Friday
Mar052010
Starting Saturday: The European Chess Championship
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 12:49AM
There don't seem to be any absolute top players, but with nearly 200 GMs, 42 of whom are 2650 and above, this is going to be an incredibly strong tournament, and one you should keep an eye on if only to see what happens in your favorite openings. The tournament takes place from March 5-18 (but the playing days are from the 6th to (I think) the 17th) in Rijeka, Croatia. It's an 11 round Swiss, using the standard FIDE time control of game/90 + 30 second increments after each move.
The tournament website is here.
Reader Comments (5)
An incredibly rich tournament too, with a prize fund of 150,000 Euros (for the men's section)!
And don't forget that the top 22 qualify for the World Cup, which means guaranteed extra prize money. One consequence is that some players may not be too interested in winning the tournament, but rather only in securing their World Cup spot -> many draws in the final rounds.
A useful comment, Thomas, and you're likely right that the final rounds will be a great big drawfest.
My comment on draws was not just "educated gut feeling", but based on what I remembered (and just checked again) from last year's event: Before the last round, it was rather clear that 8/11 means World Cup qualification, and 7.5/11 at least a chance to get there via rapid tiebreaks. This is what happened in the last round:
- four draws between players having 7.5 points
- four draws and two white wins between those with 7 points
- four draws and 13 wins (8 with black) among those with 6.5 points.
On the top 10 boards, there were four draws in 11-14 moves, and another one in 24 moves.
In the end, 11 players were tied for first (8/11), and 23 for 12th-34th. There are two reasons why the European champion shouldn't be taken too seriously IMO (actually I have a hard time remembering names over the years):
- The title is decided in a tiebreak lottery
- The strongest players don't participate: no Carlsen, no Topalov, none of the very strongest ex-Soviet players.
But of course, the sheer number of games between strong GMs guarantees that there will be some interesting ones, and some contributing to opening theory.
Upsets. That is what this tournament is about. Cheparinov's loss against Lopez, for example, was a nice one, specially since it wass done with a beautiful combination. NOt the only upset so far.