English Chess Forum

Round 3 today in this huge open where there are 30 odd live games. I noticed that Isaac Sanders is the sole English entrant although there are a bunch of Scots headed by Alan Tate and Carl Strugnell from Wales. Isaac has White today against guess who - Bogdan Lalic. Fancy going all the way to the Czech Republic and playing Bogdan!

Could be better than a half-point bye, provided Bogdan is in the mood.

Perhaps not a great surprise - quick draw.

Pardubice seems to have dropped off the Forum radar, undeservedly so.

Isaac Sanders has drawn with all four grandmaster opponents he has met and, despite having his first defeat of the tournament in yesterday's eighth round, has scored 4.5/8 against a high-class field and can achieve his second IM norm if he draws in this afternoon's final round, which can be followed live (3pm BST start) on www.chessbomb.com.

FM SANDERS Isaac B 2338 ENG Rp:2440 Pts. 4.5
1 251 GALICEK Stanislav 2127 CZE 3.5 w 1
2 24 GM RAZNIKOV Danny 2500 ISR 6.0 s ½
3 28 GM LALIC Bogdan 2480 CRO 5.0 w ½
4 18 GM KRYAKVIN Dmitry 2529 RUS 5.5 s ½
5 34 IM NARAYANAN Srinath 2464 IND 5.5 w ½
6 32 GM NEUMAN Petr 2470 CZE 5.0 s ½
7 231 WFM MITUROVA Magdalena 2149CZE 4.0 w 1
8 41 IM SIMACEK Pavel 2454 CZE 5.5 w 0
9 25 IM POETSCH Hagen 2498 GER 4.5 s

Sadly he lost and so missed out on a norm, albeit still a very good performance. http://chess-results.com/tnr180752.aspx ... =30&wi=984

It was not so clear to me that Isaac only needed a draw in the last round. His TPR was 2440 after round eight, so surely he needed to play someone higher than 2498 in the last round to be able to draw? (His lowest rated opponent was 2127 and boosting that to 2150 doesn't quite make the difference, or at least so I thought).

Still, the norms will follow, even though (to their great credit) Isaac and his father do not seek out "easy" norm events, and rather look for the toughest challenges.

Be careful with the mathematics there; TPR is a nonlinear system, so you can't get a TPR by averaging the nine individual TPRs of the games.

(The number to which ratings can be boosted is 2050, by the way.)