English Chess Forum

Ian Thompson wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:(1) Where the event has more players than the natural limit for a Swiss. A Swiss can handle as many players as you want - this isn't the problem. The problem is having more than one person on 100% at the end.

If accelerated pairings decrease the chances of multiple players tying for first place on a 100% score, doesn't it follow that they increase the chances of multiple players tying for first place on a lower score? Is that an improvement on more than one person scoring 100%? Doesn't it also follow that there are likely to be more players involved in the tie, and that the standard of opposition they've played is likely to vary more than it would with normal pairings? Are either of these desirable?

Subjectively, I think that if > 1 person ends up on 100%, there was never any chance of having an outright winner. If several people tie for 1st equal on a score less than 100%, the people in the tie had the opportunity to win outright. To my mind, the latter is better than the former; remembering that the objective of organising any tournament is for it to have a winner, to find out who the best player in the tournament was.

Ian Thompson wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:(4) Another reason for acceleration could be attracting a sponsor. The more 'big' clashes you have then the greater the number of hits on the website and the more attractive the event becomes to a sponsor. I suspect that given the pairings of an Open are only known the night before, you probably would watch the following day whatever the pairings were. I suspect the names of the players in the tournament are a far bigger attraction, rather than who they actually play.

I would have thought that what a sponsor would want is for the as many players as possible to be in with a realistic chance of winning the tournament for as long as possible. What they wouldn't want is for most of the top players to have played each other several rounds before the end so people would be saying that whichever of them was in the lead at that point was the likely winner of the tournament, unless they slipped up against some lesser player.

I think a sponsor's main aim is getting bums on seats seeing what their advertising. What's likely to deliver that aim? In a standard knockout, more people will watch the Final than the Last 64; and I think it would follow in a Swiss that more people will watch Round 9 than Round 1. So I suppose for that reason, you would want the last round to have several people in contention for the prize before Round 9 starts. How they got there is probably not so relevant. I can see that accelerating the pairings works out who the winner is, and takes people out of contention more quickly.

Amazing - we have an interesting tournament and we have yet another discussion about pairing systems.

To return to the chess, I was rather interested in Anderson-Sengupta. Sengupta presumably has no idea who John Anderson is but I suspect that most English players try to avoid going into long sharp lines against John. Looks to me at move 20 that White is doing rather well.

Given the number of times both Anderson and Sengupta have played at Hastings, Sengupta may well have an idea of who Anderson is.

Thx Jack - didn't realise Sengupta was such a regular visitor.

Bogner-Liang. Liang's game looking difficult, and he is getting short on time.

It was difficult. He has now resigned !

Theo Slade seems to have a nice position after 21 moves against Gormally.

Danny will think 30 minutes extra on the clock will help

Roger de Coverly wrote:

David Shepherd wrote:Why would they lose a rook? 38 .... Bxd5+ looks at worst unclear

Better for Black according to the chessbomb engine.

http://www.chessbomb.com/arena/2014-has ... ton_Mike_P

Did Black overlook that 38. .. Bxd5 was check and thus d7xe8=Q+ not possible as an intermezzo?

That's my case, at any rate - sorry, david!

John Moore wrote:
Danny will think 30 minutes extra on the clock will help.


It did. He won.

Mark Hebden will be upset losing with better position and more time on the clock.

Excellent ideas from Chris Ward today on game. How did Hebden lose ??

Round 4 - Flear v Flear on Board 12 is a rather unfortunate pairing.

That is an unfortunate pairing. Often there is an existing agreement in these cases that if they ever get drawn together to agree a draw. We'll see I guess.

Here are the top pairings for Rd 4

1 GM Zhao, Jun 3.0 CHN 2585 GM Lagarde, Maxime 3.0 FRA 2576
2 IM Galyas, Miklos 2.5 HUN 2428 GM Rodshtein, Maxim 2.5 ISR 2676
3 GM Edouard, Romain 2.5 FRA 2659 IM Hunt, Adam C 2.5 ENG 2437
4 GM Fier, Alexandr 2.5 BRA 2592 GM Vakhidov, Jahongir 2.5 UZB 2502
5 IM Gledura, Benjamin 2.5 HUN 2450 GM Bogner, Sebastian 2.5 SUI 2586
6 GM Sengupta, Deep 2.5 IND 2566 FM Sowray, Peter J 2.5 ENG 2365
7 Anderson, John 2.5 ENG 2180 GM Hawkins, Jonathan 2.5 ENG 2552

Rd 4 live games http://www.hastingschess.com/live-games-1415-iv/

John Moore wrote:Round 4 - Flear v Flear on Board 12 is a rather unfortunate pairing.

Agreed but it would have disadvantaged another player to have broken the pairing which would not have been fair, especially so close to the top of the tournament.

Should be an interesting game. I still remember Glenn's performance in London 1986 GLC tournament.