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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Last 20 years, we had 12 National Championships, 3 of them were not-Zonal (2007, 2023, 2025) and 9 Zonals (2006, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2024).
Nikolay Noritsyn won all 3 not-Zonal championships.
Bator Sambuev won 3 Zonals (2011, 2012, 2017), while many players won once. I.Zugic in 2006, J.Hebert in 2009, T.Krnan in 2015, E.Bareev in 2019, Y.Zhang in 2022 and S.Thavandiran in 2024.
Theoretically, GM norm (which means GM title in Nikolay's case) was possible in Closed this year. Nikolay needed to score 7/9, which he did, but also play all 3 GMs (he did not play Bator) and get average opponents rating of 2380, which was highly unlikely.
But I think it is well past time for CFC leadership to own up to the fiasco at the end of the 2017 Zonal in Montreal. It eventually came down to a blitz playoff between GM Sambuev (of Montreal) and IM Noritsyn (of Toronto), after the two tied after the scheduled nine rounds (during which IM Noritsyn had defeated GM Sambuev in their head-to-head game), and then also split a Rapid-style playoff match. A video exists of the blitz game. This was perhaps the most sordid moment in the history of Canadian championships, going back to the 1870s. Fair resolution of the situation proved to be unachievable within the Canadian chess system.
I believe I am qualified to comment on this, having organized and helped to direct (assisting IA Alex Knox, recently deceased) the 1992 Canadian Zonal in Kingston. I worked for nearly three years, without any financial compensation (a few hundred dollars in expenses for travel, phone calls, and discussions while preparing), and arranged for an event proposal presentation at the Governors' meetings at the 1990 Canadian Open in New Brunswick; Kingston's proposal was accepted. For a $100 entry fee, it paid out $6k in prizes to the 12 contestants, provided they played through the event. Free accommodation and meal money was also supplied to all players for nearly two weeks, in a round-robin format. The 16-year-old FM Alex Lesiege, future GM, had his breakout tournament to finish as champion, earning the IM title, with GM Kevin Spraggett and IM Brian Hartman sharing second / third; GM Spraggett later won a four-game playoff match.
Yet the chief arbiter of the 2017 Montreal Zonal, who supposedly 'supervised' the blitz playoff (his only duty at that moment), received an International title from FIDE, despite the disastrous conclusion.
The mishap starts at 14:10. Ideally, Sambuev would not have been holding (and hiding) the Black Q in his left hand (after taking it at 8:30). Ideally, Noritsyn (not a newbie) would have known that an upside down Rook is still a Rook, not a Queen, according to FIDE (and so CFC) rules (only in the USA can it be a Q). Ideally, the arbiters would have recognized that pawn promotions were imminent and would've ensured extra Queens were available. Ideally, ideally, ideally, ...
I think this video should be shown at every Arbiter Training session. A reminder that arbitering a chess tournament can be a sleepy undertaking, ... until all hell breaks lose!
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