Grand Chess Tour - Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz 2019

[David Sedgwick]

The Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz takes place from Saturday 10th August until Wednesday 14th August

Saturday 10th August: Rapid Rounds 1-3 at 1900, 2030, 2200 (BST)
Sunday 11th August: Rapid Rounds 4-6 at 1900, 2030, 2200
Monday 12th August: Rapid Rounds 7-9 at 1900, 2030, 2200
Tuesday 13th August: Blitz Rounds 1-9 at half hour intervals starting at 2000
Wednesday 14th August: Blitz Rounds 10-18 at half hour intervals starting at 2000, followed by tiebreaks if required.

Time Limits: Rapid 25 minutes with 10 seconds delay; Blitz 5 minutes with 3 seconds delay;

Players: Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Leinier Doninguez, Sergei Karjakin, Shakriyar Mamedyarov, Richard Rapport, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Yu Yangyi

The draws will take place during the Opening Ceremony at 2400 BST today, Friday 9th August. I shall the pairings on here tomorrow, unless someone beats me to it.

[David Sedgwick]

Rapid Pairings: http://chess-results.com/tnr462033.aspx?lan=1

Blitz Pairings: http://chess-results.com/tnr462034.aspx?lan=1

[Leonard Barden]

Carlsen has LOST this evening to Caruana and Aronian, currently worse against Yu Yangyi. in danger of 0-3 on the night.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Drew in the end, but a shocking day for the champ - against Aronian he simply threw away a superior position.

[Matt Mackenzie]

After yesterday's high of beating Magnus, all three games lost by Caruana today.

[David Robertson]

Kasparov is right: "These guys are over-worked"

[Alex Holowczak]

Kasparov is right: "These guys are over-worked"

Good.

A full calendar is good news for chess. If you fill the calendar up, then eventually you run out of space to add more events, and so one of two things happens:
1. Players start to pick and choose their events more, and so higher fees/prize money needs to be paid in order for your tournament to be the one that gets them.
2. New upstart tournaments that want the top players to go to them need to pay more in fees/prize money. So you get a competition between the events to attract the best players, much like you get in tennis on the ATP/WTA tour.

While initially it will benefit the top players, as the situation evolves eventually it filters down the world rankings; so it's good news for all professional players.

[JustinHorton]

.

While initially it will benefit the top players, as the situation evolves eventually it filters down the world rankings

Not at all sure about this bit

[Alex Holowczak]

.

While initially it will benefit the top players, as the situation evolves eventually it filters down the world rankings

Not at all sure about this bit

Take a look at snooker and darts as recent examples of this phenomenon.

Going back pre-Hearn, snooker's nadir is considered to be 2005/06, when there were only 6 ranking events, and maybe 2 non-ranking events with decent prize money.

In 2010 when Hearn took over, he filled the calendar with 12 mini-ranking events. Initially they had very low prize money. They got phased out in 2016 when there were enough full ranking events to make the 12-event mini-series redundant. This season there is £14.4m in prize money. I can't find the equivalent figure for 2005/06, but it was probably something like £6m.

The ranking list switched from a points-based system to a money-based system in 2014. In 2014/15, the player ranked 64 (the last place guaranteed a tour card the following season) won £54,582 over the 2 years of the ranking list. At the end of 2018/19, the player ranked 64 earned £86,500 over 2 years. (This won't include other non-ranking events; although players ranked 64 are unlikely to get into those anyway.) This happened since the calendar became full.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Going back pre-Hearn, snooker's nadir is considered to be 2005/06"

Yes, anything involving Hearn needs its own scale of nadirness!

[JustinHorton]

.

While initially it will benefit the top players, as the situation evolves eventually it filters down the world rankings

Not at all sure about this bit

Take a look at snooker and darts as recent examples of this phenomenon.

Or maybe take a look at why chess might not be the same sprt of world, spare yourself the paragraphs

[Chris Rice]

Magnus is having a nightmare tournament and he was brutally honest about it in the brief interview he did last night, which is refreshing. But I do wonder if other players, who don't have his standing, would have been invited again if they were saying things like "you can expect more of the same tomorrow" or "I can't bothered" or "I just don't care anymore"?

[Alex Holowczak]

Or maybe take a look at why chess might not be the same sprt of world, spare yourself the paragraphs

The same what now?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Magnus is having a nightmare tournament and he was brutally honest about it in the brief interview he did last night, which is refreshing. But I do wonder if other players, who don't have his standing, would have been invited again if they were saying things like "you can expect more of the same tomorrow" or "I can't bothered" or "I just don't care anymore"?

What the WC says and what he does are not always the same thing. And he had a better opening blitz round than Caruana!

[LawrenceCooper]

Final scores:

1 Aronian, Levon 22/36 2765
2= Ding, Liren 21½/36 2805, Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime 21½/36 2778, Yu, Yangyi 21½/36 2752
5 Karjakin, Sergey 19½/36 2750
6 Carlsen, Magnus 17/36 2882
7 Rapport, Richard 16½/36 2747
8 Caruana, Fabiano 15/36 2818
9 Dominguez Perez, Leinier 13½/36 2763
10 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar 12/36 2764