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Hou Yifan's Gibraltar 2017 Pairings Revisited
February 3, 2018
You'll recall the last round of Gibraltar last year:
Round Ten
This was Hou Yifan's last round game:
Gibraltar Masters 2017
Round 10, Feb. 2, 2017
Hou Yifan - Lalith, Babu A00 Grob's Attack
1.g4 d5 2.f3 e5 3.d3 Qh4+ 4.Kd2 h5 5.h3 hxg4 0-1
Hou Yifan felt that pairings were unfair and that this was the only way to protest. She had a 30-minute closed door meeting with the organizers and they let the tournament proceed to its end.
________
Hou Yifan felt that she was paired unfairly only against women.
Subsequent analysis has shown that the pairings were fair.
The whole subject has been revisited by Johannes Meijer in ChessBase:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-w...irings-in-2017
And who is Meijer?
Johannes Meijer lives with his wife in sunny Cochabamba, Bolivia. Now that he is retired he writes articles about chess and mathematics, e.g., Famous numbers on a chessboard (2010) and The Golden Triangle (2010), and from time to time he still plays chess. In 2014 he won the prize for the best veteran (Millor Vetera) during the 32e Open International d'Andorra.
In his analysis he finds that the pairing process at Gibraltar was quite random and the odds that a participant had to face 7 female opponents were 1 in 5311.
Further, in the Isle of Man Open of that year, the calculation shows that approximately three participants would face four female players. These players turned out to be Andrew J. Ledger, Michael Babar and Hou Yifan. Meijer says that it is completely explained by statistics - nothing strange happened at all.
Unnoticed was the occurrence of players having to meet 5 or 6 Indian opponents. Boris Gelfand and Varuzhan Akobian faced five and Adhiban Baskaran faced six! "The wheel of fortune clearly turns in mysterious ways and not only for Hou Yifan!"
A fun article (if you like math).
See also:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/hou-yi...-investigation
http://arbiters.fide.com/images/stor...ruary_2017.pdf
http://forum.chesstalk.com/showthrea...ighlight=yifan
February 3, 2018
You'll recall the last round of Gibraltar last year:
Round Ten
This was Hou Yifan's last round game:
Gibraltar Masters 2017
Round 10, Feb. 2, 2017
Hou Yifan - Lalith, Babu A00 Grob's Attack
1.g4 d5 2.f3 e5 3.d3 Qh4+ 4.Kd2 h5 5.h3 hxg4 0-1
Hou Yifan felt that pairings were unfair and that this was the only way to protest. She had a 30-minute closed door meeting with the organizers and they let the tournament proceed to its end.
________
Hou Yifan felt that she was paired unfairly only against women.
Subsequent analysis has shown that the pairings were fair.
The whole subject has been revisited by Johannes Meijer in ChessBase:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-w...irings-in-2017
And who is Meijer?
Johannes Meijer lives with his wife in sunny Cochabamba, Bolivia. Now that he is retired he writes articles about chess and mathematics, e.g., Famous numbers on a chessboard (2010) and The Golden Triangle (2010), and from time to time he still plays chess. In 2014 he won the prize for the best veteran (Millor Vetera) during the 32e Open International d'Andorra.
In his analysis he finds that the pairing process at Gibraltar was quite random and the odds that a participant had to face 7 female opponents were 1 in 5311.
Further, in the Isle of Man Open of that year, the calculation shows that approximately three participants would face four female players. These players turned out to be Andrew J. Ledger, Michael Babar and Hou Yifan. Meijer says that it is completely explained by statistics - nothing strange happened at all.
Unnoticed was the occurrence of players having to meet 5 or 6 Indian opponents. Boris Gelfand and Varuzhan Akobian faced five and Adhiban Baskaran faced six! "The wheel of fortune clearly turns in mysterious ways and not only for Hou Yifan!"
A fun article (if you like math).
See also:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/hou-yi...-investigation
http://arbiters.fide.com/images/stor...ruary_2017.pdf
http://forum.chesstalk.com/showthrea...ighlight=yifan