David Howell at the Dubai Open

[benedgell]

Not so sure Ivanisevic is winning.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Oh dear, he fell for a perpetual in what might have been a winning position. Would he have gone over 2700 with a win?

[benedgell]

And I jinxed the Ivanisevic game. Shabalov fell apart near the end.

[Tim Harding]

And I jinxed the Ivanisevic game. Shabalov fell apart near the end.

Sorry Benedgell but I don't understand either of your postings.

1) When you posted "not sure Ivanisevic is winning" I had already posted that he had. Shabalov resigned because of mate in 4. Maybe you were writing yours as I was writing mine?

2) You jinxed nothing. We wanted any result but a Shabalov win because Ivanisevic was half a point behind David Howell, so Shabalov losing was fine by me.

Nobody answered my query about whether there was a play-off. so I guess not.
A six-way tie on 7 after nine rounds is somewhat surprising.
On tiebreak if they have one, I suppose Fedoseev would come out first and David second but they probably split the cash.

You have to admire David for going to these middle eastern tournaments (first Jerusalem and now Dubai) with nobody else from Britain, and hardly anyone from western Europe, to lend moral support and share a meal or two.

[Mick Norris]

17th Dubai Chess Open Dubai UAE Mon 6th Apr 2015 - Wed 15th Apr 2015
Leading Final Round 9 Standings:
Rk SNo Name FED Rtg Pts TB1 TB2 TB3
1 19 Solak Dragan TUR 2602 7.0 20684 0.0 55.5
2 1 Howell David W L ENG 2687 7.0 20583 0.0 55.5
3 2 Fedoseev Vladimir RUS 2674 7.0 20556 0.0 53.5
4 11 Istratescu Andrei FRA 2630 7.0 20426 0.0 53.0
5 8 Ivanisevic Ivan SRB 2638 7.0 19971 0.0 48.5
6 9 Safarli Eltaj AZE 2637 7.0 19511 0.0 48.0

[Mick Norris]

Website says

The tournament champion will receive US$12,000 and will have his or her name etched on the His Highness Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Cup. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top 18 placers. There are also special prizes for local and Arab players and for the top women scorers.

[benedgell]

And I jinxed the Ivanisevic game. Shabalov fell apart near the end.

Sorry Benedgell but I don't understand either of your postings.

1) When you posted "not sure Ivanisevic is winning" I had already posted that he had. Shabalov resigned because of mate in 4. Maybe you were writing yours as I was writing mine?

2) You jinxed nothing. We wanted any result but a Shabalov win because Ivanisevic was half a point behind David Howell, so Shabalov losing was fine by me.

Nobody answered my query about whether there was a play-off. so I guess not.
A six-way tie on 7 after nine rounds is somewhat surprising.
On tiebreak if they have one, I suppose Fedoseev would come out first and David second but they probably split the cash.

You have to admire David for going to these middle eastern tournaments (first Jerusalem and now Dubai) with nobody else from Britain, and hardly anyone from western Europe, to lend moral support and share a meal or two.

Hi Tim,

I guess you edited your post at a similar time to my postings (it says your last edit was 17.35, with my posts 17.23 and 17.30). My first post was written when I was watching on Playchess and Shabalov had just taken on h2 (move 47). Maybe I was blindly following Fritz on this, but it didn't think there was much in the position at that point. Within the space of 2 or 3 moves the position had jumped to about +3 or 4 and it was clear Ivanisevic was winning.

[Mick Norris]

Solak wins

[Stewart Reuben]

Most tournaments outside the UK use a tiebreak system to decide placings and therefore money.
Best is:
Playoff. Very time-consuming and difficult with 7 players in the tie.
Personal encounter, obviously impossible with a 7 way tie.
Greater number of wins. Illogical, but helps fulfil the objective of more positive chess.
Average rating of opponents, often discarding the lowest rated opponent. A good system, but highly dependent on the ratings.
Greater number of blacks. A system never used, but quite objective.
More popular though are Bucholz or Sonneborn-Berger. I regard them as appalling because it means the players in the tie have to wait around to find out their position from the results achieved by third parties.

Last year Hastings had a seven way tie. The money and title was shared. It was logical and followed the rules, but unsatisfactory. Gibraltar uses playoff and reduces the number involved in the playoff to four by Ra.

[Keith Arkell]

Yet another tremendous result by my Cheddleton team-mate David Howell.

Stewart, I wish those eminently sensible tie-breaks were used universally when they are needed, but I'm biased because if they were then I'd be World old gits Champion, rather than losing out to a convoluted method which is both extremely random and hard to keep track of during play.

However, in a Swiss System, Open tournament, I think the traditional British treatment is the best - ie David simply came equal first.

[Mick Norris]

I think David's live rating is now 2696

[Mick Norris]

chess.com report

[Paul Dargan]

Dubai Open has always in the past not shared prizes (i.e. your tie-break score significantly affects your cheque) and their preferred tiebreak has normmally been average rating of opponents cut one (as they describe it) i.e. average rating of the highest 8 players you played ... might have been cut 2 some years...

Paul

[AustinElliott]

Hmm. Slightly hard luck on Howell to play a long, long game in the final rd, going all out for the win, and then lose out on the tie-break to a player who apparently drew in minutes via a known move repetition...

[Jonathan Rogers]

David certainly deserves to be 2700 by now; even before now. He has been playing consistently well since last summer, (and has been performing well even when not at his best, as in the British) and he has, I think, broadened his style. (I echo Tim's comments about his brave choice of events too). Well, very soon now, hopefully.