The Daily Update: Laznicka Wins the World Open, Greek Team Ch. Continues
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 11:31PM ...and the Netherlands beat Uruguay 3-2 in the World Cup semi-finals.
I didn't notice any terribly spectacular games in the Greek Team Championship, but there was a good fight in the last round of the World Open. Unfortunately for Viktor Laznicka, his last round opponent was Loek van Wely, who was not the sort of player who would let him get an easy, first-place clinching draw, despite having Black. Still, although he pushed, Laznicka held and won with his 7.5/9 score. Loek McShane, Pentala Harikrishna and and Ilya Smirin won their last round games to close to within half a point. Unfortunately for them, that half a point was worth almost $12,500 - Laznicka won more than $17.4k, while the others made about $5k each.
It's not easy being a non-Linares GM. Take even someone like Vallejo Pons, who does get to play in super-GM events from time to time. He's over 2700 and played well enough to gain a couple of rating points. His earnings? The princely sum of 118 dollars and 50 cents. Most of the foreign GMs who came over failed to get their plane fare back, while the influx of foreign GMs sucked almost all the money away from the American GMs - only Alex Lenderman managed to win a relatively substantial prize of about $800. Lessons, writing and videos aside, it's a terrible way to make a living if your FIDE rating isn't in the mid-2700s.
If you are in the mid-2700s and up, on the other hand, you can play 30 moves, 25 of which follow pre-existing Petroff, Marshall or Slav theory, shake hands and collect 4-5 digit appearance fees. What rubbish.
Reader Comments (16)
Right---so what we need is a statistic that measures the amount of non-book "Challenge" posed to one's opposition...let invites take that into account.
Loek, Ma---a typo! :-)
Do you have a solution to the problem of chess in the US (for players 2400+)? It was also mentioned in a video on the USCF site by a disgusted Shankland, and further explained in the comments by an IM who actually made money (but still felt the tournament setup was awful).
I don't see any solution happening until some major corporate (or very rich individual) sponsor is willing to step in to bankroll tournament prize funds at least an order of magnitude above what they are now, and also to meet the travel expenses of the foreign titled players so badly needed to provide norm opportunities for American players.
According to one source Van Wely offered a draw to Laznicka but Laznicka DECLINED! I don't know if I believe this, but if this is true I think Laznicka deserved both the fighting chess award and the award for poor financial decisions.
If you are in the mid-2700s and up, on the other hand, you can play 30 moves, 25 of which follow pre-existing Petroff, Marshall or Slav theory, shake hands and collect 4-5 digit appearance fees. What rubbish.
But these 2700s presumably spent many years working their way up the ranks thus "earning" this right.
I think if there are people who are not mid 2700 in a tournament with mid 2700, mostly they languish at the bottom look at recent Corus result. You will find Smeets, Triviakov and van Wely (all around 2650) lying at bottom. That shows that 2750 people deserve to be there based on their performance. Also look at how Aronian dominated Grand Prix with less rating opponents. I think most of the times results in chess over a long period reflect player's strength which is also reflected in rating. So even if their games are not entertaining, they are more towards perfection ( Anand's recent few interview mention this). If 2750 people are not making enough efforts as suggested by Dennis, they will be punished by their lesser rated opponents, but that doesn't happen. If one has to get entertained then may be there should be more handicaps in the game, resulting in mistakes -- like rapid, blitz, armageddon., blindfolded and so on.
I'm not claiming that 2750s aren't really 2750s, just that it's absurd for the habitual offenders to keep getting invitations in order to play non-games. Of course they can beat 2600s at a pretty good clip on the rare occasions when they're forced to play them, and then they go to super-GM events, draw most - usually quickly and dully - lose a couple and maybe win once in a blue moon.
Note too that this isn't a complaint about draws per se or style, but about non-games in large quantities.
I fully agree with Dennis on his comments about the chess elites and others. It is like Mughal India when a rupee could buy two goats but many people starved while members of the royal family and high nobles earned millions.
How many "habitual offenders" playing "non-games in large quantities" are there among the current 2700+ crowd?
Leko is an obvious candidate.
Maybe Gelfand and Wang Yue (both play the Petroff with black), but they mix short non-games with fighting or grinding efforts.
Svidler and Bacrot - but they don't seem to get many top invitations these days
Anand!? at least in some events (e.g. Corus 2010), but still it takes more than a string of non-games to be and stay world champion.
[gone are the days when Kramnik would be on that list]
This is 1-6 out of 37 on the current rating lists (FIDE and live).
Your general point (" it's a terrible way to make a living if your FIDE rating isn't in the mid-2700s") seems to be mostly relevant for American players. I am not saying that such European GMs earn milk and honey, but they usually get
- regular income from team competitions
- some sort of conditions at opens
- and there are also at least some round robin events catering to that crowd (e.g. Corus B).
On the other hand, what's wrong with making money from lessons, writing and (not as widespread) videos?
Well hey, why should the top players waste their time in being creative at the board when it seems they can now earn megabucks as brand-icon fashion models?
Dennis: while I have not enough knowledge on the matter to claim that your general statement is false, I do think that your example (the World Open) is not a good one. It is beyond my comprehension why respectable grandmasters bother to play this tournament. As you yourself mentioned, it's a bad tournament to play for a professional: very little prize money if you don't win the whole thing outright, no appearance fees, no accomodation, no travel expenses.
However, this is just one of thousands of Swiss-type festivals organised worldwide every year. While this one seems to back up your statement, most festival advertisements I see mention special treatment of GMs. At the very least, a hotel, travel expenses, restaurant and an appearance fee are guaranteed, and often GMs get to negotiate their conditions, so (I guess, I'd have to be one to know) a 2650 gets more than a 2500. This applies to most European festivals I see advertised.
BTW, I took a look at the tournament advertisement and I noticed it said that the players should bring their own boards, clocks and pieces as none would be provided!! Say what?! They collect $300 per player (OK, this one doesn't apply to the GMs) and they don't even have the equipment? What do you pay the 300 dollars for exactly, the playing hall?
Kajetan,
What statement are you disagreeing with, the claim that it's a terrible way to make a living for a GM under 2750? Ok then, here are some thoughts for further reflection:
1. Sure, GMs often get some conditions, but there are well over 1000 GMs now, and over 3000 IMs too. It's nice to have a free hotel room during a tournament, but it doesn't pay the rent or mortgage. (GMs generally get some minor conditions at US tournaments too, by the way.)
2. Take a look at how many GMs are vendors on ICC or playing for ducats on playchess, even extremely strong ones. Can you imagine Kasparov or Anand playing for hours on playchess to make a few extra bucks?
3. Look at all the strong European GMs who come to play in the big US opens in the summer. Perhaps it's not the Garden of Eden over there after all. Of course there's a better developed chess culture over there...which means that there are more GMs fighting for that larger pie.
4. Chess players don't have pensions or other perks, so after 20-25 years of playing, they're out of a career, competing with younger guys who have more energy and ambition and who don't have decades of old theory to unlearn. These older GMs are in further trouble, because they often lack any other developed professional skills. So you teach, write, hustle and hope that in the end you don't die at the board trying to earn the next day's crust of bread.
As for players bringing their own sets and clocks, why not? It's not a complicated or onerous task, and I'd just as soon that the money the organizers save by not providing this equipment and paying people to set it up, guard it, move it and so on go back into the prize fund.
"What do you pay the 300 dollars for exactly, the playing hall?" Well, yes, and the prize fund! You were expecting all the US chess tournaments to be sponsored by rich people or taken from tax money?
Thomas, I didn't say that anything was "wrong with making money from lessons, writing and (not as widespread) videos?" I wrote that "[l]essons, writing and videos aside, it's a terrible way to make a living if your FIDE rating isn't in the mid-2700s."
If I recall correctly, Bill Goichberg provided sets for many tournaments when he started out in the late 1960s into the early 1970s, but some bad theft experiences led to his regular policy.
I note that a commenter named "Daniel" in this earlier item stated, "supposedly the inflation is "49" points according to wikipedia!" I can't find this in the Wikipedia articles on Elo_rating_system or Grandmaster_(chess) or Magnus_Carlsen. Does anyone know a reference for "official" inflation estimates, over various time intervals?
May as well ask too, if I pick a random round-robin from the early 1990s, is there a way to look up the time control it used, including whether it had adjournments?
Dennis: as I said, I have no intention disputing the general statement ("it's a terrible way to make a living for a GM under 2750"), as I simply don't know about that; I'll take your word for it, as someone far more knowledgeable in the matter than me.
However, I disagree with the argument that "it's a terrible way to make a living for a GM under 2750 because the World Open offers lousy conditions". This doesn't seem valid to me, as in "it's very expensive to drive a car nowadays because the Hummer H2 uses 25 liters of fuel per 100 km". While the general statement may very well be true, the example seems hand-picked to confirm it.
Also, I'm under the impression that you understood my post as an expression of dislike of US swisses, US chess, or even the US in general. This absolutely was not my intention. True, English is not my first language, but after re-reading my post I still do not believe it suggests any of those. I was criticising this particular tournament. For all I know, US festivals other than the World Open may offer better condititions than any European ones; I gave the latter as my example simply because where I live, which is very much in Europe, US chess tournaments are not advertised.
All I'm saying is that playing an open for a professional player doesn't necessarily have to be as big a financial commitment as the World Open, where you have to pay your plane fare, hotel, meals and can forget about an appearance fee.
Kajetan,
I agree that the WO isn't an especially good deal for a GM looking to save money. But aren't all big opens like this nowadays? If you go to Capelle-la-Grande, or Aeroflot, or some other monstrously strong event with dozens of GMs, the organizers would go broke trying to give them conditions. I suspect that the WO does pick up GMs' hotel rooms (though they might make them share rooms with each other) and takes care of the entry fee (the EF will come out of the winnings, if any), but appearance fees? Maybe for a top ten player, but when you have 30 GMs or more playing and a first prize over $15k, what motivation (other than bankruptcy) would an organizer have?