Trivia questions

[Victor Plotkin]

3 trivia questions about last 7 (since 2006) Canadian Closed.

1. Who played all tournaments?

2. Who scored the most points/tournament (average) by playing more than once?

3. Who got both FM and IM titles from Canadian Closed?

Fair play: don't use chess.ca or fide.com.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

You need to select text bellow to see the answer.

My guesses:

1. Nikolay N., Leonid G., Robert H., Michael B. (If only one person - NN).

2. Bator S. and Eric H. do great in Closed.

3. Arthur C. maybe

[Victor Plotkin]

And the right answer is...

1. N.Noritsyn played all 7 tournaments. R.Panjwani played 6 (except the last one), S.Thavandiran, L.Gerzhoy and V.Plotkin played 5. Many players played 4 times.

2. B.Sambuev is the clear leader with the average of 7.5 out of 9, after 4 tournaments (last 4). He got 7.5 in 2011 (shared 1st with Hansen and won the play-off), 8.5 (!) in 2012 (1.5 points above A.Kovalyov), 6 in 2015 and 8 in 2017 (shared 1st with Noritsyn and won the play-off).

The second best is M.Bluvshein: 6.5 points in 2006 (shared 2-5 place) and in 2009 (clear 2nd).

Third best is probably J.Hebert, who finished with 6.5 in 2007 (shared 1st with 3 other players, lost to Nikolay in play-off semifinal), 7.5 in 2009 (1st place, whole point above M.Bluvshtein) and 5 in 2012. His average is 6.33.

The next is L.Gerzhoy who finished every event either with 6 (twice) or with 6.5 (3 times, included 1-3 place in 2015). His average is 6.3 points

3 players have 6 points exactly

- N.Noritsyn, who finished once with 8 (in 2017 - shared 1st place with Sambuev), once with 4 (?!) and 5 more times between 5.5 and 6.5

- R.Wang, who finished twice with 6 points: in 2012 (and IM title) and in 2015.

- J.Tayar, who also finished twice with 6 points: in 2006 (and FM title) and 2009 (and IM title).

E.Hansen played 3 times, twice shared 1st place (in 2011 with Bator and in 2015 with T.Krnan and L.Gerzhoy). Eric got 7.5 in 2011 and 6.5 in 2015. However, his first tournament in 2006 he finished with just 2 points, which significantly reduces his average.

3. J.Tayar earned his FM title in 2006 and IM title in 2009. Both A.Calugar in 2011 and V.Lee in 2006 got their IM title without some unnecessary stuff like FM.

[Hans Jung]

Id forgotten about Jonathan Tayar. Good trivia question.

[Erik Malmsten]

Back in 2015 I wondered who was the top historic player and updated my list:

TotalPoints/Name/Percent/number of times played

164 Fox 77.1% 18
142 Yanofsky 76.3% 15
133.5 Morrison 76.7% 14
124.5 Spraggett 73.7% 13
98.5 Day 60% 12
97.5 Belson 72.2% 10
91 Narraway 61% 13
86 Blumin 68% 10
73 Vranesic 64% 8
68.5 Piasetski 55% 8
67.5 Nickoloff 57% 9
64.5 Hamilton 51% 12
63.5 Rauch 65% 9
63 Martin 66% 8
57.5 Gale 70.0% 7
56.5 Anderson 77.4% 7
53 Hebert 64% 7
52.5 Opsahl 63% 7
52 Vaitonis 61% 8
50 Hergott 56% 7
48 Eastman 75.0% 5
48 Joyner 70.6% 6
48 Berry 50% 7

47.5 Noritsyn 66% 8
46 Therien 47% 8
45.5 Fuster 56% 6
44.5 Macskasy 52% 5
44 Ivanov 77.2% 5
43.5 Hartman 59% 6
43 Biyiasas 67.2% 4
42 Davison 70.0% 5
41.5 Le Seige75.5% 5
40 Livshits 54% 7
39 Whitfield 44% 7
36.5 Yerhoff 64% 5
36 C. Smith 59% 5
35 Brunet 48% 6
33.5 Panjwani 53% 6
33.5 Coudari 52% 4
33 O'Donnell 56% 5
33 Schleifer 50% 6
33 Allan 43% 5
31.5 Gerzhoy 70.0% 5
31.5 Thavandiran 58% 6
31 Jung 45% 7
30.5 Gentes 43% 7
30 Sambuev 83.3% 4
29.5 Witt 60% 3
28 M. Smith 82.9% 3
28 Howe 80.0% 4


Also
7 Kovalyov 77.8% 1
22 Charbonneau 75.9% 3
23 Bohatirchuk 74.2% 3
25.5 Bluvshtein 70.8% 4
23 Krnan 64% 4
20.5 Hansen 57% 3

[Victor Plotkin]

Interesting, that even if we take into account results from the previous century, Bator still has the highest performance (%-wise) among all Canadian players. 30/36 against a pretty solid field is truly amazing. His only two losses came from the same player (N.Noritsyn).

[Brian Hartman]

Hi Victor, this is interesting, as is the ELO attempt to compare past to present. However, there are so many mitigating factors to attempt a true apples to apples...rating inflation over the past 20 years, round robin versus Swiss events (e.g., GM Spraggett's Canadian Zonal win in 1994 is difficult to rival), the affect of Internet/computer chess preparation, playing conditions, prize fund, performance rating, whether the players were devoted or part-time (e.g., IM Zvonko Vranesic - an amazing person, who combined his esteemed engineering profession with such a high chess level) etc., etc.

Who would win a tournament or match between a historical player (say Paul Morphy) versus a current player (say Alexei Shirov) assuming Morphy was updated on theory to date? It is always fun to speculate, but we will never know.

I was lucky enough to play players from Shamkovich to Spragggett and many other top North American players from 1978-1992, but to ask me who was better than the other is an impossible question, as it always depended on so many factors. One thing is clear, they all were great players and I learned from them all, however, my sentimental favorite is always Bryon Nickoloff, whose talent I have never witnessed since.


Brian

[Ian Findlay]

Hi Victor, this is interesting, as is the ELO attempt to compare past to present. However, there are so many mitigating factors to attempt a true apples to apples...rating inflation over the past 20 years, round robin versus Swiss events (e.g., GM Spraggett's Canadian Zonal win in 1994 is difficult to rival), the affect of Internet/computer chess preparation, playing conditions, prize fund, performance rating, whether the players were devoted or part-time (e.g., IM Zvonko Vranesic - an amazing person, who combined his esteemed engineering profession with such a high chess level) etc., etc.

I was lucky enough to play players from Shamkovich to Spragggett and many other top North American players from 1978-1992, but to ask me who was better than the other is an impossible question, as it always depended on so many factors. One thing is clear, they all were great players and I learned from them all, however, my sentimental favorite is always Bryon Nickoloff, whose talent I have never witnessed since.


Brian

I still marvel at Nick's talent. For him, it was all about the opening. I was always so impressed with his opening prep, before engines. He would gladly show me his analysis. I remember after he played Kortchnoi in Toronto in the mid eighties, he was showing him his analysis, but Kortchnoi did not want lessons, so he just said, 'Yes, I understand!". My 2 most feared opponents for opening prep were Bryon Nickoloff and Brian Hartman!

[Erik Malmsten]

Interesting, that even if we take into account results from the previous century, Bator still has the highest performance (%-wise) among all Canadian players. 30/36 against a pretty solid field is truly amazing. His only two losses came from the same player (N.Noritsyn).

Another way to look at the top players in the Swiss era of the Canadian Closed is looking at the top rating performance:

2828 Bator Sambuev 2012
2754 Nikolay Noritsyn 2017
2741 Bator Sambuev 2011
2722 Eric Hansen 2011
2697 Alexandre Lesiège 2001
2679 Anton Kovalyov 2012
2678 Jean Hébert 2009
2676 Kevin Spraggett 2001
2673 Alexandre Lesiège 1999
2673 Eric Hansen 2015

2667 Bator Sambuev 2017
2646 Leonid Gerzhoy 2015
2630 Bator Sambuev 2015
2622 Kevin Spraggett 2002
2620 Tomas Krnan 2015
2618 Pascal Charbonneau 2004
2617 Pascal Charbonneau 2002
2612 Igor Zugic 2006
2601 Louise Jiang 2009
2601 Leonid Gerzhoy 2011

2588 Mark Bluvshtein 2009
2584 Raja Panjwani 2011
2578 Arthur Calugar 2011
2576 Razvan Preotu 2015
2572 Alexandre Lesiège 2002
2570 Nikolay Noritsyn 2012
2567 Dimitry Tyomkin 2004
2565 David Ross 1999
2564 Kevin Spraggett 1999
2563 Goran Milicevic 2004

2563 Artiom Samsonkin 2007
2561 Leonid Gerzhoy 2012
2555 Nikolay Noritsyn 2011
2554 Lawrence Day 1999