English Chess Forum

Is it too soon to speculate about how far Howell might go? What level do you have to reach to start getting invites to the elite events? I presume you have to make it into at least the top 50-ish for that. Currently 44 players on the 2700 live list. Am also trying to work out how many in the 2700 list are younger than Howell (currently 24): I make it six players: Caruana, Giri, So, Ding Liren, Yu Yangyi and Wei Yi (the only teenager). The 2700 live site tweeted that Howell is #51 in the world and gives his live rating as 2695.5.

Nice pictorial report:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/dragan-sol ... dubai-open

The setting for board 1 is quite intimidating. Just one board up on a stage.

There is a quote from Howell in response to the following question:

Q: "What one quality, according to you, is the most important to become a world-class GM?”
A: “The talent to persevere.”

Does not the way in which board 1 was staged to some extent transgress the Tournament Rules? They are the same for both players, but not the same for all the players in the tournament. So David had a minor advantage after round 1 as his opponents had not had the same experience. In round 8 he had a minor disadvantage. At Wimbledon they try to avoid this by staging a match for all the late stage players on the Centre Court.

We have been trying to put together a 6 game match for David Howell againt a strong opponent, in the same way as we arranged for Gawain Jones against Romain Edouard in December. The purpose of this is to get him the experience of playing an elite match. So far it has not been possible.