Giri Leads Dutch Championship (Surprise, Surprise)
Wouter Spoelman's time atop the leaderboard of the Dutch Championship made for a nice story, but now it's back to dog bites man. After the day off, Spoelman lost with White to Ivan Sokolov, and for good measure lost to Friso Nijboer in round 7 as well. He's young and the great start will have been good for his confidence, so there's no doubt he'll be back. Meanwhile, top seed Anish Giri immediately made up his half-point deficit with wins over Daan Brandenburg and Robin Swinkels, making it three wins in a row. With two rounds to go, Giri's in clear first with 5.5/7 and a nice 2809 TPR, a point ahead of Sipke Ernst and a point and a half ahead of Sokolov, Swinkels and Spoelman.
(An aside for the "draw-deathers" out there: fewer than half the games have been drawn here, just as far fewer than half of the games in New Delhi finished peacefully. It may be somewhat of a problem at the very top level, though I suspect that most of it is psychological rather than objective, but once we're "down" to the low 2700 level on down it's not a problem at all.)
Reader Comments (3)
Hm, I heard Stellwagen didn't enter because he was working on his promotion (at the university), which will probably keep him away from the chessboard for the next 3,5 years. He did second l'Ami at Wijk aan Zee, I wonder if he's doing the same for the dutch championships.
Source (in dutch): http://www.schaakbond.nl/2011/stellwagen-geeft-promotie-voorrang-boven-schaken
There's no doubt Giri will win. He's just a class ahead of everyone else.
[DM: Thanks for the bit about Stellwagen. As for the "prediction", c'mon, you're making it with two rounds to go and Giri a point clear of the field with the tailender next on his plate! I don't think Las Vegas would accept your bet...]
I once saw a betting line (online, not in vegas) for a college football game where the price for the favorite was 5000 to 1! In a situation like this Giri is of course considered a "lock" to win, but would you lay 5000 to 1? I don't think he was that big of a favorite to win, even in that spot. So Las Vegas might accept that bet(for the right price) but certainly not at even money!
I know Dennis, it's just, there really was never any doubt, a point I failed to make, making it look like a silly hindsight-prediction. It takes a chain of serious off-days for Giri not to win as he did. As for Giri's future in the "NK Schaken", who knows? If he wants to be a dutchman (I don't mean on his passport or FIDE passport), he'd do well to stick around. I'd put the chances of that happening at 1/10 though. :-)