Sunday
Jun142015
Wei Yi Wins Leon Rapid Event
Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 9:47PM
Scary good, this young Chinese chap. Wei Yi won a small but strong rapid event in Leon. In the semi-finals he beat David Anton Guijarro 2.5-1.5 while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave defeated Ruslan Ponomariov by the same margin, and in the final Wei Yi beat MVL in yet another match to finish with the same score.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see him get a super-tournament invite. He just turned 16 and is rated 2723, ahead of Magnus Carlsen's pace (and everyone else's too) at the same age. Carlsen was invited everywhere at that age, but where is Wei Yi playing? Outside of China, only in opens and rapids, it seems. Not good, but kudos to the organizers in Leon for bringing him in.
tagged Wei Yi
Reader Comments (6)
Well, he'll be playing in tata steel A next year.
[DM: True...and while he had to earn the group A invite he did at least receive one to group B that gave him the chance to qualify.]
"where is Wei Yi playing? Outside of China, only in opens and rapids, it seems."
Living in the Netherlands, I am mildly offended that you neglect one semi-prestigious round robin invitation: Tata Steel B 2015 - where he won a race to the finish line against Navara and qualified for the A group in 2016. In this respect, he keeps pace with Carlsen - who played Corus Chess B 2006 to qualify for the top group in 2007. Or is/will he be ahead of Carlsen? Carlsen was shared first (second on tiebreak) in the B group, and his first Wijk aan Zee A result (4.5/13) is certainly improvable.
[DM: Don't be offended! You are correct, and your countrymen get full props.]
Otherwise, invitations always lag behind progress: Wei Yi entered the top 100 only in December 2014, seems looong ago by now but isn't. And he has competition from other Chinese players: for example this month, Capablanca Memorial has Yu Yangyi and Dortmund has Hou Yifan.
I don't know if Carlsen was invited "everywhere" when he turned 16. Only Biel and Tal Memorial 2006 might be counted as super tournaments, if I recall correctly, and Biel was not all that strong compared to the strongest events, while for example Radjabov and Karjakin had been invited to top tournaments like Linares and Dortmund when they were 14-15.
[DM: Carlsen's birthday is in November, so the year to examine is 2007.]
The Chinese players seem to come in waves. First there was Wang Yue who was everywhere around 2009-10, then came Wang Hao, after that was Ding Liren, albeit briefly. lets hope Yu Yangyi and Wei Yi are here to stay!
@Jaideepblue: What makes you think that Ding Liren was around briefly and is already 'history'? He was shared second in Wijk aan zee this year, world #11 in May, currently down to #15 but is this "the end of his career"?!
There is also world #16 Li Chao - but to my knowledge he didn't get any round-robin invitations yet (too old at the age of 26?) so hard to say how strong he really is.
DM definitely has a point that Wei Yi didn't get invitation to the elite tournaments he should have qualified for.
Though Wei Yi was invited for Tata Steel B in 2015, he already "over-qualified" for the event. The average rating B group was 2561 in 2015 (lowest among recent years), while Wei Yi (2675) was already the second highest in the group. Just for comparison, when Carlsen was invited in 2006 (rated 2625, middle of the pack), the average rating for B group was 2605. It seemed to be that by the same standard, Wei should have been invited to Corus in 2014 when he was rated 2607, higher than the average of 2579 in B group. Why did Duda (2573) and Troff (2457) got the invitation but not Wei? Guess the organizer considered them as more youngsters with more talents.....On a separate story, the tournament, in particular the B group, have been lowering the standard since it was branded as Tata Steel. Corus has been a favorite chess event of mine, so it is painful to see the caliber of the event going downhill these days.
[DM: In fairness to Carlsen and/or the organizers, I don't think he (Carlsen) was "invited" to Wijk B - I think he had qualified by winning the Wijk C event the year before.]
Yes, Carlsen got invited to Biel and Tal, both are much stronger event than Corus B if you look at the average rating of the participants at the time. Wei is one of youngest to achieve GM title and has been among the top Juniors for a while. As DM as observed, Carlsen (and Karjakin etc) get invited to super tournaments because of organizers see his potential. It is puzzling why Wei didn't get half of the invitations Carlsen received then.
By the way, nice blog. Appreciate the chess comments and fresh perspectives.
[DM; Thank you, and you're welcome!]