Hou mystified by pairings, sits out round five

Carlsen and six others tied for lead

The foremost games of the round were the two between the last players left with 100% scores: former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov against Magnus Carlsen, and Alex Lenderman, who has often shared his deep analysis with ChessBase readers, against Pavel Eljanov.

Kasimdzhanov opened with 1.e4 without trepidation, perhaps wondering whether the World Champion would repeat his ‘Tiger Modern’ from round two. When Carlsen replied with 1…Nc6, essentially inviting all manner of unorthodox opening play, Kasimdzhanov backed down slightly, and a slightly offbeat Pirc ensued. If Magnus was hoping to just outplay his opponent, he also had to deal with his serious space disadvantage, which Rustam negotiated well, and they eventually drew after 72 moves.

It as nice to see both players leave the board in visble good spirits after the hard-fought game that had lasted no fewer than 72 moves. | Photo: John Saunders

Alexander Lenderman showed that his share of first was not a fluke, as he outplayed his higher rated opponent, Pavel Eljanov, for a good portion of the game, and even achieved what was likely a winning endgame advantage.

Lenderman ½-½ Eljanov

Alexander Lenderman has shown great chess so far | Photo: Alina L'Ami

Unfortunately for his supporters, this was shortly before the time control, and by the time move 40 was reached, his advantage had been reduced to a four vs three rook endgame that the Ukrainian held to a draw.

Fabiano Caruana, who made waves by beating Vladimir Kramnik in the very first round, will be kicking himself slightly as he missed a nice opportunity to get ahead in his game against Nils Grandelius.

Grandelius ½-½ Caruana

Though he strived hard to wrest the advantage again, he never quite got the same opportunity and they drew.

One advantage of a big open such as this compared to a tighter round robin is how many colleagues and friends the players get to run into | Photo: Alina L'Ami

One player who did not miss his chance was the young Indian grandmaster Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, who completely swamped his opponent Benjamin Bok.

Fabiano Caruana faced Nils Grandelius in round four | Photo: John Saunders

Benajmin Bok 0-1 Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (annotated by Elshan Moradiabadi)

WGM Enkhtuul Altan had to be a combination of shocked and delighted to get an opportunity to play against Vladimir Kramnik despite her modest start and playing on board 50. | Photo: Alina L'Ami

Hikaru Nakamura pressed hard throughout the entire game and endgame, but was unable to get his Indian opponent, GM S. P. Sethuraman to crack and they drew. | Photo: Maria Emelianova / Chess.com

While the tale of any event, short of a scandal or controversy, is inevitably comprised of the action by the top boards and players, such a large open with such a rich selection of strong players means that there will also be a wealth of fascinating struggles that have no direct effect on the podium, yet deserve to be seen and enjoyed. One such game was between young Argentinian GM Alan Pichot, former World under-16 champion, who overcame his 2700+ opponent, Zoltan Almasi from Hungary in an imbalanced tussle.

Alan Pichot and Zoltan Almasi showed that all games deserve to be checked out, not just the elite | Photo: Maria Emelianova / Chess.com

Alan Pichot 1-0 Zoltan Almasi (annotated by Elshan Moradiabadi)

Hou sits out fifth round

Speaking of controversies, it was with considerable surprise that we saw Hou Yifan paired against her fourth consecutive female player in the Isle of Man Open. This stands out for a variety of reasons, not least of which is Hou Yifan's very public protest in Gibraltar earlier this year, when she refused to play her last round after being paired against no fewer than seven female players. She already refused to take part in the latest Women World Champion cycle, effectively leaving the title open to any and all other colleagues, in order to focus on honing her skills against the best male players in the world. Her campaign and ambitions met with unprecedented success when she took clear first at the Biel GM tournament, but here once more, the pairings gods seem to have conspired against her.

Frustrated by the pairings, Hou has opted to skip round five, receiving instead a half point bye.

"It is difficult to imagine that the organisers are doing this on purpose," she said, reached for cooment via Skype. "There is no reason for that." 

Results for round four (top 30)

Top pairings for round five

Update 12:30: We reached Hou Yifan for comment who informed that she is not considering withdrawing at this time, but did request a ½ bye due to her frustration with her pairings thus far. Initially the bye was recorded as a zero point bye, but it was later updated to ½ point along with byes for Arkadij Naiditsch, Laurent Fressinet and FM Michael Babar.

Update 16:00: We received the following information on pairing procedures from the Chief Arbiter, IA Peter Purland:

I can confirm we are using Swiss Manager version 12.0.0.171 (21 June 2017) and Swiss Master version 5.6 (build 12). These programmes do not use the same pairing programme.
 
Our procedures are that I input results and make pairings with Swiss Manager, Deputy Chief Arbiter IA Arno Eliens does this in Swiss Master independently. Then we compare full pairings of both programmes and only if these are exactly the same do we publish the pairings.

Swiss Manager is based on the JaVaFo algorithm which is standard for Dutch Swiss pairings. See FIDE pairing rules, for details.

Links

• Official tournament site
• ChessBase Live Broadcast (with many games analyzed)
• Complete standings (Chess-Results)