22th European Team Chess Championship 2019

[Alex Holowczak]

If I've worked it out correctly - and I've rushed it rather - I think in Round 9 we'll see: Ukraine v Croatia, Russia v Poland, Germany v England.

Armenia v Greece?

Yes

Pairings have been published: http://chess-results.com/tnr434677.aspx ... ES&flag=30

Still got it.

[Mick Norris]

What time UK time do the games start tomorrow? The organisers seem to have missed the obvious clash (G Man & Warks travelling to Newcastle under Lyme for the U160 match, I mean, not the rugby)

European Team Championships: 0700 (0715 with the 15 minute time delay)

England v South Africa - Rugby: 0900

Greater Manchester U160 v Warwickshire U160: Please advise, Mick.

Well, kick off is 1 pm, but I probably have to leave home about 10:30 am

[David Sedgwick]

Just realised - what on earth is tiebreak 2 and what would happen if, for instance, England were to draw 2-2 and Armenia win 4-0.

It's the Sonnenborn-Berger Olympiad Khanty-Mansiysk without lowest result tie-break. What don't you understand about that?

In a bid to be rather more helpful...

Basically, it's the sum of (matchpoints x gamepoints you scored against them) for all of your opponents, not including the team that's lowest in the ranking list.

So if you played a team on 12 MP, and you beat them 4-0, then you score 48 to your tie-break. If you played a team on 6 MP and you lost 1-3, then you get 6 to your tie-break. Repeat this for all your opponents, except the one that's last in the ranking, and that's your tie-break score. There are further complexities for unplayed games, such as forfeits and byes.

In a previous Olympiad, Malcolm asked me to give him a piece of paper with what he needed to keep track of to help work out the tie-break in Round 11. I presented him at breakfast that morning with a notebook containing everything. I suspect the notebook never made it into the playing area.

TAP is investigating the tie-breaks at the Olympiad in 2020. Our final proposal is likely to see this tie-break no longer in operation, and replaced with something that can actually be concisely explained and followed; rather than some arbitrary maths. We'll see what happens.

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Could you have a stab at answering the two key questions:

1. If Ukraine and Russia both win, could Russia conceivably overtake Ukraine on tiebreak?

2. If England draw with Germany and Armenia beat Greece, which of England and Armenia is more likely to finish third?

[LawrenceCooper]

Confirmed pairings:

Team pairings
Round 9 on 2019/11/02 at 11:00
No. SNo Team Team MP Res. : Res. MP Team Team SNo
1 8 UKR Ukraine 13 : 11 Croatia CRO 15
2 1 RUS Russia 13 : 10 Poland POL 3
3 9 GER Germany 11 : 12 England ENG 2
4 5 ARM Armenia 11 : 10 Greece GRE 18

[Alex Holowczak]

l see what happens.Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Could you have a stab at answering the two key questions:

1. If Ukraine and Russia both win, could Russia conceivably overtake Ukraine on tiebreak?

2. If England draw with Germany and Armenia beat Greece, which of England and Armenia is more likely to finish third?

1. If Ukraine win, Russia win 4-0, and every other match is a 2-2 draw, Ukraine still come out ahead, 239 - 235.5. If I vary the rest of the scores, I'm struggling to find a scenario where Russia comes out on top. A 19-point lead on that tie-break is tough to overturn in one round in a long tournament.

2. The key match there is likely to be France v Czech Republic. The Czechs are the highest-ranked non-mutual opponent, so far as I can see. If the Czechs beat the French, then it is very close between England and Armenia. A drawn match or a French win, and England are more likely to finish 3rd.

As an aside, the proposals we put are likely to include Gamepoints followed by Direct Encounter. Given England beat Armenia 2.5-1.5, this would mean that a tie on gamepoints would be good enough for us. So we'd know that if England drew 2-2, then Armenia would have to win 3-1. It would be a lot simpler!

[John Moore]

Thanks Alex. I wish I'd realised it was so simple.

[NickFaulks]

Advantage Ukraine, then.

[Alex Holowczak]

One scenario: It's not impossible that Poland beats Russia, they are seeded 3, Russia are seeded 1. If that happens, and England draw and Armenia win, then it's a lucky dip as to which two of the three get the medals if the Czechs win.

[JustinHorton]

Tiebreak:

match points of each points, excluding the opponent who scored the lowest number of match points, multiplied by
the number of board points scored against each opponent respectively.

This doesn't quite makes sense, does it?

Anyway, none of your knowing what you have to do when the last round starts then

[MartinCarpenter]

There's a typo of points for opponent (the second points). Then its really quite a clear way to describe it I think?

Might need to emphasise that it is the match point each opponent achieves after the final round. I did briefly think it might mean match points in the round you played them - you could calculate that as you went of course but obviously nonsensical.

[David Sedgwick]

Will be interesting to see whether [Svane] plays against us tomorrow.

Presumably, Svane will be dropped and Germany will play their top 4 who are a fairly solid looking outfit.

Wrong, John. We get Jones v Svane as compensation for not getting Dubov v Jones.

[LawrenceCooper]

Board Pairings
Round 9 on 2019/11/02 at 11:00
Bo. 8 Ukraine Rtg - 15 Croatia Rtg 0 : 0
1.1 GM Ivanchuk, Vassily 2686 - GM Saric, Ivan 2667
1.2 GM Volokitin, Andrei 2627 - GM Bosiocic, Marin 2619
1.3 GM Moiseenko, Alexander 2635 - GM Stevic, Hrvoje 2570
1.4 GM Onischuk, Vladimir 2616 - GM Brkic, Ante 2600

Bo. 1 Russia Rtg - 3 Poland Rtg 0 : 0
2.1 GM Andreikin, Dmitry 2741 - GM Duda, Jan-Krzysztof 2734
2.2 GM Vitiugov, Nikita 2732 - GM Wojtaszek, Radoslaw 2748
2.3 GM Alekseenko, Kirill 2674 - GM Piorun, Kacper 2643
2.4 GM Dubov, Daniil 2699 - GM Dragun, Kamil 2584

Bo. 9 Germany Rtg - 2 England Rtg 0 : 0
3.1 GM Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter 2656 - GM Adams, Michael 2694
3.2 GM Bluebaum, Matthias 2643 - GM Mcshane, Luke J 2682
3.3 GM Fridman, Daniel 2637 - GM Howell, David W L 2694
3.4 GM Svane, Rasmus 2592 - GM Jones, Gawain C B 2688

Bo. 5 Armenia Rtg - 18 Greece Rtg 0 : 0
4.1 GM Aronian, Levon 2758 - GM Papaioannou, Ioannis 2645
4.2 GM Sargissian, Gabriel 2690 - GM Mastrovasilis, Dimitrios 2596
4.3 GM Melkumyan, Hrant 2650 - GM Banikas, Hristos 2597
4.4 GM Pashikian, Arman 2599 - GM Mastrovasilis, Athanasios 2521

Bo. 16 Slovakia Rtg - 24 England Rtg 0 : 0
12.1 IM Repkova, Eva 2315 - IM Houska, Jovanka 2430
12.2 IM Hagarova, Zuzana 2295 - WGM Toma, Katarzyna 2272
12.3 WGM Movsesian, Julia 2307 - WIM Lauterbach, Ingrid 2078
12.4 WGM Cibickova, Zuzana 2258 - WFM Longson, Sarah N 2073

[JustinHorton]

Gawain looking a little awkward to me in the game you'd want England to really push in, though it seems that Svane has been thinking more than twenty minutes on move 22, unless there's a glitch.

[JustinHorton]

David making good progress though. Queens off in both the top two games.

[JustinHorton]

I'd managed to miss that Luke is a pawn down for no obvious compensation.