Hastings 28 Dec 2017 - 7 Jan 2018

[E Michael White]

Increments are a mixed blessing for arbiters.

A five second increment gives the best of both worlds.

Using increments means that the arbiter can expect more occasions with several boards simultaneously having one or both players short of time, meaning less than say 3-5 minutes on their clocks. That is when mistakes are likely to be made and most incidents happen.

[David Shepherd]

Congratulations to Adam Taylor who has just drawn.

[Alex McFarlane]

Adam Taylor draws!!

[Alistair Campbell]

Yes 2430 or above will do.

So if he doesn't draw with Boggy he doesn't get a norm? Seems a bit harsh after such a fantastic performance!

FWIW I agreed the calculations. It was sufficiently close that had they used November ratings rather than December ratings, I suspect he would just have needed to turn up for the Norm.

Congratulations to Adam Taylor who has just drawn.

Happily, my comment above would appear no longer relevant.

[LawrenceCooper]

Adam Taylor draws!!

[John Upham]

The game Stanisz - Murphy may well be most exciting of the final round.

Anyone seen 12 Rd4 previously ?

[ThomasThorpe]

Happily Yiping Lou also drew and has achieved a GM norm and =1st - not a bad tournament!

[Jonathan Rogers]

All very good news.

But, er, why was it thought to be a potential obstacle that Adam had to draw with Boggy?!

[David Shepherd]

If you look at Bogdan's win percentage it is almost identical to Magnus Carlsen's, what is amazing is that he has only lost 63 out of 1903 games.

[Nick Burrows]

Therefore unless i am overlooking something, if he only got the invites he would be a world championship candidate..

[David Shepherd]

http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo199707e.html shows how high he was in 1997 (66=) so not so far off that sort of level, my point was that although he does draw many games he also wins many games - what is lacking is the losses.

[Jonathan Rogers]

There is still something missing here, really - why someone with such a profile is just seemingly sliding down the list all the time?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Because he draws loads of games with lower rated players?

[Jonathan Rogers]

Because he draws loads of games with lower rated players?

And often very quickly too.

Thus my original post.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Because he draws loads of games with lower rated players?"

I played him in a league game a couple of years ago and he castled opposite sides and hurled all his pawns and pieces at my king, so I nearly lost before the coffee arrived. It wasn't FIDE-rated of course, or maybe I was so weak, he decided to have fun. But he can definitely attack...