Maxime Vachier-Lagrave wins Dortmund 2016

MVL have a new weapon which works well. It is the coolnees amd relaxation weapon.

Before, he was to hot, and that made him vulnerable. The way as he play now is fantastic ...

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I am not surprized that he is now the number 2.

I remember his game in Tokyo against the Shogi Superstar Habu, which plays sometimes also western chess and is a solid 2400 player.

MVL played a lousy opening and the 2400 Japanese had a advantage. But then MVL started to work on his position. The way how he digged him out of this hole was impressive.

And his comments was very good.

I knew at this time already that here is a very special player on the way to the top.

MVL has been improving a lot to reach the top.

Why can't I share this news trough facebook? Only twitter and google+.

@ ngn : It depends on what you call wide ! For me, it is relatively wide (compared to certain tournaments : for exemple in the 2016 Candidates, the "gap" between the strongest and the weakest was only 37 points). But, on the one hand, I don't think at all that in can have negative consequences on the results, and, on the other hand, it always tend to diminish the draw percentage (with even some surprises from time to time, because a 2800+ player wanting very badly to win against a 2600+ player can very well find himself losing his game, in the end, if he is not sufficiently cautious !), so I rather think that it is a good idea to chose some 2600+ grandmasters for the lineups of important tournaments as this one...

So, for me, yes, the Elo range is a little wide in this tournament, but it is a good thing, and not a bad one !

@ MaxMinus : I agree that single round-robin tournaments are not wholly satisfying. But I think that this is nonetheless not a very important problem : in, for exemple, a tournament with 8 participants as this one, the difference is only that some will play three times with White and four with Black when some others will play four times with White and three times with Black, and also that two potential winners can play the same opponent with different colors (as an exemple, here, Vachier-Lagrave played Kramnik with White, while Caruana played Kramnik with Black), which can have some consequences on the opening preparation.

But globally, as, on the one hand, having White or Black doesn't have a very great statistical influence on the results (...it even happens sometime that in an important event, Black wins globally more games than White, as in the 2011 Kazan Candidates, for exemple...), and, on the other hand, the differences between players in terms of White and Black are only marginally significant, here, I don't think that it can have a big influence on the results of the tournaments.

As for the wide range of elo ratings that we find in this tournament, I don't see at all how it can have a negative influence on the results : for me, the only difference is that, when a 2800 player plays, for exemple, a 2600 player, a draw will be a negative result for him, and he must necessarily play for a win (a situation which tends, in my opinion, to create interesting games...). But, as a draw is always quite possible (a 2600+ grandmaster is not someone against anyone can win easily, even for a 2800+ player), I don't see at all how the consequence can be that the tournaments results are less significant.

The gap between the strongest and weakest player is 159 points. That's not "wide" by any means but completely normal.

I'm sorry, but a tournament with so few contestants, and with such a wide range of elo rating, a single round system is just ridiculous. I find single rounders annoying anyway, considering the mathematical aspect, but this is taking it beyond.