Shenzhen Finishes in a Three-Way Tie; MVL First on Tiebreak
Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 12:12AM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2018 Shenzhen Masters, Anish Giri, Ding Liren, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave took first on tiebreaks over Anish Giri and Ding Liren in the Shenzhen Masters (aka the 2nd Du Te Cup). I'm not a fan of determining first place in round-robins by tiebreaks, but that said, it was the only tiebreak method that I think is relevant: head-to-head scores. Giri drew his four games with MVL and Ding (it was a double round-robin), but MVL won his second game with Ding to have the best score in the mini-round robin of the top three.

It was an odd tournament, with very few wins overall - just six games out of 30. Ding beat Radoslaw Wojtaszek in round 5, lost to MVL in round 7, and beat Yu Yangyi in round 8. Yu beat Nikita Vitiugov in round 5; Vitiugov beat Wojtaszek in round 7, and Giri beat Wojtaszek in the final round. (Up to that point he was the only player who drew all his games.)

The tournament came close to achieving Lake Wobegon status. Not all the "children" were above average, but half were while 2/3 of the other half (Yu and Vitiugov) were average. Only poor Wojtaszek really took it on the chin, going -3 (3.5/10).

The most noteworthy aspect of the tournament was that Ding Liren's very long unbeaten streak finally came to an end after 100 games, when he lost to Vachier-Lagrave. More on the streak, and the apparent surviving record streak held by Sergei Tiviakov, here.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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