The Tal Memorial finishes tonight and it has revealed at least one thing to me. Previously I suggested that double round robins encouraged more conservative play than single round robins, in that players were happy to draw with Black and then fight against the same opponent with White (or course their opponent is probably using the same strategy).
However the gathering of 10 of the worlds top players has seen just as many draws, if not more. After 7 rounds there were 5 players tied for first on +1, and in round 8 only Aronian v Svidler was decisive. Of course most of the draws were still pretty hard fought (No draw offers before move 40 is a tournament condition), but lack of decisive games in the later half of the tournament indicates, well, something.
Probably the outstanding result in this regard is Viswanathan Anand's +0=9-0 result. The normal explanation is that he keeps his powder dry for upcoming World Championship matches, but I'm sure Tigran Petrosian is smiling somewhere in the afterlife!
Here is his final round game against his upcoming World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand.
Gelfand, Boris - Anand, Viswanathan
6th Tal Memorial Moscow RUS (9), 25.11.2011
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4 comments:
Hey Shaun in team competitions what's the standard criteria to determine properly the board medal performers? In a Team Swiss/Roundrobin tourneys what's the recommended tie-breaks regularly used? I have Swiss Manager for pairings? Thank you very much for your time...allanpelias@hotmail.com
What I don't get is: Carlsen and Aronian finished on the same points, with two wins; they drew their game; Aronian beat 3rd and 6th while C beat 9th and 10th; the average of the players A beat was higher than the average of the players C beat; but Carlsen won on "countback"!
AO
@Allan
The current system for Olympiads is simply Performance Rating for Board medals. While this seems obvious, the change from the old system was met with dismay from the lower ranked teams. This was because it was previously percentage score, and there was always a chance that an outstanding performer on a weaker team might pick up a board prize (eg Stuart Fancy from PNG won a Gold and Silver medal at 2 Olympiads).
If players are tied on PR, then the tie-breaks at the Olympiad are: Most games played, PR after removing result against lowest rated opponent, PR after removing result against 2 lowest rated opponents etc
In schools events I've directed I've either used straight SOS (which can be tricky to calculate without a computer in a short period of time), or simply team SOS, on the principle that if a team has played a stong set of opponents, chances are the player concerned has as well.
@Alex, the first tie-break for this tournament was most number of games with Black. The argument is that as having white is a slight advantage, scoring the same number of points with more blacks is a stronger performance. (This is one of the valid FIDE tie-break methods btw).
Interestingly Carlsen seems to have a better tie-break in just about every tournament he ties for first in, no matter what the tie break system is (most blacks, 3-1-0 etc)
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