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(Mark Crowther) - 6 of the 10 players for Norway Chess, April 16th–29th 2016 announced. Carlsen, Kramnik, Giri, Topalov, Vachier-Lagrave and Aronian.
Four more names to be added.
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I don’t see how this differs materially from the Grand Chess Tour if Norway were still in it.
On January 6, 2016, the Altibox Norway Chess event announced it would not be part of the Grand Chess Tour in 2016, mostly due to differences in how much of a priority getting commercial sponsorship should be.
______
(Mick Norris (in the ECForum)) - Clashes with US Championship, which is presumably why Nakamura, Caruana & So aren't in Norway
Wonder if Karjakin will be invited? Ding Liren and/or Wei Yi too?
______
The 2016 U.S. Championship will feature 12 of the strongest chess players in America. Over the course of eleven rounds, these competitors will battle for $294,000 in prize money, qualification into the World Championship cycle, and the coveted title of 2016 U.S. Champion.
Dates: April 13-30, 2016
Location: Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis
To the six players already announced – Carlsen, Kramnik, Giri, Aronian, Vachier-Lagrave and Topalov, a seventh will be added by way of a qualifying, double round robin tournament:
The invitees are as follows
Jon Ludvig Hammer
Hou Yifan
Nils Grandelius
Aryan Tari
with the qualifier taking place in Norway March 23-26.
That leaves three more spots open and how they will be filled is still a mystery.
There is an interesting thread going on chess.com about this tournament and about the players getting appearance fees. Of course, these are not announced, but more than likely are given.
- The idea of announcing the participants in the qualifier event before finalizing the rest of the field is a bit odd IMO. Also, I wouldn't say that Hou Yifan "impressed" in Wijk aan Zee, given that she (again) had 1 win and 4 losses, and a performance of 2672 (slightly below her rating). OTOH, if she hadn't of screwed up a bunch of endgames, her result would have been better, but many players can make similar excuses.
While the USA commenters note the absence of Caruana, Nakamura, and So, the Chinese Championship is also in late April, which might explain the absence of Ding Liren (and could be a conflict for Hou Yifan also, if she does well in the qualifier, which incidentally is soon after her match against Muzychuk), with probably Wei Yi (and others) not going to be in the final field due to this. Even Grandelius could end up conflicted, as I thought he was playing the Hasselbacken Open (starting Apr 30, 150th jubilee year), though maybe the days will (just) work out.
- I still don't understand why name players get paid appearance money. They should apply that money to the prize money and if the name players want to come, good for them, if they don't, they can watch tv at home. It gives the name players an unfair financial advantage over those who would like to break into the ranks.
- The answer is easy..."name players" get paid appearance money because otherwise they would not appear...and they deserve it by having invested the effort, time and money to become "name players"...which in my definition roughly means holding out in the top 10 for a prolonged period...name players are just much more popular among fans and sponsors...because they have proven their exceptional class...every top tourney just needs to enroll a number of them...ageing name players like Anand, Kramnik and Topalov will experience increasing difficulties to see their financial expectations met...being challenged by younger (and cheaper?) stars...nothing unfair about it as they have had their time to reap the financial benefits...of course the current World Champion usually has the highest market value...especially when he is popular and plays attractive chess as Carlsen does
- If you increased the prize money and had more prizes you would both get the name players coming and also help those with talent who are struggling financially to break into the ranks. The name players would come to earn the prize money if it was enough without any appearance money. If they choose not to, then other players will take over their position as the name players. No tournament owes any name player anything to be giving money to them for nothing. I don't see how any name player has earned appearance money. Tournaments are not exhibition matches or a circus. If anything, the name player should be grateful that he or she is given the opportunity to come and earn some money in an invitation tournament.
The other problem is that you get what you have now with Kramnik and others who will not turn up unless the organisers meet their expectations as they see themselves equal to certain other players who are getting more appearance money. That is nonsense to my mind and not good for the game. Appearance money also tends to encourage complacency. A player is more likely to be determined and work hard if he or she is hungry for success. Unfortunately, in the day of corporate sponsorship, organisers are too nervous and take the easy route by offering appearance money so that the name players will come and keep the sponsors happy. They are reluctant to risk a name player not coming. I suggest that if the culture of giving appearance money were removed, the organisers would not have to worry about these issues.
- Appearance fees are paid whenever a tournament depends more on a particular player (or player type, e.g. top10 rated) than the player depends on this particular event. Events like the FIDE Grand Prix series or the European championship that, IMO correctly, don't offer advance benefits to anyone, end up having somewhat weaker fields.
Appearance fees are also paid by many Swiss events that can't possibly offer enough prize money: there is always the risk for anyone to get (almost) nothing. In that case, 2600ish or 2500ish GMs are also treated like "name players" - obviously receiving less than the world top. Here it can also be a deliberate strategy: Organizers of the Limburg Open told me "Unlike other weekend events in the Netherlands we offer appearance fees. Thus we can select our GMs, going for those who have an attractive playing style and are social and approachable" - i.e. not players who grind away wins against amateurs, refuse to analyze after the game, draw quickly against fellow GMs and collect prize money. But they also accept GMs who just show up without asking for conditions and are interested in prize money.
It is what it is. If there is an element of unfairness, then the fact that a few already rich players keep getting richer, the next group can earn a decent living from chess but not more than that, the next group is already struggling or, as Vallejo put it, "in limbo". And here just a few Elo points or differences in reputation (for vague rather than objective reasons) can make a lot of a difference. But it is what it is, and nobody is obliged to become a professional chess player.
- There have been a few attempts to move all the payouts to prizes. Linares 2009, and the 32-player Prague rapid KO (500000 euros in 2002) were two notable ones (and of course Kirsan's World Cup and its variations).
The payout method in tennis is somewhat top-heavy, as if you are in the top 100, you can likely make enough (given travel costs, future savings, etc.), but if you are on the second tier tour, you get maybe 10K for winning a 32-player KO and (much) less for an early exit, and to cover costs (including coaches) for more than a short while you need sponsorship. Anyone in the top 100 gets into the Grand Slam events, where a first round exit is worth as much as winning a second tier KO. Unsurprisingly, match-fixing is common, when you can get 50K (in the second tier!) for that. Whether 100 competition "pros" (making their living doing nothing but playing) is approximately the right number is a different question.
- Some tournaments like the Sinquefield Cup claim no appearance fees, but give $20,000 for finishing last, which is basically the same thing as an appearance fee if you can turn up, lose every game and take home that amount.
Altibox Norway Chess has today published the final three players in this year's tournament, which will be played in Stavanger from 19 to 29 April.
The elect are Ukrainian Pavel Eljanov (2765), Sergey Karjakin (2760) from Russia and Indian Pentaela Harikrishna (2758).
It means we get to see again Karjakin (No. 13 in the world), who won the tournament in 2013 and 2014. Eljanov (# 11 in the world). It is Harikrishna (# 14) in the world) who makes his debut in Norway Chess.
Thus, nine out of ten players ready for this year's tournament. Previously Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, Anish Giri, Veselin Topalov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave confirmed for the fourth edition of Norway Chess.
Anand was once again invited to Stavanger again, but said thanks, but this time no.
- He had no time. There was lonely a few days for his family if he accepted. He hopes to return in 2017.
Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So are all busy with games in the American championship, which takes place simultaneously with Norway Chess.
- We sent invitations to some of the United States. Unfortunately the date clashed with the American championship, but I understand their answers.
From before, it was decided that Jon Ludvig Hammer, Aryan Tari, Nils Grandelius and Yifan Hou would play a qualifier for the last place at Fagernes 23 - 26 March.
Official commentators will be Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svidler, considered two of the world's leading commentators.
The Field
1. Magnus Carlsen Norway 2851
2. Vladimir Kramnik Russia 2801
3. Anish Giri Netherlands 2793
4. M. Vachier-Lagrave France 2792
5. Levon Aronian Armenia 2786
6. Veselin Topalov Bulgaria 2780
7. Pavel Eljanov Ukraine 2773
8. Sergey Karjakin Russia 2760
9. Pentaela Harikrishna India 2758
10. Wild Card – one of:
Hammer, Tari, Yifan or Grandelius
Schedule
Round 1 April 19
Round 2 April 20
Round 3 April 21
Round 4 April 22
Rest Day April 23
Round 5 April 24
Round 6 April 25
Rest Day April 26
Round 7 April 27
Round 8 April 28
Round 9 April 29
The tournament is slated to start in less than two weeks. The final place has been allotted to the Swedish Grandmaster Nils Grandelius because he won the playoff with Hou Yifan, Jon Ludvig Hammer and Aryan Tari.
Jan Gustafsson will be one of the commentators and he has a rundown of all the participants at:
Sergey Karjakin withdraws from Altibox Norway Chess
Apr 6, 2016
The World Championship challenger Sergey Karjakin has canceled participation in the upcoming Altibox Norway Chess tournament, Chessdom.com confirmed.
Karjakin’s manager Kiryllos Zangalis stated that with a new status of Carlsen’s challenger Karjakin needs to focus on the preparation for the World Championship match. In addition, the Stavanger event comes only three weeks after the exhausting Candidates Tournament.
Li Chao substitutes Sergey Karjakin in Altibox Norway Chess tournament 2016
Li Chao, born in 1989 takes on the challenge from Altibox Norway Chess. Li is the second highest rated player in China and at present no. 15 on the live rating list.
Among his earlier victories is the Graz Open with 8 points out of 9. He also won the European Club Cup together with Kramnik, Aronian and Grischuk.
After thorough discussions with his family, Li Chao is now postponing his wedding in order to participate in Altibox Norway Chess.
The Altibox Norway Chess board is very happy that Li Chao has accepted participation on such a short notice and look forward to a spectacular tournament.
The tournament starts Tuesday, April 19 and one player does not have a rating. If you look at the FIDE web site you will see that Pavel Eljanov is unrated:
Following the decision of the FIDE Presidential Board at its meeting in Moscow, 28-29 March 2016, the services for the Ukrainian Chess Federation are temporarily suspended, as the full amount in respect of the Women’s World Championship match in Lviv has not been paid within the set deadline.
The ratings will be withdrawn at the date of the next publication of the rating list, downloadable FRLs and the players will not be able to participate in the events organised under the aegis of:
a) the World Championship & Olympiad Commission or Events Commission,
b) Continental competitions that provide qualifiers to any of the aforesaid competitions.
The tournament starts Tuesday, April 19 and one player does not have a rating. If you look at the FIDE web site you will see that Pavel Eljanov is unrated:
This is undoubtedly because the Ukrainian Chess Federation is in arrears....
Following the decision of the FIDE Presidential Board at its meeting in Moscow, 28-29 March 2016, the services for the Ukrainian Chess Federation are temporarily suspended, as the full amount in respect of the Women’s World Championship match in Lviv has not been paid within the set deadline.
I posted about this in the Women's World Championship thread. According to a FIDE report, neither Yifan Hou nor Mariya Muzychuk have received their awards yet.
The top players will get the extra white. It looks like Carlsen is in good form and Eljanov is out of form. I shall be pulling for him seeing that he is unrated, so to speak.
Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svidler are in the commentators chairs. The games were supposed to start at 11 a.m. Toronto/Montreal time but seemed to start an hour earlier.
First rounds are notorious for their technical glitches and today there was a massive fail.
The transmission was just starting its second hour when, all over the world, this message appeared on our computer screens:
This content is not available in your location due to licensing restrictions
I thought that we were not going to see the broadcast here. Then, from the comments on-line, it was apparent that this was happening to all the viewers.
- Agon, is that you?
- The Spanish transmission is still available
- The stream is blocked in Slovenia
- They are trying to block it in Norway but they have issues
- Same here in Sweden
- Same here in Hong Kong
- Same in the USA
- Australia
- in France
- Blocked in Texas
- Us Canadians are irate! We might have a hockey fight.
Turkey, Poland, Austria, the UK and India came in with the same message. Vatican City (!) said they were still seeing it.
I believe that Norwegian TV was not allowing transmission over the Internet to their citizens and they inadvertently blocked out the world.
When we got the picture again, the sound was wonky
- why can’t these noobs fix the sound already? Aren’t there any professionals in the production crew?
And the team from Norwegian TV was in the same room as Peter and Jan and they were making a lot of noise.
Then, there was a break and a young lady came on but nobody gave her name. One of the texters said it was Kaja Marie Snare, but it wasn’t.
In any case, she said that she would spend a few minutes every hour answering any tweets we send her. She also showed some of her photographs and one was of Harikrishna arriving at the tournament site. Each participant has their own car and driver to bring them to and from the hotel (about 10 or 15 minutes drive, depending on traffic) each day.
__________
A kibitzer on chessbomb answered a question that has been much on my mind the last year. Why is the Chinese player called Li Chao B?
- What does it means "b" of Chao b?
- there are many Li Chaos in the world
- So he is the second?
- b just to differentiate from others
-two chinese called Li Chao @fide
- ahhh, now it's all clear
- He was named Li Chao 2 for a while
- In the FIDE ratings
- so he's "b"
- there is a Li Chao a....
- When the country with the most people has short names, these things are certain to happen.
_______
Other viewers say that they switched over to YouTube to watch the commentary and to Chess Champs in the States but in the latter they had to listen to Maurice instead of Jan and Peter.
One techie wrote this:
- anyone who doesn't have the mental capabilities of a wooden plank knows how to bypass geoblocking
And others:
- Nils should have kept his dreadlocks, it would have made Kramnik uncomfortable
- komarov is the best commentator by far, no one comes close
- Literally every football commentator on US tv talks like Maurice
- The video is not good but Peter and Jan are good
_______
In summary, they are sorting out the technical glitches. As I write this, all games are finished after just three plus hours. It looks like Giri and Carlsen are in form and like this will be a very entertaining tournament to watch!
Since all the big dogs of the tournament got white against the lowest ranked players, it was expected that they would win. Harikrishna, Grandelius, Eljanov and Li Chao2 are all in a supertournament for the first time.
The first game to finish was MVL-Li Chao2. The “2” or “b” after the name of the Chinese player was explained in the last post.
Then all the other games seemed to finish. When Giri came in for the post mortem, he had so much to say that he could talk for twenty minutes. Jan Gustafsson vacated his chair and let Peter handle everything. He said this was because he told so many jokes when Anish was having the long string of draws, that he was afraid that Anish was offended.
Svidler pulled Giri at the end because Vladimir Kramnik was there and when big Vlad speaks, everyone listens. Today he sounded a bit like Dracula, with the booming voice. He started analyzing and Grandelius could hardly put in a word or two nor Peter. Two comments from the kibitzers on-line:
- So far, Peter has not been able to complete a sentence and Kramnik hasn’t taken a breath.
- Doesn't Kramnik ever shut up?
Still, it was all good stuff. The problem was that Carlsen was evidently waiting to get on and could not. You don’t keep the World Champion waiting and they missed him by a few minutes and he was driven back to his hotel and Harikrishna was left holding the bag. Hari said that at one point he had equalized and Tarjei Svensen tweeted this:
Carlsen completely disagrees with Harikrishna's claim that he had equalized. "He wasn't even close to equalize"
Because it was 2 o’clock Toronto/Montreal time, some viewers thought they should turn over to the U.S. Championships from St. Louis but they have a rest day there today.
Tomorrow should be interesting, perhaps trying to watch both tournies at the same time.
A Few On-Line Comments
Daniel Gormally – Can anyone in world chess stop the runaway winning machine that is Magnus Carlsen?
- Why did Harikrishna NOT capture Carlsen’s seemingly free pawn on b2?
Tarjei J. Svensen – Carlsen wins an opening game of a tournament for the first time since April 20th, 2014, 730 days ago!
Daniel Gormally – Anish Giri finally won a game today, as he was playing an unrated guy
- Amused that Svidler has gained 2 places in the world rankings by commentating instead of playing today
Nigel Short - Excellent game by Magnus Carlsen . But were one to quibble, it should be pointed out he missed both a mate in 7 and a mate in 3 :)
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Tuesday, 19 April, 2016, 04:29 PM.
Round Two of Norway Chess (starts) in 2 hours. Hopefully today the players will show some common decency and won’t finish their games all at once.
There is always a lot of noise from the Norwegians around and about and also from Peter Heine Nielsen, the Dane, who is Magnus Carlsen’s coach and trainer.
The big news is that Anish Giri goes down to MVL. Anish seemed to have the better game from the opening until MVL played 15….Rg8 to get Giri out of his preparation. Instead of answering with g5, Anish played 18.Rdg1. Undoubtedly Anish will face more Sicilians now in the tournament.
(Peter Doggers) - "Anish spent 47 minutes on his next move: 16.Rdg1. In many lines he had to compare positions with a white rook on d1 or h1 — the famous “which rook” problem.
Magnus Carlsen, who finished early today and made some comments about the other games, felt that 15...Rg8 “has to be bad” but admitted that it was perhaps a good practical choice, especially together with MVL's brilliant follow-up: 16...d5!!"
The games:
Norway Chess 2016
Round 2, April 20, 2016
Grandelius, Nils – Aronian, Levon
C65 Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence
Giri and Kramnik both took over their postmortems as usual. Magnus Carlsen commented on his games. Eljanov and Harikrishna are both very soft spoken and they were a pleasant change from the other two. Peter pointed out that when Pentala made a move that his second, Markus Ragger, didn’t like, Markus gave an angry look.
Fiona Steil-Antoni discussed a few tweets from viewers and showed a picture of Magnus with his two managers. Evidently, he is so busy that two managers are de rigueur.
Tweets
Nigel Short – Norway Chess is great! One can follow the games live without threats of law-suits from grasping, shady organisations.
- really enjoyed today’s games and what is even better is that next up are the US Championships. We are spoiled with all the great chess going on.
- Nils Grandelius creates chess TV fever in Sweden. Aftonbladet TV will broadcast his fight vs Magnus Carlsen tomorrow
Comment