Batumi Olympiad

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Michael Farthing
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Michael Farthing » Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:34 pm

Ummm... 8 posts up? (9 now).

Robert Page
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Robert Page » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:25 pm

Michael Farthing wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:34 pm
Ummm... 8 posts up? (9 now).
Indeed. And the original?

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:31 pm

Robert Page wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:25 pm
Michael Farthing wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:34 pm
Ummm... 8 posts up? (9 now).
Indeed. And the original?
Searching for the filename revealed that it came (not surprisingly) from Twitter.

It was re-tweeted by the ECU (European Chess Union) from the Batumi Chess 2018 account, see here.

That tweet gives a link to a high-resolution version, which I presume is what you are after?

Plenty of other excellent photos from that Twitter account (and indeed many other chess-related Twitter accounts).

Robert Page
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Robert Page » Wed Oct 10, 2018 3:57 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:31 pm
Robert Page wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:25 pm
Michael Farthing wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:34 pm
Ummm... 8 posts up? (9 now).
Indeed. And the original?
Searching for the filename revealed that it came (not surprisingly) from Twitter.

It was re-tweeted by the ECU (European Chess Union) from the Batumi Chess 2018 account, see here.

That tweet gives a link to a high-resolution version, which I presume is what you are after?

Plenty of other excellent photos from that Twitter account (and indeed many other chess-related Twitter accounts).
Thank you, Christopher.

Lewis Martin
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Lewis Martin » Wed Oct 10, 2018 9:08 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Fri Oct 05, 2018 10:16 am
benedgell wrote:
Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:31 am
Mike W. Richardt wrote:
Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:00 am


Martin Lewis is playing do ICCD - and what a tournament he's having!!! :-)
http://chess-results.com/tnr368908.aspx ... 30&snr=580
Unless I've read it wrong Lewis has got the FM title with his performance.
Yes, this was mentioned earlier (it is easy to miss it in a massive thread like this): see here and here (and next few posts).

Sadly, Lewis has just lost his last round game, but still an incredible overall performance, with a great run in between losses in the first and last rounds, all the more impressive for having played in all 11 rounds. Really pleased that he has got the FM title, and that his rating is racing upwards now.
Capturing this part of the thread since it packs all of myself in.

I believe it is the first time ICCD vs IBCA has happened.
WIth regards to otb play: Babarykin didn't need an assistant, so it was just him and Gruenfeld on one board.
The other 3 had a volunteer who plays the move the blind player had played on their board.

With respect to arbiters, the volunteer on my board was a match arbiter. I would like to say that I thought they were generally excellent and worked very hard in the Olympiad. There were challenging moments for them!

However, the problem I had was the adjustment of pieces in that game. On a few occasions the arbiter/volunteer had adjusted the pieces when it was my move which I thought was very unprofessional - this incidentally had happened in another game by my opponent - this contributed to my burning of thinking time as it was distracting. At the start of the game I was very sluggish in thinking in comparison to previous games (evidently not a morning person!), so it was an off/slow day anyway.

I thought it was a bit strange that such a basic rule or even courtesy passed by this arbiter/volunteer.

I also remark that we were not told how to 'pause' on the adapted chess clock in case of any incident so I just got on with it really. Originally it was positioned beyond the reach of my left arm never mind my playing right arm(!).

As for an overall performance, I certainly rode my luck. Some of my play was frankly shocking, but I simply played some challenging moves in a practical sense if I could which contributed to wins out of nowhere.

Finally, I found it amusing that the ECF eNewsletter addressed myself as an 'ECF member' lauding the England players for their high scores (rightly so), but without mentioning the highest point scoring player whose federation is 'ENG'.

Lewis Martin
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Lewis Martin » Wed Oct 10, 2018 9:09 pm

I would also like to thank all of the congratulations on here, it was certainly an enjoyable experience. Now, let's see if I can do better next time(!)...

Nick Burrows
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Nick Burrows » Wed Oct 10, 2018 9:48 pm

Nice one Lewis, delighted for you. Now you get to intimidate players with those shiny letters before your name. On the other hand, you will now be a scalp!

Chris Rice
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Chris Rice » Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:30 am

Filatov analyses what was considered to be a poor performance by the Russian men in Batumi. Vitiugov and Jakovenko are summarily thrown under the bus.

Martin Crichton
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Martin Crichton » Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:41 am

After a promising start by the Irish mens team they had successive defeats near the end of the tournament cumulating in a 4-0 whitewash by the much lower rated Tunisian team, no one has heard from any of the team members since ... (rumours are circulating that they have had their passports confiscated and have been stripped of their Irish citizenship.)
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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Thu Oct 11, 2018 1:08 pm

Chris Rice wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:30 am
Filatov analyses what was considered to be a poor performance by the Russian men in Batumi. Vitiugov and Jakovenko are summarily thrown under the bus.
I think that is overstating it for the former at least.
"Set up your attacks so that when the fire is out, it isn't out!" (H N Pillsbury)

Tim Harding
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Tim Harding » Thu Oct 11, 2018 1:40 pm

Martin Crichton wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:41 am
After a promising start by the Irish mens team they had successive defeats near the end of the tournament cumulating in a 4-0 whitewash by the much lower rated Tunisian team, no one has heard from any of the team members since ... (rumours are circulating that they have had their passports confiscated and have been stripped of their Irish citizenship.)
Total fake news from Martin!

Apart from anything else, the Irish men did not lose any match 0-4. Stephen Jessel won for us against Tunisia.
Tim Harding
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Martin Crichton
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Martin Crichton » Thu Oct 11, 2018 2:45 pm

must have been an error on the chess24 site that was corrected later then because it said 4-0 when I switched off the screen lol

http://chess-results.com/tnr368908.aspx ... RL&flag=30

I cannot remember a worse Irish team performance in my lifetime......

(I remember an Irish player once had the unfortunate score of 0.5 / 8 in an olympiad...one of my clubmates in Cork was joking just before he played him in the Mulcahy in the 80's that he was going to congradulate him on the draw!

seriously tough......that is good news that they were allowed back in the country! :)
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Chris Rice
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Chris Rice » Sat Oct 13, 2018 12:46 pm

There is still widespread discontent regarding the Olympiad tie-breaks and an article by Peter Doggers The Olympiad Tiebreaks Have To Change, Grandmasters Say has GMs Peter Heine Nielsen (Carlsen's second) and David Smerdon demonstrating what is wrong with the current system.

Smerdon made the following point "I get the feeling that past policy changes have been largely reactionary to isolated events. One system gets replaced by another just because it fixes exactly that situation and calms the noise. The most difficult problem is that it’s much easier to say ’This system is better than that system for this one tournament’ than to think about all possible scenarios in a comprehensive way."

This very much reminded me of Rowson's 'hole in the bucket' argument in Chess for Zebras where fixing one problem caused a problem somewhere else.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Oct 13, 2018 1:39 pm

Chris Rice wrote:
Sat Oct 13, 2018 12:46 pm
There is still widespread discontent regarding the Olympiad tie-breaks
No one has complained against the pairing method, which use the same formula. So a simple enough solution, keep the pairings as they are, but use game points for the final rankings. Simple to calculate and everyone knows where they will stand.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Batumi Olympiad

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sat Oct 13, 2018 1:51 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sat Oct 13, 2018 1:39 pm
No one has complained against the pairing method
Yes, they have.