.

[Roger de Coverly]

Why has it now been changed? Was it really over GM Ghaem Maghami's almost certain intention to default against Gelfand? I thought Gelfand had no intention of going to Iran in the first place for obvious reasons, had he changed his mind and decided to do so and force the issue with GM Ghaem Maghami?

Gelfand, Nakamura and Caruana were never scheduled for Tehran, but Gelfand and Maghami would have been scheduled to play in Tashkent and Kanty. Was Maghami instructed to default those games?

[Chris Rice]

That makes sense. I'm not sure whether Ghaem Maghami would have even needed an instruction. If he played Gelfand there would very likely have been reprisals, persecution and even imprisonment in Iran. Its reminiscent of the Sudanese scandal a few days ago. http://susanpolgar.blogspot.ae/2014/10/ ... -over.html

[Roger de Coverly]

Its reminiscent of the Sudanese scandal a few days ago. http://susanpolgar.blogspot.ae/2014/10/ ... -over.html

Isn't there a feature in the standard Swiss pairing software to block particular pairings? Evidently the arbiters in South Africa didn't use it.

[Chris Rice]

It seems to be easy enough to use the "forbidden pairings" protocol in the same way that organisers try and stop father and son being paired together for instance but it needs FIDE approval I would imagine for a FIDE-rated tournament. I've certainly seen such systems used in Russian international tournaments. The problem is though that the tournaments should be fair and thus 'norms' etc could technically be refused under such a system. Clearly for an all-play-all this couldn't be applied anyway and the player benefiting from a Ghaem Maghami default would have a considerable advantage over his opponents given that he is such a strong player.

Doing a little bit of research I found that Ghaem Maghani defaulted in Corsica in 2011 against an Israeli player, FM Ehud Shachar and was disqualified from the tournament for doing so.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... /?page=all

[Mick Norris]

Tashkent info here
http://theweekinchess.com/chessnews/eve ... -prix-2014

[Mick Norris]

Tashkent underway in about 20 mins I think

Giri-Gelfand, Mamedyarov-Andreikin, Nakamura-Jobava, Caruana-Vachier-Lagrave, Kasimdzhanov-Jakovenko, Radjabov-Karjakin

http://tashkent2014.fide.com/

Live games here
http://live.fide.com/tashkent2014/lite.php but no commentry

[MJMcCready]

Pretty unadventurous stuff by Radjubov. I used to play that line, its pretty drawish.

[Chris Rice]

Nice to be able to see at a glance on the live boards how much time the player has taken on each move. 35 years ago I used to see players doing this all the time, I specifically remember Paul Lamford who was (is?) Batsford's technical chess editor, meticulously noting the times down on his scoresheet in his very neat handwriting.

Simon Webb in Chess For Tigers noted how you could use these when you were analysing your games afterwards. I did this for a while and noticed that I would get through the opening quickly but as soon as my opponent played something unexpected I would spend all the time I had gained on the next 2-3 moves, run myself into time trouble and blame that for my defeat. I really need to sort that out.

[Barry Sandercock]

Caruana losing today. Even the opposite colour Bishops won't save him.