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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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I think some of the games have small glitches. The Miller v Haessel game from round two saw White miss a win of a rook when they agreed to a draw.
Yes, I made an error entering the game, thanks for pointing it out. The King should be sitting on f7 in the final position. Will be corrected in the next upload.
The Calgary International Blitz Championship will take place tonight after round 6. Some of the players from the International will also play. GM Shabalov will be in attendance as well as some of Calgary's best players to get a crack at the prize money. The tournament will be played in the Oakanagan room at the Ramada Inn, Downtown Calgary. Even if you can't play, come on down and see some of the action. Entry is just $10. Should be a blast. I will try to take some video and post it on our website later.
The Calgary International Blitz Championship will take place tonight after round 6. Some of the players from the International will also play. GM Shabalov will be in attendance as well as some of Calgary's best players to get a crack at the prize money. The tournament will be played in the Oakanagan room at the Ramada Inn, Downtown Calgary. Even if you can't play, come on down and see some of the action. Entry is just $10. Should be a blast. I will try to take some video and post it on our website later.
Great fun at blitz! First was shared by GMs Shabalov and Kovalyov with 8.5/10 each. Third was shared by GM Dmitry Gurevich and IM Eric Hansen with 6.5/10. Although, Eric almost had an advantage over the field in the last round since he got me as an opponent:-)
I see the final crosstable on the webpage showing GM's Kovalyov and Gurevich winning with 6.5/9, but no round reports since round 5. Will these be uploaded? Any norms made?
Well basically, it was the only legal pairing possible. The fact that we only had 16 players made it next to impossible to do the pairings, avoiding any 3 whites or blacks in a row. Take a close look at the crosstable. In round 9, all the pairings look out of wack.
FM Vladimir Pechenkin tied all 5 GMs! It looks to me like his 5.5 score, 2391 average opponent's rating, is an IM norm.
FM Richard Wang defeated an IM, drew 2 GMs and an IM but drawing 2 untitled players, scoring 4.5, stopped him from getting an IM norm (average rating 2375 needed a score of 5.5).
Congratulations to Vlad Pechenkin on his fine result and his first IM norm. The Calgary International has provided norm opportunities over the last 4 years and each year, someone has earned an IM norm.
Yes, Richard had a pretty good tournament although I'm sure he is a bit dissapointed by his final score. He should have earned a draw against GM Gurevich, came so close, but messed it up.
The Calgary International will be back again next year. Stay tuned for details, but it should be a very exciting event.
I will take a look. That game was online, but the dgt boards were giving us problems. If they would have worked, my job would have been so much easier!
Well basically, it was the only legal pairing possible. The fact that we only had 16 players made it next to impossible to do the pairings, avoiding any 3 whites or blacks in a row. Take a close look at the crosstable. In round 9, all the pairings look out of wack.
It's an old story. Those who do not understand pairings (including FIDE!) are likely to take potshots at the TD, but measures can be taken to minimize the possibilities of being forced to make bad pairings in the last (9th) round. One is to practice "look-ahead" when making the 8th round pairings. A subtler one concerns colour alternation. A TD rejoices when he assigned WBWBW (= Day) and of course BWBWB = Night alternations. But it is an unsustainable situation, as eventually the Day players will begin to run out of Night opponents to play. In the later rounds they will need to play Day opponents, which creates colour conflicts. The subtle solution is in odd-numbered rounds (3, 5, 7) to cross-pollinate between the Day and Night groups, creating sequences such as WBB, WBWBB, BWBWBWW. How many? That depends. I suppose somebody could work it out with statistics, but I'd guesstimate that 10 to 15% of the players should be cross-pollinated to the other alternation in each odd-numbered round. With a 16-18 player event, 10-15% would mean just two players (not playing against each other, eh, you don't want to offend sensibilities). Maybe % is not the right measure, as that same gut feeling tells me that 4 would sometimes be an appropriate number. For example, 2 in round 3, 4 in round 5, 2 or 4 in round 7. And careful not to send a player back into the alternation scheme that he started with; in this setup, avoid WBBWW.
Pairing rules and algorithms do not mention this, so proceed at your peril. FIDE reserves the right to reject your tournament. I don't believe that they ever have, but they keep making noises, such as the project to write a program which will check in detail the pairing validity of all events submitted.
The crosstable at the site does not give colour assignments, and I haven't bothered to recreate them from the PGN gamefile. It will be egg on my face if the recommendations I made above were followed and still there were problems. Pairings just aren't easy as the tournament gets longer.
I guess my point was that it seems crazy to give a player playing for a top prize a pairing vs someone at, or very near the bottom. Anyone in the middle would have been more natural, regardless of the colours people were due.
If I got an IM and someone I was battling with for a prize got someone 350 points less and was 4 points out of his score group, I would be pissed. Colours don't make that much of a difference. For a successful tournament, this eventuality should be considered next year. To me, the results are off.
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