Monday, September 17, 2007

I've Started So I'll Finish

Over in Mexico it's a rest day. I wonder who's happiest so far. Perhaps not Kramnik even though he's in lead - he's already used up 3 of his 7 Whites so would probably have wanted to be more than +1 by now. On the other hand he did get a draw with Black against his main rival.

Any thoughts on how things have been progressing?


In other news:-

"Correspondence Chess IM Jerry Asquith has reached the televised part of the BBC quiz Mastermind. His specialist subject will be Alexander Alekhine so tune in tonight at 7.30 on BBC2"

I got that from Speedy Malc's Daily Telegraph column so perhaps I should be a little less rude about him in future.

6 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

The first round was strange, but there's been some interesting games so far. I particularly liked Kramnik's win v Morozevich. I think Kramnik will be gutted not to have beaten Grischuk. Aronian's loss to Anand with white was a bit of a shock, but Aronian is a player capable of winning a lot, so maybe it doesn't rule anything out just yet...

ejh said...

Do they need to have imbalances of colours?

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the colour imbalance thing I have to be honest.

I assume it *is* necessary otherwise it wouldn't be run like that. On the otherhand it doesn't seem to me as if it *should* be necessary. Mind you I've never tried working a playing schedule out so what do I know.

As for the tournament so far...

a notable absence of Sicilian Defences compared to San Luis. I'd read somewhere that +6 was being predicted as a possible winning score but maybe as little as +3 will do it.

Anonymous said...

Presumably the pairings are based on a Berger Table, use of which FIDE stipulates for its events... and I guess it's impossible for each player to have alternating colours (or even two of each colour in the first four games).

(Angus)

Tom Chivers said...

Mm, they play each other twice - once with black, one with white. So there is no imbalance.

Anonymous said...

Well it's pretty obvious that it's not possible to have alternate black and whites in every round. It's presumably possible to time the colour repetitions for odd numbered rounds (so no colour imbalances) but this would result in a particular playing order which may not be appropriate.

Richard