Ukraine's Andrei Volokitin leads alone with 6/7 after beating the ever-explosive and occasionally-exploding Sergei Volkov. Four players are chasing with 5.5: Eljanov, Tkachiev, Moiseenko, Tomashevsky. Today is a free day; tomorrow is round 8 of 11. Pairings here. These giant qualifying events always have dozens and dozens of short draws in the middle rounds at the top boards as everyone with a plus score plays it safe against each other. That's why there are some 40 players with five points.
I see the 'safe' draw lives on....
This tournament needs to bring in some kind of Anti-draw rule to give the spectators what they deserve...Some chess games!
The spectators need some sort of life, so that their biggest disappointment in it is not a short draw of a chess game.
If the spectator is paying he or she deserves fighting chess. If not, which is the norm, then the spectator has no right to ask for fighting chess. It is simple as that.
Shorter Ed: money talks, everything else shuts the hell up.
your idealism is an inspiration to us all, Ed
I would like to interview one of these major sponsors, just to ask them:
"Why do you not bother to insist on the Sofia anti-short-draw rule for tournaments that you sponsor? The grandmasters will still attend and play."
I presume the sponsors are already well aware of the Sofia rule option. Their dis-interest in Sofia is an unanswered baffler. My curiosity is killing me.
Does Mig have any contact with any sponsor, to whom he could put the question?
"If the spectator is paying he or she deserves fighting chess. If not, which is the norm, then the spectator has no right to ask for fighting chess. It is simple as that."
Most spectators of baseball are either listening to the radio or watching television, both free. Therefore they have no right to ask for good pitching.
In a way, we do pay to see the games. We have to look at the sponsor's advertisements (no bad thing), and I'm sure they sponsors would like us to look at their advertising for more than 20 minutes while a short draw is played out. Also, if short draws put a lot of people off watching the games, then the advertisements are exposed to a lot less people.
I've always wondered why so many (all?) chess tournaments split price money among people on the same score?
Splitting price money makes the especially annoying last round draws too tempting for some people.
Buchholzes or even blitz tiebreaks makes splitting unnecessary imho.
Skip splitting the prices AND introduce a special price for "best fighting spirit" and award a player who didn't ask for or accept (early) draws!
Problem (partly) solved!
I'm not sure there is even a problem here to be solved. A better problem to solve is the rampant cheating that occurs in US Swiss tournaments.
I think the short draw is the best thing to ever happen to chess. Usually, there is very little interest in 40-50 move draws, and 60-70 move wins...but, when there are 5-15 move draws, there are 100 posts here about how we need to do something about it, plus the arguments for/against all kinds of rules regarding quick draws. When people have something to complain about, suddenly there is a ton of interest.
The rampant cheating? I am not sure if that was said in jest, but I suppose not. If there are hundreds of thousands of USCF rated games played every year, and there is cheating in 5-10 of them (The kind of cheating we keep reading about), I guess reading about it a lot and seeing all the posts makes it rampant!
I guess if there is very little cheating, we should pretend it happens in almost every tournament, and almost every game, so we can try to figure out what to do about it.
You bloggers have all forgotten the battle cry of Jesse "The Guv" Ventura. "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat!" (Although that was said by Jesse when he was a pro wrestler, not the governor).
BPF
So let's see...
The people in the stadium can demand active fighting baseball/basketball/chess. The people watching the game on TV need to call in and order a t-shirt first. Then they may complain.
If the draw is not a fighting one then you should complain. If chess draw is active and fighting, the spectators should not complain. But if the fighting draw turns out to be a repetition of an earlier game, you can complain. However, if it turns out the repetition is unintentional and reasonable proof is provided, stop complaining immediately.
Or you could just watch another game. And if there was nothing good today, I am sure there are many games from twenties, fifties and eighties that you haven't played through yet.
Today's Volokitin game:
1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 c6 5. b3 Ne4 6. d4 Qa5+ 7. Nbd2 c5 8. b4 Qxb4 9. Rb1 Nxd2 10. Rxb4 Nxf3+ 11. Bxf3 cxb4 12. a3 bxa3 13. Bxa3 Nc6 14. e3 d6 15. c5 dxc5 16. Bxc5 a5 17. O-O O-O *
Volokitin has Black against Tkachiev.
Volokitin has R+N+P for Q with connected passers on the queenside, so I expect a decisive result with this much imbalance on the board.
Tkachiev-Volokitin update:
1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 c6 5. b3 Ne4 6. d4 Qa5+ 7. Nbd2 c5 8. b4 Qxb4 9. Rb1 Nxd2 10. Rxb4 Nxf3+ 11. Bxf3 cxb4 12. a3 bxa3 13. Bxa3 Nc6 14. e3 d6 15. c5 dxc5 16. Bxc5 a5 17. O-O O-O 18. Qb1 a4 19. Rc1 Re8 20. Qb5 e5 21. d5 Ra5 22. Qb1 a3 *
22 ... a3! is a lovely move, leaving the Black c6-knight hanging to the White d5-pawn, which Black can get away with due to the power of his passed a3-pawn supported by his a5-rook and his g7-bishop, which will gain control of the a1-promotion square with tempo when the Black e5-pawn moves off of the long diagonal with tempo against the White f3-bishop.
Jakovenko wins!
Yes, acirce, a -beautiful- win by Jakovenko, 34 Rf1xf7!! Kg8xf7 35 Qh3-h7+ being a powerful KING DEFLECTION tactic.
1. c4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. a3 Nxd4 7. Qxd4 b6 8. Qf4 Be7 9. e4 d6 10. Qg3 O-O 11. Bh6 Ne8 12. Bd2 Nf6 13. Rd1 Qc7 14. Bh6 Ne8 15. Bd3 Ba6 16. Rc1 Rc8 17. Bd2 Nf6 18. O-O Nd7 19. b3 Rfe8 20. Kh1 Bb7 21. f4 a6 22. Qh3 Bf8 23. b4 g6 24. Ne2 Bg7 25. Bc3 Bxc3 26. Nxc3 Qd8 27. Be2 Qc7 28. f5 exf5 29. exf5 Re5 30. Bg4 Rd8 31. Nd5 Bxd5 32. cxd5 Qb7 33. fxg6 hxg6 34. Rxf7 Kxf7 35. Qh7+ Ke8 36. Qxg6+ Ke7 37. Qg7+ Ke8 38. Rf1 Qxd5 39. Bxd7+ 1-0
This Jakovenko can really play some chess. I already knew he was one of the world's greatest endgame but this brilliant win over Moisenko really shows up his attacking abilities.
Jakovenko is having the kind of breakout year in 2007 that Aronian had in 2005 and Mamedyarov did in 2006.
"If the spectator is paying he or she deserves fighting chess. If not, which is the norm, then the spectator has no right to ask for fighting chess. It is simple as that."
Most spectators of baseball are either listening to the radio or watching television, both free. Therefore they have no right to ask for good pitching.
=========================
Yet good pitching tends to lead to good results, and overall success for the team. In turn, that leads to more people opting to tune in to watch or listen to broadcast coverage of their favorite teams (many fans are "fair weather" and tend to jump on the bandwagon when the team is doing well, and lose interest when the team is doing poorly) on TV and radio, thereby increasing ratings, and ultimately making the team's broadcast rights more valuable.
In a sense, neither TV or radio are "Free", since the viewer/listener must "pay", in the sense of having to listen to commercial advertisements.
In contrast, in a big money Swiss, there are almost no "pure" spectators--nearly all of the people interested in watching a demonstration of fighting chess are Amateurs who are contesting games in their own sections.
An elite Round Robin is meant to be a spectacle, where the invited players are the beneficiaries of heavy sponsorship by entities, who are presumably hoping to garner favorable publicity. The Top GMs are supposed to be putting on a show that attracts
fans. In contrast, a Big $$ Swiss is simply a lottery scheme, in which the odds of winning money are far from equal.
We've just published many photos from Dresden at http://www.chessvibes.com/?p=777&lp_lang_view=en
Enjoy!
@peter: Can you or someone else identify the silver chess clock being used in the bottom picture, the one with Robin Swinkels?
Thanks.
Stefan Loeffler (http://schach.twoday.net/)writes: "Selbst die Silver Timer machen keine Probleme, weil die Macken der früheren Versionen dieser Uhr wohl einigermaßen beseitigt sind.", meaning something like "Even the Silver clocks don't cause trouble, because the problems with previous versions of this clock are probably solved somewhat.". But surely somebody else can give a better translation.
Apparently they use the Silver Timer for games that are not broadcasted on the internet (DGT-boards and clocks are being used there). It is the official chess clock of the European Chess Union (http://www.freibauer-nord.de/start.htm?d_8360_Schachuhr__Chess_Timer_Silver___uberarbeitete_Version760.htm)
And now for something completely different. Chessbase gives the press release for the upcoming tournament in Leon (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3786). With four world champions: Anand, Topalov, Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov. Excuse me? These fine players have never been world champion. They were all FIDE world champion, which is something completely different.
@Oscar: Thanks for answering my question.
@ gmnotyet Don't know.
Forgive my ignorance, but is this a qualifying event? How many qualify, and for what? I can't seem to find any info on the website, and fide.com is silent too...
The Individual European Championships 2007 and the Individual Women`s Championships 2007 are qualification events for the next Chess World Cup or the next World Chess Championships for Women respectively. According to FIDE's tournament regulations and the decision of the ECU Board, 33 players from the men's section and 13 players from the women's section will qualify.
This is from the official site: http://www.dresden2008.de/front_content.php?idcat=82
Looks like getting beaten up in men's tournaments is paying dividends for the Kosintseva sisters.
Vlad Tkachiev - new European Champion!