This event often flies under the radar (quick, who is the reigning European individual champion?) but it's a very strong one this year in Dresden. Ivanchuk is the top seed [he withdrew and isn't playing] in a massive field (over 400 players) that includes a broad swath of the GM class. Go here and click the Anzeigen button to see the player list. Around 40 players from the top 100 are playing in the eleven-round swiss from April 3-14. The only free day is April 10. They're using the new and ACP approved time control of 40 moves in 90, then 30'+30" for the rest of the game. The prize fund is 300,000 dollars, minus the FIDE tax. The top prize is $27,000. There are also brilliancy prizes and performance prizes. 33 men and 13 women (in a segregated event) qualify for the next stages of their respective world championship cycles. All technical details here. If the "Dresden 2008" and "Euro 2007" logos at the official site confuse you it's because Dresden is prepping for next year's Olympiad. The sponsor page is one of the most impressive I've seen.
That's Zdenko Kozul of course.
And by the way: it's damn official. The rating list on the FIDE website now gives Vishy the well-deserved first spot.
In the player list why is GM Robin Swinkels listed without a rating and seeded last?!
There is supposed to be another FIDE World Cup this year, right? Does this event act as a qualifier for Europe? If so, how many qualify? How about the players currently preparing for the candidates matches, are those that don't make it to Mexico qualified for the World Cup?
Okay, I found this on the Euro 2007 page:
7. QUALIFIERS
The Individual European Championships 2007 and the Individual Women`s Championships 2007 are qualification events for the next Chess World Cup or the next World Chess Championships for Women respectively. According to FIDE's tournament regulations and the decision of the ECU Board, 33 players from the men's section and 13 players from the women's section will qualify.
The list of players is impressive. 60 players rated 2600 or above. Must be one of the strongest swiss tournamets ever.
I see the name Iweta Rajlich in the women's participant list - this must be the former Iweta Radjewicz, having recently married a computer. Congratulations!
Any idea where the live games will be broadcast?
Just found out that Ivanchuk and Mameyarov are not in the first round pairings. They ARE on the participants list of this Spanish rapid chess festival, upcoming weekend: http://www.koali.com/festival/index_en.html Too bad for the Dresden organisers.
Oops Mamedyarov.
Looks like the official Euro2007 homepage has a broken link to the live transmission (http://www.dresden2008.de/www.live.dresden2008.de - does that link make any sense??) and the page loads in about 2 hours. Go figure.
Better luck next year? ;-)
UPDATE: someone obviously found the mistake and they´re frantically trying to correct it as the round has just started. Wicked fun!
Kirsan is going to every opening ceremony these days, and is even taking English lessons to improve on his speeches.
But he could improve his popularity with chess fans much more and a lot easier with a match (instead of a tournament) for the worldchampionship.
Now he will still be known as the man who killed or attempted to kill the match tradition for the worldchampionship.
Web site and live transmission seem to be up & running - not much going on in Alexey Dreev's game though... Aren't there any appearance fees or contracts with top players in FIDE events or does señor Martín simply cover any penalties of the players for breach of contract ? Maybe FIDE should consider deducting a handful ELO for last minute dropouts without cause...
Yes, I think that both Ivanchuk and Mamedyarov withdrew from Dresden.
I wished Mamedyarov good luck and this morning on ICC and thought he was joking when he said he was not playing Dresden. Looks like he wasn't kidding. :-(
... Maybe FIDE should consider deducting a handful ELO for last minute dropouts without cause...
--- Posted by: poisoned pawn at April 3, 2007 10:58
Without cause? Mamedyarov and Ivanchuk probably got a better deal to play in Spain than in Dresden. That's a good cause in my book.
So one should be considered a weaker chess player because he drops out of a tournament?
Ratings bear only some correlation to one's true strength as a chess player. Let's not erode that further.
There are three top players lured away to the same Spanish chess event, in case of Dreev apparently so late, that he even shows up in 1st round pairings and his "game" gets transmitted over internet. If this behaviour proliferates it becomes an organizational nightmare and impossible to promote an event which in turn makes it more difficult to find sponsors. It's also unfair because some players get free points. Therefore it has to be prevented and the question is by which measures. As I indicated I don't know if top players get appearance fees or have contracts with the organizer in this kind of FIDE championships. If everything else fails players who don't unterstand those interrelations could be given reason to do so in the future by temporary bans or deducting ELO's. It's normal procedure in sports: if e.g. Micheal Schuhmacher get's disciplined for speeding in pit lane he may miss the victory. Although as a driver he might have been the best that day the result doesn't reflect his "true strength".
Very bad R1 loss for Georgiev, missing 18...Bf8 winning the Queen for a Rook. Naiditsch´s 49...Rf1+?? in an opposite-coloured B+R endgame was also a nice one ;-)
Sounds like simple breach of contract to me. The Schumacher analogy doesn't hold since nobody is suggesting that Dreev be awarded a win and Schumacher in your example breaks the rules of the sport. ELO does not measure who wins/losses tournaments. It's a measure of who wins/losses individual chess games. A score of 5.5/6 is treated the same whether it won the tournament or only got you a second place or was even obtained in three separate tournaments. The most direct analogy in racing terms would be average lap speed.
Deducting the rating of a player also punishes all his opponents. Or should rating calculations not take the deduction in regard, perhaps?
Ratings have traditionally been "Zero Sum": If somebody loses points, his opponent gains.
Besides, do you really trust FIDE to treat all players the same when it comes to such ratings deductions. Right now, FIDE has relatively little discretion, in terms of influencing players' ratings. However, given what we've seen FIDE do with
respect to controversial decisions about deadlines for including recent events (specifically, the Morelia-Linares tournament), do we really want to given FIDE more power. Next thing we know, Danailov will be trying to dock Anand ratings points for showing up two minutes late to a game, or for not answering enough questions at a press conference.
If you assume the same K factor for both players ;-) Still I have to admit it was simply a bad idea beyond any possibility of repair. Alexey Dreev, who was listed as participant at the spanish site too, is playing after all, his round 1 game non-transmission must have been a technical glitch.