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.
First let us take a pro forma look at the key results. On the top board Vladimir Akopyan (2684, Armenia) and Vladimir Malahov (2705, Russia) drew their game in 16 moves with threefold repetition of the position.
Akopian,Vladimir (2684) - Malakhov,Vladimir (2705) [C67]
13th EICC round_9 Plovdiv BUL (9.1), 29.03.2012
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5
Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Nc3 Ke8 10.h3 h5 11.Rd1 Be7 12.Ne2 Be6 13.Nf4 Bc8 14.Ne2
Be6 15.Nf4 Bc8 16.Ne2 ½-½.
Mikhail Kobalia (2666, Russia) beat Baadur Jobava (2706, Georgia), Ernesto Inarkiev (2695, Russia) beat Ivan Sokolov (2653, Netherlands) and Laurent Fressinet (2693, France) won against Anton Korobov (2679, Ukraine). This left seven players – five Russians, one Armenian and one Frenchman – in the lead, with 7.0/9 points and performances in the 2800 range – see our standings below.
There is one game you will want to take note of: 14-year-old Turkish player Vahap Sanal, rated 2286 defended a rook and pawn vs queen ending against his compatriot Emre Can, 2476. Now comes the juicy bit: the game lasted seven hours and 52 minutes, and a total of 228 moves were made. Guinness people, are you reading this?
And now the traumatic part. As we reported yesterday, the second seed in this Championship, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, had just begun his second-half surge when he ran afoul of the "zero tolerance" rule that punishes any player who is not seated at the board when the starting gong for a round sounds with immediate forfeit. The Azeri GM arrived "about ten seconds late" (he said) for his round eight game and was defaulted. Today he topped it by breaking a different rule: the Sofia Rule which forbids players to offer or accept draws before move 40. In his black game against Alvar Alonso Rosell, rated 2513, the two agreed to a draw after move 19 and were immediately defaulted. The game was scored 0:0.
Defaulted GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov,
Alonso Rosell,Alvar (2513) - Mamedyarov,Shakhriyar (2752) [E90]
13th EICC round_9 Plovdiv BUL (9.76), 29.03.2012
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.e4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.h3 c5 7.d5 b5 8.cxb5
a6 9.a4 Nbd7 10.Rb1 axb5 11.axb5 Nb6 12.Be2 e6 13.dxe6 Bxe6 14.0-0 d5 15.exd5
Nbxd5 16.Nxd5 Nxd5 17.Bg5 Qb6 18.Qd2 Nc7 19.Bh6 Nxb5 0:0.
Another game, lower down on the table, ended in a similar default:
Baron,Tal (2497) - Safarli,Eltaj (2645) [E05]
13th EICC round_9 Plovdiv BUL (9.80), 29.03.2012
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 Be7 5.Bg2 0-0 6.0-0 dxc4 7.Qc2 a6 8.Qxc4
b5 9.Qc2 Bb7 10.Bd2 Be4 11.Qc1 Bb7 12.Qc2 Be4 13.Qc1 Bb7 14.Qc2 0:0.
But hang on, we hear you cry, why was the Akopian-Malakhov 16-move game quoted above allowed to stand, while these two were forfeited? Baron-Safarli was also a three-fold repetition, but – and this is the critical difference – while Akopian and Malakhov formally asked the referee permission to abandon their game, Baron and Safarli did not. They simply signed the scoresheets and quit.
Agitated players (except Mamedyarov, who is smiling) discussing with the
arbiters.
Photo by Chess-News, where you
can also hear the conversation in an audio file.
And what about Alonso-Mamedyarov? Well, they did not even repeat, but simply agreed to a draw. Mamedyarov has in the meantime abandoned the tournament and will not play the final rounds.
Steve Giddins, who drew our attention to what had transpired in Plovdiv – Steve speaks fluent Russian and can follow a bit of Bulgarian – criticizes the organisers sharply on his blog, but writes: "In the specific case of Mamedyarov, anyone who has had dealings with him will probably suspect that he was not especially near the front of the queue, when the interpersonal skills were being handed out, and so may not feel very sympathetic towards him. Agreeing the draw without waiting for 40 moves was especially silly."
And GM Romain Edouard, who contacted us with a computer problem around midnight, said:
"About the forfeit problems today, I did not see anything. According to what I heard, Mamedyarov and his opponent agreed a draw before move 40 and were given 0-0 according to the rules. Baron and Safarli's case is different: it seems they repeated the position and signed for a draw without getting the confirmation of the arbiter, and also were given 0-0. About this second case, if this is actually what happened, I understand that arbiters should apply the rules, but I don't understand the rule itself, since I guess chess players should be clever enough to count up to three...
About the zero-tolerance rule, I am against it in general, especially in big open tournaments. I will just give one argument: nobody is happy to see someone lose because he didn't run fast enough to the game (spectators are ashamed, and most of the times opponents are unhappy), and I'm not sure anyone cares if someone arrives ten seconds late, while there are 300 players here. Of course it would give a bad image if everyone was coming late every day. But this never happens. On the other hand, if on round 11, a player on the first board comes three seconds late to the game, it will ruin the entire European Championship."
But let's have some real chess. Here is a very exciting game from round nine, annotated by GM Alejandro Ramirez.
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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.
| Day | Date | Time | Program | Playchess commentary |
| Friday | March 30 | 15:00 | Round 10 | Robert Ris |
| Saturday | March 31 | 13:00 | Round 11 | Valeri Lilov |
| Saturday | March 31 | 20:00 | Closing | |
| Sunday | April 01 | Departure | ||
LinksSome 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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