Zurich 12-15 February 2016

[Mick Norris]

TWIC with results of initial blitz tournament

Pairings for Rapid

[Steven DuCharme]

anand 1 aronian 0 in under 20 moves !!!

[NickFaulks]

anand 1 aronian 0 in under 20 moves !!!

Shambles. If this is the first attempt to show that G/40+10" can produce games of close to classical quality, it hasn't started very well.

[Stewart Reuben]

Surely it has worked out excellently, showing that rapidplay produces games inferior to standardplay.
People should experiment with different rates of play. Otherwise we would still be using 40 moves in 150 minutes and 16 moves per hour thereafter with adjournment after 5 hours. That is a truly Classical rate of play. 40 in 90 + 30 minutes + 30 seconds from the first has ben shown to produce games of excellent quality. But there had to be experimentation.

[NickFaulks]

Surely it has worked out excellently, showing that rapidplay produces games inferior to standardplay.

In our view, perhaps, but the Zurich organisers have spent a great deal of money on this event, and have been loud in their claims that it would produce high quality chess which deserved to be rated pari passu with full length games. If they know anything about the game they cannot be pleased so far.

[Stewart Reuben]

We could have a very interesting discussion on how to achieve the maximum number of high quality games.
It might be that this would be achieved playing blitz. Of course, many games would be rubbish, but some would be of high quality.
Then also you would have to define your terms. Some games have very few errors, but are boring draws.
You could rate all games played equally. Blitz, Rapidplay, Standard, 30 moves in 30 minutes and so on. The players wouldn't like that.

The London Chess Association had its own rating system. Adjudicated counted 1. Quickplay fiish 2. Long play (that would have been adjournments) 3. It worked well enough.

[Barry Sandercock]

Nakamura- Kramnik. Interesting ending, RPP v. NPPP (move 60 )

[Barry Sandercock]

Drawn. Move 72.

[Mick Norris]

Any more views on the quality of the games?

Final round of rapidplay today:
Viswanathan Anand (3) - Vladimir Kramnik (2.5)
Levon Aronian (2) - Hikaru Nakamura (2.5)
Anish Giri (1) - Alexei Shirov (1)

[Ray Sayers]

They are rapid play games. So they have the quality of rapid play games.
I think that just about covers it?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Indeed, so why are some people trying to push this as the "new classical"?

[LawrenceCooper]

Any more views on the quality of the games?

Final round of rapidplay today:
Viswanathan Anand (3) - Vladimir Kramnik (2.5)
Levon Aronian (2) - Hikaru Nakamura (2.5)
Anish Giri (1) - Alexei Shirov (1)

Aronian made an oversight that wouldn't have happened at a slower time limit but nothing else happened in the three games I've glanced at today.

[Angus French]

Alex Colovic isn't too keen on the format.

[LawrenceCooper]

1= Nakamura, Hikaru 10½/15 2787
1= Anand, Viswanathan 10½/15 2784
3 Kramnik, Vladimir 9½/15 2801
4= Giri, Anish 5½/15 2798
4= Aronian, Levon 5½/15 2792
6 Shirov, Alexei 3½/15 2684

Nakamura escaping with a draw against Anand in the penultimate round allowed him to catch up with a last round win and force a tie which probably means some sort of play-off.

[NickFaulks]

Website talks about SB, aka random.

Why not just toss a coin, so much simpler?