Tata Steel 10th-28th Jan 2020

[Jacques Parry]

Banning headgear may be racist

What a very silly thing to say

Perhaps Nick means that it might contravene anti-discrimination legislation, because it would affect certain groups more than others. But rules which discriminate in this way are legally justifiable if they are a proportionate way to achieve a legitimate objective - in this case, to prevent cheating.

[Alex Holowczak]

If they're away from the board then you wouldn't think anything of it

On the contrary, you can be suspicious if your opponent is absent. That's particularly the case at some of the 4NCL venues when there's an area where support teams can lurk. Was that not the problem with the Smart Watch in Telford that the support team were analysing the game in the lobby and communicating the result of the analysis to the player?

People keep making different, almost random guesses about the Telford case and what actually happened, and I'm still not going to tell anyone what actually happened, because I can't.

[Alex Holowczak]

I think in certain areas the anti-cheating has gone too far. But if the penalties were lifetime bans that will help.

I am not sure how sentence 1 and sentence 2 are logically consistent, but in any case, CAS don't do lifetime bans so that's never going to happen.

[NickFaulks]

If we are to be barred from wearing watches, I trust this will only happen in venues with visible and accurate clocks.

I agree. There is no reason to ask why people sometimes like to know the time, because they just do.

When the AC regulations for the last Olympiad appeared, I made precisely this point to ACC. I got back a quick and polite reply, saying that since I was neither a player nor a captain my comment was "not receivable". Sure enough, this issue did arise in the first round and was then fixed.

[Joseph Conlon]

Playing my first chess tournament for a decade last September, I was unsure whether my cheap low-tech £20 digital watch would be in contravention of whatever the new tournament rules were. So I decided to take it off in advance and - poetic justice? - the strap duly broke.

But even an absolute ban on wristwatches does not seem, depending on the level of a tournament, disproportionate. Smart technology is to chess what drugs were to athletics, in some ways even more so.

[Roger de Coverly]

Smart technology is to chess what drugs were to athletics, in some ways even more so.

It isn't though, because it's totally legal to use performance enhancing devices outside of competition. A clockwork powered watch isn't a smart device, and a ban makes no sense unless it's security theatre for the sake of it.

[Jacques Parry]

If we are to be barred from wearing watches, I trust this will only happen in venues with visible and accurate clocks.

I agree. There is no reason to ask why people sometimes like to know the time, because they just do.

I also agree, and I'll suggest a reason. Sometimes I try to time my resignation, or my draw offer, in such a way as to avoid a long wait for the next train home.

[JustinHorton]

I once had to win a game by a certain time when I had a train booked from Lleida to Sahagùn, which I achieved with about ten to fifteen minutes to spare...

[Mick Norris]

Pete Doggers preview

2019 was a bad year for Tata Steel Netherlands. With steel production declining worldwide, and even more so in Europe, the Indian multinational corporation announced a restructuring measure in November that involved cutting nearly 3,000 jobs across its European operations. For the Dutch division, 1,600 to 1,700 jobs from a total of 9,000 might disappear.

In this light, the chess fans should count their blessings that a 82nd edition is coming up

[David Sedgwick]

2019 was a bad year for Tata Steel Netherlands. With steel production declining worldwide, and even more so in Europe, the Indian multinational corporation announced a restructuring measure in November that involved cutting nearly 3,000 jobs across its European operations. For the Dutch division, 1,600 to 1,700 jobs from a total of 9,000 might disappear.

In this light, the chess fans should count their blessings that a 82nd edition is coming up

Very much so.

On a smaller scale, I remember the Owens Corning tournaments in Wrexham in the 1990s. Five years in, demand for their products was dropping and they were making employees redundant at all levels. The publicity which they were getting from the sponsorship was mostly negative: "Why are they wasting money on a chess tournament?"

Not surprisingly, they didn't renew.

[JustinHorton]

Out of interest, why (according to Chessbomb) is kick-off half an hour later for round five?

[Richard Bates]

Out of interest, why (according to Chessbomb) is kick-off half an hour later for round five?

Different venue

[Mick Norris]

Round 5 is at the Phillips Stadium home of PSV Eindhoven

I think they normally start later at the away days presumably because of travelling time to the venue

[Leonard Barden]

Carlsen going for the record...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/ ... ds-at-wijk

[Mick Norris]

Pairings

Round 1 - Saturday the 11th

Xiong, Jeffery - Dubov, Daniil
Van Foreest, Jorden - Yu, Yangyi
Carlsen, Magnus - Giri, Anish
Caruana, Fabiano - So, Wesley
Anand, Viswanathan - Artemiev, Vladislav
Vitiugov, Nikita - Duda, Jan-Krzysztof
Firouzja, Alireza - Kovalev, Vladislav