European Championship: Mamedyarov defaulted 'for ten second delay'

The 13th European Individual Championship is taking place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, from March 20th to 31st, 2012. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves, plus 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move, starting from move one. The total prize fund is 100,000 Euros, with the top three taking 14,000, 11,000 and 9,000 Euros respectively.

Round seven – Sergei Azarov in the sole lead

Sergei Azarov (2667, BLR), ranked 32 in the starting list, became the sole leader with 6.0/7 points after beating Arkadij Naiditsch (2702, GER), who played inaccurately in the middle game and his position was already lost on move 30. Azarov chose a slower but secure continuation and won the game in 73 moves.

Sergei Azarov at the start of a very important game against Arkadij Naiditsch

The rest of the top board games were drawn. The struggles have become more intense, which is evidenced by the fact that not a single game ended in less than two hours, while most of the draws were made after more than four hours of play. Second seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2752, AZE) woke up from his “draw-sleep” with a quick win after the rest day. He beat Bulgarian youngster GM Grigor Grigorov (2489, BUL) in 32 moves and 2.5 hours of play. Also David Navara (2700, CZE) scored a clean win against Romanian Vlad-Cristian Jianu (2497, ROU).

Fourth seed, 18-year-old Dutchman Anish Giri (2717, NED) is still having a terrible time in this tournament. He suffered his third loss today, this time with the white pieces against Hungarian Tamas Fodor (2482, HUN). His rating performance is 2438 and he stands to lose 25 point on the FIDE list. The other prodigy, 15-year-old Illya Nyzhnyk (2585, UKR), also lost his game, against Ferenc Berkes (2682, HUN) and remained at 4.0/7 with a 2671. 13-year-old Bulgarian youngster Yavor Todorov (2029) defeated Serbian hopeful, 18-year-old FM Novak Cabarkapa (2314) in two hours.

Guest of the round was the Consul General of Turkey in Plovdiv, Ramis Shen, who came to support the ten Turkish participants in the European Championship. This visit was clearly inspiring for the young Turkish chess talents: European U14 champion Cemil Can Ali Marandi (2315, TUR) won against Andreas Diermair (2416, AUT), while another 14-year-old youngster, Vahap Sanal (2286, TUR) beat defeated another Austrian, Martin Neubauer, rated 2413.

• Here are the results of all games of round seven

Round eight – Mamedyarov defaulted for ten second delay

They say that life imitates art and assuredly today’s round illustrated this to the extreme as irony befitting a Shakespearian play unfolded. After round six’s Theatre of the Absurd, one would have thought the discussion on zero-tolerance to be over, but in fact it merely set the stage for what was to follow.

Round seven saw the elite Azeri player Shakhriyar Mamedyarov chalk up a quick and efficient win, and climb out of the hole he seemed to have fallen in. It was such that the trainer of the Azeri national team, Vladimir Tukmakov, felt this might be the start of Shakhriyar’s impending rise to the top, as this would give him the boost of confidence he had needed. In a live interview granted to Chess-News, he explained “I hope that this victory – a quick victory – will serve as a watershed between the first and second part of the tournament.”

Tukmakov also had strong words on the Georgian fiasco, and the zero-tolerance rule per se, a rule that mandates player to be seated at the board when the starting gong sounds – or forfeit the game. “I think its stupid because from time to time and in many cases, regardless of the participants, for some objective reasons, such incidents happen here that happened in, say, in the sixth round, when the six players simultaneously received zeros. Some of these six players held very high positions. And this incident greatly affected the tournament. The argument that if an athlete is absent at the start in other sports means disqualification does not work. Because in other sports, the athletes are also not given an allotted time. In general, it's silly to compare chess with other sports.” He further added: “When a man (IM Shota Azaladze) is having possibly the tournament of his life, then to end such a high note in this basest possible way, it is, I think, just wrong.”

Tukmakov made it clear that he supported a professional attitude in chess, and was not dismissive of proper behavior. When asked about the dress code, he was supportive to avoid excesses, but worried that trying to define it too closely might allow a narrow-minded arbiter to find any reason to punish a player not abiding to the rules. There should always be room for common sense.

Round eight showed how direly some room for common sense was needed, and it could not have been more ironic. IM Shota Azaladze, who had drawn his round seven game, continued with a 2800+ performance, and was paired against…. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (picture above). The result? 1-0 for the Georgian player. As the Azeri wrote in his Twitter, he arrived about ten seconds late – the tournament bulletin claims "more than a minute" – for a four to eight hour game, and was promptly forfeited. Simply appalling.

Other games: tenth seed Malakhov Vladimir (2705, RUS) defeated Sergei Azarov (2667, BLR) to go into pole position on the scoreboard. Maxim Matlakov (2632, RUS) beat Viktor Bologan (2687, MDA) and Vladimir Akopyan (2684, ARM) defeated Dennis Hismatulin (2656, RUS). All three wins were with the white pieces, and all three winners are now leading with 6.5/8 points. GM Alejandro Ramirez has annotated the Matlakov-Bologan game below.

We need to mention the black piece win of 255th seed, 15-year-old FM Kirill Alekseenko of Russia (picture above), rated 2367, against fellow countryman GM Boris Savchenko, rated 2580. Alekseenko has been playing at a 2692 performance level and stands to gain 49 points from it for the next FIDE rating list.

• Click to view results of all games

Here's an interesting game from round eight, annotated by GM Alejandro Ramirez.

Top rankings after round eight

• Full rankings and tiebreaks of all 348 players

Remaining schedule + Playchess commentary

After every round there will be special wrap-up commentary on Playchess. This starts at 20:00h Server time (= CET, = , 22:00h Moscow, 19:00h London, 3 p.m. New York, 12:00 noon California, 03:00h Beijing, 00:30h New Delhi – you can find the time in your location here). Commentary is in English.

Links Official tournament site All available games in PGN (zipped) Some of the games are being broadcast live on the official web site and some on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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