London Chess Classic 2017

[Jonathan Rogers]

James Jackson's 5/7 includes wins over Peter Wells, a French 2480, and draws with Dan Fernandez and Iturrizaga (2650+), the latter of whom he was beating. In fact he has only played two players under 2400, no doubt a sharp contrast to very many others on 5/7!

[JustinHorton]

I'm less bothered by the draws than I am about the kick-off time bouncing around.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Oh, when is it today then?

[Roger de Coverly]

Oh, when is it today then?

It's still 4pm today, then switches to 2pm for Saturday and Sunday and midday on Monday.

The FIDE Open remains at 4:30 pm both today and tomorrow.

The FIDE Open start time is determined by the use of the large hall during the week for CSC invited schools.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

The schedule is:

1 - Friday 1 December - 14:00
rest day - Saturday 2 December
2 - Sunday 3 December - 14:00
3 - Monday 4 December - 16:00
4 - Tuesday 5 December - 16:00
5 - Wednesday 6 December - 16:00
rest day - Thursday 7 December
6 - Friday 8 December - 16:00
7 - Saturday 9 December - 14:00
8 - Sunday 10 December - 14:00
9 - Monday 11 December - 12:00

The bouncing around not only disturbs the players, but online viewers and spectators have to adjust too.

[MartinCarpenter]

That seems a bit random The first (different venue etc) and final rounds obviously make sense but the 2pm starts on Weekends perhaps less so.
(Although I imagine there are good reasons behind it all!).

[JustinHorton]

Oh as I recall there's very good reasons, it's to provide friendlier session times according to whether it's the weekend or the working week. Probably a good idea, to be honest: it just catches me out a bit because it's not the normal arrangement, and I have an irregular work pattern which means I don't always have it in my head that it's "working week" or "weekend".

[Alex Holowczak]

There are schools events going on in the Auditorium until about 2pm on each of Monday to Friday; and in the East Hall until about 3:30pm. The Monday to Friday rounds start at 4pm to allow for the room to be set up. This isn't an issue in Round 1, which was at Google. Nor is it an issue at the weekend. There are no school events on the final Monday either.

The East Hall events start at 4:30pm during the week principally to allow the arbiters enough time after the school events finish to tidy everything up, allow for the cleaners to go around, and so on. We have to put out the board numbers and clocks afresh, and check all the boards are correctly set up (e.g. the correct way around, the K and Q on the right squares). We can normally complete that by about 4pm, when most of the players begin arriving. Over the years, the staff who run the schools events have been very helpful in terms of re-setting the room at the end of them, which has helped tremendously.

Justin is right that there are very good reasons - specifically, the schedule of the Classic and Festival events fit around the school events, and not the other way around.

[MartinCarpenter]

That I wouldn't have guessed, but its a nice thing

[LawrenceCooper]

At risk of jinxing it the games today seem to have a bit more life than in previous rounds.

[LawrenceCooper]

At risk of jinxing it the games today seem to have a bit more life than in previous rounds.

Right on cue Anand-Karjakin construct a repetition leading to a draw in 20 moves

[JustinHorton]

0:00 in So-Aronian, but I wouldn't be at all surprised by a result.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Carlsen pulled off a great escape there.

[Brian Towers]

Glancing briefly over at the FIDE Open side of things, does anybody know which players may be on track for a norm?

With 8 rounds gone looks like -

GM Norms
Sarin Nihal (IND, TPR 2617)

IM Norms
James Jackson (ENG, 2498)
Or Globus (ISR, 2477)
Sehyun Kwon (KOR 2462)

[Richard Bates]

Glancing briefly over at the FIDE Open side of things, does anybody know which players may be on track for a norm?

With 8 rounds gone looks like -

GM Norms
Sarin Nihal (IND, TPR 2617)

IM Norms
James Jackson (ENG, 2498)
Or Globus (ISR, 2477)
Sehyun Kwon (KOR 2462)

Vo Thi Kim Phung has a 2640 performance