English Chess Forum

Good luck Luke

Pete Doggers round 3 report has analysis of Luke's win, and his round 4 report also features a Luke win

Caruana said: "Playing Luke is always fun. I’ve played him very rarely, but on the few occasions that we have played, they have been fun games."

Ended up with 6 defaults and G Man won 12.5 - 3.5

It's the only method of the four where playing extra chess games can make you less likely to qualify. Is there a rule in place which says players qualifying by rating have to have played in two of the World Cup, Grand Prix and the Grand Swiss? Yes which is why those like Giri and MVL can miss IOM h...

Can't blame Giri, he's just playing the system. It's a rules problem which allows a player a better chance of qualification by not playing chess. Hopefully FIDE will sort that out before the next cycle. Do you think so? FIDE have had opportunities to improve the qualifying cycle and not taken them ...

Well, I was looking forward to playing against a new county, Derbyshire, at a new venue, Buxton, tomorrow for the U160, but have now been stood down as Derbys are unfortunately defaulting 5 boards Shame as it is good to see a new county in the U160s, and hopefully it is only the early season match f...

Ian is right that Nigel was on the reserve list

I suppose likely round 3 before we start to see contenders playing each other, so nice to have some local interest too. The revised wildcard rules mean that there is unlikely to be anyone really unexpected qualifying through that route. But my guess is we will see quite a few players outside the to...

English pairings

All 8 play a GM, as does Keith Allen (Irish registered IoM resident)

The paper was written to reflect the fact that many people would be reading the paper for the first time on or only shortly before the day of the Council meeting and so to reflect the position as it was expected to be (and indeed will be) as at the day of the Council meeting. The intention was to h...

You could probably knock together a system which started with the World Cup in the summer to give 2 (or more) qualifiers, then had an Interzonal like IoM in October providing a few more (but with no participation of the world champion or anyone already qualified for the Candidates), scrap the averag...

I guess the 1990 interzonal is the main historical rival. It was also a candidates qualifier, but for 11 places rather than just one. It had great strength in depth, and didn't have the long wildcard tail which will be present in Douglas. Of course rating numbers were much lower then, but in terms ...

Claimed to be the "strongest Swiss ever" even after the withdrawal of Giri and Lenier D-P. I wonder if there is any way of "scientifically" testing this claim? I guess the 1990 interzonal is the main historical rival. It was also a candidates qualifier, but for 11 places rather than just one. It ha...

I hope so

Possibly

Radjabov wins the first blitz game, with black, after drawing the two rapids and two 10 minute games

MVL wins both games to finish 3rd