English Chess Forum

Chessbase reports...

http://en.chessbase.com/post/hastings-c ... en-way-tie

First picture is captioned, "The competition has long been a proving ground for young British talent"

Without wishing to be unkind, I assume that does not refer to Mike Gunn!

As the other in the foreground is Dutch, the comment must refer to Mike!!

Jonathan Rogers wrote:Damn it, I had just ordered a T-shirt "Radovanovic - Hastings Champion 2014"

How fitting, since he *was* the champion! Of course, shared with 6 other players.

A few questions:
1. What was the tiebreak used to define the final standing and possibly the Golombek Trophy? Why was it never published after the tournament which tiebreak was used?
2. Why wasn't that tiebreak system specified in the tournament regulations?
3. Why was it not specified how many rounds the accelerated pairing was applied? Was it decided ad-hoc before a round if the pairing would still be accelerated?
4. The prizes were £2000, £1200, £750, £500, £350, £250, £200 but they were shared equally in case of equal points as it happened here, resulting in £750 for the 7-way tie. Why was it not informed that prizes would be shared equally for players on the same score in the tournament details on the web site. Is that because it is "same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie" or is that considered too much information for the players?
5. What would have happened with the last prize of £200 if there had only been 6 players on 6½ points, it would have been shared equally between places 7-18 of 6 points, so around £16½ per player?

Jesper Norgaard wrote:1. What was the tiebreak used to define the final standing and possibly the Golombek Trophy? Why was it never published after the tournament which tiebreak was used?

No tie break is used. This was stated in the programme which was/is on the website.

Jesper Norgaard wrote:2. Why wasn't that tiebreak system specified in the tournament regulations?

Because there isn't one. (See above)

Jesper Norgaard wrote:3. Why was it not specified how many rounds the accelerated pairing was applied? Was it decided ad-hoc before a round if the pairing would still be accelerated?

Where accelerated pairings are used in Britain the standard is to apply it for three rounds. This figure was known before the tournament.

Jesper Norgaard wrote:5. What would have happened with the last prize of £200 if there had only been 6 players on 6½ points, it would have been shared equally between places 7-18 of 6 points, so around £16½ per player?

Correct.

With regard to the lack of/difficulty in finding information on the website please contact the organisers. I'm sure they will consider your comments on board for future years.

Thanks, Alex, I will have to retract some of my criticism. I just didn't expect I had to jump from "Prize Fund" down below an obituary and "prices for fish and chips" to find the "General Rules and Notices".

In fact it says that "Where players finish equal, cash prizes will be shared."

Also "If needed to decide the places in the British Championship, tie-break will be (a) Sum of Progressive Scores and, if still necessary (b) Sum of Opponents Scores, (c) the results between players involved in the tie, provided that they have all played each other."

This takes care of 1, 2 and 4, while 5 is a more a question of a general character rather than criticism. I assume this tiebreak was used both to produce the final standing, and more importantly, to award the Golombek Trophy.

That leaves (3) the specification of that accelerated pairing will be used, and for 3 rounds. It seems to me both of these data points would be relevant for players to decide whether to participate or not, especially in view of the negative view of accelerated pairings by Nigel Short and others on this site. It doesn't seem to be part of the published information. I don't know why this would be known beforehand, especially the 3 round specification?

Alex McFarlane wrote:

Jesper Norgaard wrote:1. What was the tiebreak used to define the final standing and possibly the Golombek Trophy? Why was it never published after the tournament which tiebreak was used?

No tie break is used. This was stated in the programme which was/is on the website.

That is not quite accurate (See above)

Alex McFarlane wrote:

Jesper Norgaard wrote:3. Why was it not specified how many rounds the accelerated pairing was applied? Was it decided ad-hoc before a round if the pairing would still be accelerated?

Where accelerated pairings are used in Britain the standard is to apply it for three rounds. This figure was known before the tournament.

With regard to the lack of/difficulty in finding information on the website please contact the organisers. I'm sure they will consider your comments on board for future years.

It seems that the only lack is mentioning the accelerated pairing and the number of rounds which would be useful to include next year.

Jumping a bit in the focus, the use of tiebreak criteria 1.Progressive 2. Buchholz 3.Direct Encounter does seem a good choice in my (very subjective) opinion. It might lead to undecided ties in the order of 0.5% - 1.5%, and if that happens for the Golombek Trophy, a new tie would have to be defined on the spot I assume. One option would be an extra criteria 4.Berger (or Sonneborn-Berger, or Neustadtl). That would diminish that chance. I have tournaments that are not resolved for all ties with tiebreaks (1/2/3). Indeed Direct Encounter is seldom resolving ties in Swiss tournaments with more than 30 participants except for an outright tournament winner (where there would only be 2 in the highest score group).

The only question is if applying Progressive tiebreak when accelerated pairing is used really makes sense, especially if comparing the leading players in Q1 (quartile 1) and Q3 which are expected to be near 3/3 but otherwise cannot be compared at all between the groups. In other words scoring 3/3 from Q3 is quite different than scoring 3/3 from Q1. Here the Buchholz probably makes more sense since supposedly the opponents of Q1 players are expected to score more than the opponents of Q3 players, in the last rounds 4-9, in which case the problem will be corrected towards the end of the tournament. Progressive will not correct this problem of comparability.

If someone has a collection of Swiss tournaments with accelerated pairing, that I could use, I could investigate if the predictiveness of Progressive tiebreak is in fact diminishing compared to e.g. Buchholz, as expected from my arguments above.

The Acceleration is in the Congress details section on the website and, I'm sure, on the entry form though the number of rounds to which it will be applied probably isn't.

HASTINGS MASTERS
A nine round accelerated Swiss Pairing tournament.

The tie-break method for the British Championship places is determined by the ECF.

Alex McFarlane wrote:The Acceleration is in the Congress details section on the website and, I'm sure, on the entry form though the number of rounds to which it will be applied probably isn't.

HASTINGS MASTERS
A nine round accelerated Swiss Pairing tournament.

Ah yes, got it. So you say it was known in advance it would be 3 rounds of acceleration? Based on what?

As a matter of standard practice in UK chess, monetary prizes are almost always shared. This is a very long standing practice, but if you needed a rationalisation, it would be that players don't select their opponents. If you have a physical trophy or a qualification for another event, you need some form of tie break. The rule for awarding the British Championship places has already been discussed. Recent practice has been that the ECF have ignored the tie break and offered places to all those on the same score. I rather suspect the Golombek Trophy is regarded as shared, although I don't know who would take physical possession of it. Perhaps it never leaves Hastings. The British Championship Trophy in recent years has stayed in the possession of the ECF. Whilst there's usually a play off in event of a tie, there wouldn't have been in 2013 and won't be in 2014.

Hastings attracts many of the same players, year in, year out, so they are aware it will most likely be accelerated. The British Championship abandoned acceleration this year, but as an event requiring qualification it doesn't have quite the same range of ratings from top to bottom. As is usual with acceleration, the effect at Hastings was to postpone round 1 mismatches to round 4. Some arbiters like acceleration because it gives them an excuse to play with pairing cards and have a debate rather than click an icon.

Roger de Coverly wrote:I rather suspect the Golombek Trophy is regarded as shared, although I don't know who would take physical possession of it. Perhaps it never leaves Hastings.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it never leaves Hastings, but it certainly doesn't normally do so and won't have done this time.

RdC>As is usual with acceleration, the effect at Hastings was to postpone round 1 mismatches to round 4.<

This year there were mismatches aplenty in round 3 as the following extract shows -


Pairings round 3 (Monday, 30 December 2013)
Bd.
2 GM Gormally, Daniel W 2.0 ENG 2500 Haria, Ravi 2.0 ENG 2160 1-0
4 Stonehouse, Tom H 2.0 ENG 1772 GM Mchedlishvili, Mikheil 1.5 GEO 2649 0-1
5 GM Tomczak, Jacek 1.5 POL 2569 Mueller, Constantin 2.0 GER 2047 1-0
13 GM Hebden, Mark L 1.0 ENG 2560 FM Cafferty, Bernard 1.5 ENG 2081 1-0
14 GM Pert, Nicholas 1.0 ENG 2554 Taylor, Adam C 1.5 ENG 2025 1-0
15 IM Sarkar, Justin 1.0 USA 2425 Halfhide, Sebastian 1.5 NED 1916 1-0
16 IM Milliet, Sophie 1.0 FRA 2387 Brewer, Callum D 1.5 ENG 1693 ½-½
20 FM Sowray, Peter J 1.0 ENG 2326 Mitchell, Robert 0.0 NZL 1674 1-0
34 Flynn, David 0.5 ENG 1932 Mu, Ke 0.5 CHN 2302 0-1
38 Anderson, John 0.5 ENG 2195 Clayton, Tristan 0.5 ENG 1832 1-0
39 WIM Atkins, Rita 0.5 ENG 2176 McKenna, John R 0.5 ENG 1735 1-0
40 Gunn, Michael J 0.5 ENG 1727 WFM Chlost, Marlena 0.5 POL 2167 0-1
41 Bianco, Valerio 0.5 ITA 2151 French, Max 0.5 ENG 1718 1-0
42 Dean, Michael 0.5 ENG 1597 Degro, Heiko 0.5 GER 2060 0-1
43 Pettersen, Joar Gullestad 0.5 NOR 2013 Fell, Colin C 0.5 ENG 1672 * 1-0
44 FM Strugnell, Carl 0.0 FRA 2291 Macrae, James S 0.0 SCO 1736 1-0
45 FM Croad, Nicolas 0.0 NZL 2272 Shierlaw, Hamish 0.0 ENG 1605 1-0

Like to add my thanks to Carl & Co. for the excellent live coverage & all the organising team at Hastings.
I played half of my 8 games (+2,-2) on the low live boards and I think that it is very inclusive.
Of course I came in for a bit of stick from a couple of my Crystal Palace (not Chrystal Palace - as a noted journalist wrote in another thread) teammates about the live games I lost and should have lost.