Wojtaszek wins György Marx Memorial with 2900 performance

The 9th Gyorgy Marx Memorial took place from Jund 16th-27th, 2011, in the Erzsébet Grand Hotel in Paks, Hungary. The tournament is held in commemoration of the great physicst György Marx. The main patron of the tournament is István Hamvas, the General Director of Nuclear Power Plant Ltd. Paks, the organiser Atomeromu TLK. The double round robin tournament with six players is intended to give the most talented young local grandmasters a chance to acquire experience. Time limit: 90 minutes/40 moves + 30minutes + 30 seconds/move from the first move. The Sophia Rule was applied: players can offer a draw in the first 40 moves only with arbiter’s permission in particular cases. Tiebreaks: 1. most wins, 2. result against each other, 3. Berger.

Prof. George Marx was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and died at the age of 76 in 2002 in Budapest. He played an important role in particle physics, in theoretical astrophysics and also in bioastronomy and SETI. After Michael Papagiannis and Frank Drake he was the third chairman of the International Astronamical Union (IAU) Bioastronomy Commission. He will be remembered also as an eminent teacher by his students, friends and colleagues. [Source: Ivan Almar at Seti]

The average rating of the GM tournament was 2664 = Category XVII. It was won by Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek, who demolished the opposition and finished a point an a half ahead of the two nearest rivals Smirin and Berkes. His performance: 2893. It will bring him twenty additional rating points on the next list. Radoslaw, we remind you, is the permanent second of World Champion Vishy Anand and confirms the theory (which we have just invented) that genetic information can be transferred by proximity alone.

At the other end of the expectancy scale: Viktor Bologan and Peter Acs played well below their FIDE rating and stand to lose 17 and 20 points respectively.

The women's section was won by Alina Kashlinskaya, whose 6.5 out of 10 against an average opposition of 2360 gives the 18-year-old an IM norm (according to our calculations). Here's a video from earlier days – she made her WGM title at the age of 15.

The tournament site has a zillion and a half pictures, but they are not captioned, and the viewer is slightly off synch (in Firefox 4). So here is a small selection.

The players in front of the venue, the Erzsébet Grand Hotel in Paks

Smirin vs Wojtaszek in round four – in spite of the announced "Sofia rule" (see above)
this game ended after fifteen moves in a draw.

2900 thinking: Radoslaw Wojtaszek during a game

Dropped 17 Elo points in Paks: Moldovan GM Viktor Bologan

Anna Rudolf attracted attention during the Vandoeuvre Open in December 2007, where she defeated the top seed Christian Bauer, finished ninth and scored WGM and IM norms. Following her good results in the initial rounds of the tournament, three players accused her of cheating, saying that a "secret Internet connection was transmitting the best moves with the help of Anna's lip balm". After the tournament, the Hungarian Chess Federation protested against the "unethical behavior" of the three accusers and asked the FIDE Ethics Commission to examine the case. This became known as the lip balm controversy.

A very disappointing event for many time Belarusian Women's Champion WGM
Anna Sharevich, who scored 3.0/10 and shed 23 points from her 2210 FIDE rating

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: GM section – WGM section You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.

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