Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017

[JustinHorton]

Either in this or in Wijk Aan Zee.

[Brian Towers]

What on earth is going on in the Hou Yifan game?

The commentators said they thought it was a protest against the pairings but totally out of character.

Specifically that she received 7 pairings out of 10 against women. She has a point, although presumably that is just what the computer threw up? If it's not reproducible then she has a strong case.

[Paul Dargan]

What is the story with Hou Yifan - clearly she was making some kind of protest for 1.g4 2.f3 and losing with White in 5 moves ... what's upset here?

Paul

[JustinHorton]

Edouard's position is going the way of all flesh.

[JustinHorton]

....and as the top board has been drawn already, we have a play-off in which I imagine Nakamura will be favourite.

[Joshua Gibbs]

bit disappointed with the draw oh playoff ok

[PeterFarr]

Check whether Naka played it earlier in this event? (Someone did)

Good spot, it was Anton v Nakamura, round 7.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I'm not sure it's a case of being coy - everyone can see she deliberately lost the game, and I don't see anyone pretending anything otherwise.

They’re not pretending otherwise. What they’re not doing is calling a spade a spade. Different thing entirely.

As you say everybody knows it’s true. So why not say it. Why resort to stuff like "very strange game" as chess24 do here

https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/8 ... 7296460800

?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

....and as the top board has been drawn already, we have a play-off in which I imagine Nakamura will be favourite.

Three-way play off. Hikaru Nakamura, Anton David and Yu Yangyi.

And currently a six-way tie for fourth place on 7.5/10, with Adams in that group. Two games still going on where a victory would add to that score group (Howell is playing one of those games). Short won to finish in the next score group down on 7/10.

[LawrenceCooper]

Three-way play off. Hikaru Nakamura, Anton David and Yu Yangyi.

Final TPR for playoff of #gibchess

Anton - 2865
Hikaru - 2845
Yu - 2828

Anton gets "bye" in opening round playoffs.

[LawrenceCooper]

Hou Yifan Final Round Interview, Tradewise Gibraltar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsV4Pf- ... e=youtu.be

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Playoff starts 17:00 CET, which is 16:00 GMT, so about 80 minutes from now.

[Roger de Coverly]

Hou Yifan Final Round Interview, Tradewise Gibraltar

As stated in the interview, pairings come from the machine, but is there a case for changing the machine's instructions? If there's a prize fund or championship available only to a subset of the players, should there be a bias to pair together those players eligible for this prize or even a bias to avoid these pairings?

[Nigel White]

Does anyone know the pairing rules being used? Casual observation suggests that in earlier rounds there have been more all female pairings than would otherwise have been expected. However, the just published Round 7 pairings do not seem to have followed this trend.

Given today's controversy, the question I asked in my post on Sunday was apposite. There was no answer provided on the forum. In the YouTube interview just released, Brian Callaghan, implies that the pairings were just a normal product of the program used - however, given my earlier observations, I'm not sure I believe that.

[Mick Norris]

Interesting interview

If you change the pairing rules for any subset, won't it impact norm seekers as well as seekers of other prizes?