Economist-SGSEU-1 Saratov and Spartak Vidnoe win European Club Cup

32 Responses to “Economist-SGSEU-1 Saratov and Spartak Vidnoe win European Club Cup”

1. Jan on October 11th, 2009 23:24
   

   To me, this tournament is not interesting, for the reason that the so-called ‘clubs’ just consist of hired GM-s. Its just a show of money.
2. Thomas on October 11th, 2009 23:43
   

   Why was the loss of Yerevan against Saratov “a big surprise”? Saratov had a rating advantage on boards 2-6, particularly the two lowest boards. Maybe you are influenced by the winners reputation of the Armenian team, but
   1) they overperformed at the last two Olympiads, no guarantee that this will always continue to be the case
   2) more important: Olympic teams have four boards, this competition had six – and Yerevan’s board 5 Andriasian turned out to be the weak spot (2.5/7).

   Maybe there was also some “justice” involved, as Yerevan won four other key matches with the minimum result of 3.5-2.5 . This includes the drama against Baden-Baden. I was watching live (and rooting for the “German” team): Naiditsch and Pashikian were basically down to increments for at least the last 10 moves when Naiditsch blundered. I wonder if he mixed up the move order and planned to play 67.-Re2 followed by 68.-Qd4. White then has lots of queen checks, but can the black king eventually escape to a6?
3. Castro on October 12th, 2009 00:20
   

   @Jan

   Sorry, but “a show of money” is a tournament like Bilbao, Sofia or (next) London, in which chess is falsified by stupid time controls, draw regulations and scoring points, with all the false excuses, and they merely get top players (and hence fan audience) because of the money. Chess is a victim there, IMO.
   At least at ECC the money role is perfectly clear, and you have some reason, of course, but it is common to all sports, in fact.
   One of the few things I didn’t like in ECC was the very short number of Swiss rounds (7). Not enough at all here!!

   @Thomas

   Naidish was trying to win for most part of the game, but it seems that in time-trouble he chose a bad plan and culminated with a suicidal move. You’re maybe right about the move order posibility! And kute plan, king to a6
4. Crouchyboy on October 12th, 2009 01:56
   

   Look at the position in Pavlovic – Nakamura after Black’s 17th move… pawns doubled on three different files! =D A remarkable game by the American, full credit for the win.
5. Marcos Sander on October 12th, 2009 07:40
   

   If money is put on chess events i think we should celebrate and not hated it.Our game is not a popular game so when there’s somene with money to make the game grow i think it should be supported.As any other human being chess players work for money as an physician works for money either.There’s nothing wrong to show money and the best players in the world.Congratulations for the organizers of the event.
6. John A. on October 12th, 2009 07:42
   

   @Thomas

   It may be possible for a team to “overperform” in 1 Olympiad… but to do a repeat performance in the next Olympiad shows that it was not overperformance, but rather a demonstration of actual ability.

   Although you criticize Mika for winning many rounds with “only” the minimum point differential of 3.5:2.5, you forget to consider the fact that on average, Mika faced far more difficult opponents than did many of the other top teams, and this can be seen in their very high Tie Break 2 score.

   In particular, compare the RtgAvg of Ural Svedrdlovskaya and OSG Baden-Baden’s opponents across the several boards and compare that with Mika’s. You will see that there is a noticeable difference in the difficulty of opponents that their boards faced throughout the entire competition.

   In 7 rounds, Mika (7th seed) played against 6 top-10 seeds (#1, #2, #3, #4, #9, #10)

   In 7 rounds, Economist (1st seed) played against only 3 top-10 seeds (#5, #7, #10)

   In 7 rounds, Ural (2nd seed) played against only 1 top-10 seed… which was against Mika. Ural won the bronze medal.

   In 7 rounds, OSG Baden-Baden (4th seed) played against only 2 top-10 seeds (#7, #10).

   Obviously, because Mika consistently faced high seeds with high ELOs, and due to how matchups are arranged in the Swiss system, it was difficult for them to win rounds by a big score differential. Baden-Baden’s several wins by impressive margins seems less impressive if you consider that they were against teams seeded #23, #26, #31.

   So again, despite being a somewhat lower seed, Mika’s players have won 2 Olympiads in a row and have now gotten 2nd place in the ECC… which shows that their victories are not an “overperformance”, but rather a demonstration of their actual ability. Can a team really be successful in 3 consecutive events by sheer coincidence? I highly doubt that!
7. iLane on October 12th, 2009 09:25
   

   “Before we knew it the tournament was already over…”
   ???
   I thought you, the editors of this site are aware of its content. This tournament was on the front page under “current events” all the time.

   About the money issue I was wondering what the effect would be if the players should play with their own money – like in poker. First of all you won’t need sponsor money, secondly maybe they would be more motivated to win…
8. Peter Doggers on October 12th, 2009 09:28
   

   No need to take everything literally. Of course we knew the tournament would end on Saturday, but still it felt as if it was suddenly over.
9. Sergio on October 12th, 2009 10:48
   

   Borgerhout did very well with a lot (if not all?) Dutch players in the team.
10. Thomas on October 12th, 2009 11:00
    

    @John A.: You have a number of points, but why this emotional reaction? The reason for my comment was: The #1 seed beat the #7 with a small margin, which Peter Doggers considers “a big surprise”. I thought “Huh?” and tried to figure out why he thinks so.

    “Overperforming” – in my book this means a TPR significantly higher than the player’s rating. Doing so repeatedly is a measure of one’s ability or maybe rather potential. However, if Sargissian and Tigran Petrosian always played the way they do in team events, including this one, both should be about 50 points higher-rated? And, as I pointed out, the reason why Yerevan finished “only second” may have been that Andriasian (ELO 2612, TPR 2510) was not at all capable of a similar stunt. Maybe the sponsor should be praised for selecting an all-Armenian team, but maybe he didn’t have a choice: you are only allowed to nominate “foreign mercenaries” if they also played for the team at other occasions.

    Close match results: I didn’t “criticize” Yerevan for doing so … I just think that several of those matches could also have ended 3-3 or 2.5-3.5 – in particular, the one against Baden-Baden depended on a single time trouble drama. (Maybe in some other cases the match wasn’t as close as it looks, if Yerevan consolidated an early lead by drawing some of the other games.)

    Strength of opponents: You have a point, but cutting off at #10 is still arbitrary and a bit misleading. Saratov played #13 and #14, Baden-Baden played #12 Werder Bremen (result 5.5-0.5). Ural played sort of a Swiss gambit, drawing their round 3 match and thus avoiding the very strongest opponents for a while – yet they also played #11, 12, 14 and 16.

    There may have been something wrong with the pairing system in round 2, when Yerevan and Moscow already played each other, while all of the other favorites had second-tier opponents. And generally, one could argue that – despite the clear result – seven rounds weren’t enough to determine the winner because many top teams hadn’t faced each other. As a matter of fact, I was genuinely surprised that “the tournament was already over” – I even speculated that Nakamura took a quick draw with white against Grischuk to conserve his energy for future opponents.
11. Hortensius on October 12th, 2009 15:34
    

    Aronian is geting close to Carlsen. My guess is that these two players will be clear top two in the future…
12. Castro on October 12th, 2009 18:23
    

    @Marcos Sander

    “Our game is not a popular game”

    This is a matter of viewpoint. Of course we think it should be even much more widely played, and tough in scools, etc.
    But in comparison, and in some way, it is as popular as one could hope, being the 3rd world sport in number of federated players (after football and athletics). Not to mention the unfederated practitioners.

    @all

    In fact I stress that the biggest problem at ECC was it’s ridicularly short number of rounds.
    If it was not for the killer argument “All teams accepted to play it”, one should rate that “final clasification” as simply false. Wrong! Not fair, not real. As to a chess competition concerns.
13. Felix Kling on October 12th, 2009 18:42
    

    The graphic with the arrow doesn’t look that well, if you look for a program that generates nice arrows, you could try Aquarium. There you can also export the images easily in the right size (richt click- > save as image, you need version 3.1.2).
14. John A. on October 12th, 2009 20:52
    

    @Felix

    Does Aquarium allow you to create multiple sets of arrows appearing simultaneously (and manually placed by the user)? For example, to allow the user to “map out” their own analysis?
15. LajosArpad on October 13th, 2009 04:09
    

    As usual, I would criticize the participant clubs for using so much of “alien” force again, by paying so many mercenaries again, but I don’t do that now. I have other priority here… What are Jew teems doing in a European teem championship? Europe has borders, You know. Any non European teem should not be welcomed in such an event and the organizer should be ashamed to allow such a trickery. Israel is not part of Europe, You can ask any Geography teacher. What will be next time? Will we have teems from the USA, China, Japan because they have money? When federations from all over the world can compete, the tournament is called a World Championship of Chess Clubs or something else, but not an ECC. And if non European clubs can compete here, why are only the Jew teems allowed to play? Sincerely, I don’t understand this, but this is certainly not an ECC.
16. rajeshv on October 13th, 2009 06:19
    

    @Lajos, one data point isn’t enough for profiling (racial/religious profiling, in your case). while your central question may be a valid one, the way it is framed is not nice.
17. Peter Doggers on October 13th, 2009 08:39
    

    Lajos, the fact that you’re emphasizing “Jewish” twice is scary. The other (European) teams probably had some Jewish players playing for them as well, so what’s your point exactly?
18. RobBrown on October 13th, 2009 10:07
    

    It can hardly be said the Yerevan Team was a crew of internationals persuaded to play for their team by being offered a wad of cash, yet the Armenians narrowly missed winning the entire event. At the end of the day, does it really matter whether a player’s motivation is cash or country?
19. Thomas on October 13th, 2009 10:22
    

    It seems that Lajos is using geographic considerations to make an anti-Jewish point. As far as I remember he has done so before, and I made the same points in reply – but maybe repetition cannot hurt, here we go:

    Why is Israel considered or rather ‘defined’ as part of Europe – not only in chess but also in other sports (e.g. football) and in events such as the Eurovision Song Contest? Simply because some of his Arab neighbors do not welcome it in Asian competitions. Actually, here it makes sense to write “Muslim” rather than Arab: Iran is not an Arab country, but has the strongest anti-Israel AND anti-Jewish feelings (at least referring to the government) … .

    If geography matters, one could also question the participation of Caucasian countries as well as all of Russia including Siberia. Tomsk was participating in the ECC, some other European competitions also have participants from Kazakhstan – I couldn’t verify this for chess, but they played in the European qualifying group for the football world championship.
20. steven on October 13th, 2009 10:29
    

    Israël, although geographically not in Europe, is fully integrated in many European sport federations (basket, soccer,…) so chess is really not an exception. Who the hell would they have to compete against other than European
    teams ; most arab nations don’t even recognize Israël.
    Lajos Arpad, I understand when reading your comment that your understanding is limited and outdated.
    I suspect you’re a spiritual heir of the Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Part), Hungarian collaborators of the nazis during WW2 but really old chap, those days are gone forever (I hope).
21. RobBrown on October 13th, 2009 10:30
    

    I’m giving Lajos the benefit of the doubt by ascribing his racist ramblings to a shabby understanding of English.
22. steven on October 13th, 2009 11:33
    

    Thomas :

    Your last paragraph is incorrect : +/- 40 % (!) of European territory is part of the Russian federation (Ural is generally considered as the (artificial)border of Europe) so even if geography would matter, the participation of Russia could by no means be questioned.
    It would also make no sense to cut a country in two (Siberia) because that would create inegality within a country, for which there is no legal basis.
    Re. Kazakhstan : a small part of that country (near the Ural river) lies in Europe, so they were given the choice in football to compete in Asia or Europe, and finally they choose to play in Europe.
    The situation of Turkey is quite similar.
23. steven on October 13th, 2009 11:37
    

    Something entirely different is the European Union or Nato chess championship :
    in those competitions the Russians cannot compete of course.
24. Thomas on October 13th, 2009 12:15
    

    @steven (11:33am): I agree with you – also referring to your other posts. I just wrote “one COULD also question ….” to point out that strictly geographic considerations may be irrelevant.
    For what it’s worth: The Ural mountains are the Europe-Asia boundary based on geologic criteria (that’s where the continents collided with each other many million years ago). And Kazakhstan seems to play both European and Asian football competitions. Of course, already due to time constraints, they can play only one qualifier for the World Cup … .
25. Felix Kling on October 13th, 2009 13:20
    

    @John A: Yes, you can manually add arrows, you can also add them “live” for videos you want to create. On youtube, you can see it in e.g. jrobichess’ videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq0nvogSYH8 (you can choose other piece sets and board themes of course)
26. Lajos Arpad on October 13th, 2009 20:44
    

    @Peter Doggers: “Lajos, the fact that you’re emphasizing “Jewish” twice is scary”. I’m sorry, I don’t want to scare anybody, but I don’t know why is it scary to mention a nation’s name twice. If I say “English English”, am I scary?

    “The other (European) teams probably had some Jewish players playing for them as well, so what’s your point exactly?”
    This is not a big problem in my view. The problem in my opinion is that teems from Israel, which is far from Europe can play in an ECC. I don’t understrand the logic behind this.

    @RobBrown: “It can hardly be said the Yerevan Team was a crew of internationals persuaded to play for their team by being offered a wad of cash, yet the Armenians narrowly missed winning the entire event.”
    They have my full respect, but don’t forget, the Armenian nation has a very good line of elite grandmasters.

    @Thomas: “It seems that Lajos is using geographic considerations to make an anti-Jewish point.”
    This is not true, I’m not anti-Jewish, I’m pro ECC. If instead of the Jewish teems we had Chinese teems participating at the ECC, I would be strongly against it like in this case the participation of teems from Israel in an ECC. They are not Europeans, so why can they play in a purely European competition.

    “Why is Israel considered or rather ‘defined’ as part of Europe – not only in chess but also in other sports (e.g. football) and in events such as the Eurovision Song Contest? Simply because some of his Arab neighbors do not welcome it in Asian competitions.”
    I know there are problems in that region. It was a very bad thing to organize a World Chess Championship event in Tripoli, where Jewish players could not compete because of the political tensions. That was very bad, and many elite GM’s boycotted that World Championship and I agreed with them. But this is not a World Club Championship, it’s a European Club Championship, so I still don’t understand why can they compete at this event as Israeli teems. And what will be if, let’s say 30 countries can’t compete at their region? Will they be part of the ECC? Or just Israel?

    “If geography matters, one could also question the participation of Caucasian countries as well as all of Russia including Siberia.”
    The Caucasus is the border of Europe, so I can’t tell what should they be considered: Europeans or Asians. Because this is a dubious question, I trust the decision of the organizer. And the Russians are certainly part of both Europe and Asia.

    @Steven: “most arab nations don’t even recognize Israël.”
    The ECC is not supposed to solve this problem in my opinion.

    “Lajos Arpad, I understand when reading your comment that your understanding is limited and outdated.”
    Maybe, but I don’t know why are we always starting to get personal. In my opinion we just disagree in something.

    “I suspect you’re a spiritual heir of the Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Part), Hungarian collaborators of the nazis during WW2 but really old chap, those days are gone forever (I hope).”
    Am I a spiritual heir of the Nyilaskeresztesek, just because I’m against the participation of Israeli teems at the ECC? I don’t see the connection, just the willingness to attack me. Maybe You should reconsider Your answer.

    “so even if geography would matter”
    What alse could matter at an ECC?

    @RobBrown: “I’m giving Lajos the benefit of the doubt by ascribing his racist ramblings to a shabby understanding of English.”
    My “ramblings” are not racist, because I’m reasoning in terms of geography. If geography is racist, then You can call me racist too

    ————————————————————————————————–
    @Everyone: I’m not willing to get personal and call anybody names or give them mean attributes, just because I don’t agree with them. I can tell what is true and just in my opinion and what is false and unjust in my opinion. I’m trying to have an educated, intelligent and peaceful conversation with everyone.
27. Frits Fritschy on October 13th, 2009 21:49
    

    Lajos,
    Just a quick check on Wikipedia.
    “Despite the country’s political problems, a growing number of Arab sportsmen are joining Israeli sports teams and contributing to Israel’s success in the international arena. They include Rifat (Jimmy) Turk, Najwan Ghrayib, Walid Badir, and Salim Toama. Abbas Suan, one of Israel’s top soccer players, is an Israeli Arab.[4] Another Israeli Arab, Johar Abu Lashin, born in Nazareth, was an IBO Welterweight champion.” They are not Jewish. By calling an Israeli team a Jewish team, you raise suspicion. Certainly after what you wrote before.
    Will you give any European born, Jewish player the same treatment as you did to the French born Christian Bauer?
    Maybe you are just clumsy, trying to defend your Hungarianess despite your Roumanian birth. I certainly don’t care about that. But you seem to step deeper into the marsh with everything you write.
28. Remco G on October 14th, 2009 09:33
    

    @Lajos: It’s an Israeli team, not a Jewish team. People are aggravated because you refer to them by religion (or race) instead of by nationality. Why would you do that, if your argument is purely about the location of the country?

    And Europe isn’t that far away anyway — Cyprus is a EU member and is pretty close to Israel.

    And anyway, Israel belonging to Europe is the current situation in the world of sports, like it or not. The ECC isn’t going to change that.
29. Thomas on October 14th, 2009 10:31
    

    @Lajos: Like it or not – you were mixing religion and geography, and this sounds racist. Many people can be racist without openly admitting it, and at least some may not even realize it themselves.

    A related and controversially discussed question (not meaning to start a thread on this) is “Should Turkey become part of the European Union?” Arguments against could be
    1) the country, at least most of it, isn’t part of Europe [fair enough, and impossible to change]
    2) the country doesn’t meet European standards regarding economy, human rights, … [fine, but this could change]
    3) it’s a Muslim country [racist in my opinion, and appealing to populist-racist sentiments in current EU countries]. Things would be different if Turkey had Muslim sharia laws, when item 2) would apply.

    Back to Israel: “Problems in the region” exist for decades, ever since Israel was founded as a result of – another euphemism – “problems in Europe during and prior to World War II”. They are unlikely to be settled in the near future. Accepting this situation [at least for the time being], should all Israeli citizens (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, non-religious) be deprived of international competitions other than world championships?
    Other countries are or were temporarily excluded from international competitions for political reasons: North Korea, ex-Yugoslavia/Serbia-Montenegro/Serbia. In those cases, it referred to the government. In the case of Israel, some of its neighbors question(ed) the very right of existence of the country.

    BTW, for what it matters: I am not Jewish but “passive Christian”, and I am also critical of Irsaeli politics.
30. Arne Moll on October 14th, 2009 11:24
    

    @All. If there’s one advice I wish people would follow more often it’s the one about IGNORING all discussions where Israel or Palestine is mentioned. It’s really better for your health. Or, as we used to say in the early days of Internet: Don’t feel the troll!
31. Lajos Arpad on October 14th, 2009 22:15
    

    @Frits Fritschy: “Despite the country’s political problems, a growing number of Arab sportsmen are joining Israeli sports teams and contributing to Israel’s success in the international arena. They include Rifat (Jimmy) Turk, Najwan Ghrayib, Walid Badir, and Salim Toama. Abbas Suan, one of Israel’s top soccer players, is an Israeli Arab.[4] Another Israeli Arab, Johar Abu Lashin, born in Nazareth, was an IBO Welterweight champion.” They are not Jewish. By calling an Israeli team a Jewish team, you raise suspicion. Certainly after what you wrote before.”
    I don’t know what kind of suspicion am I raising (maybe the willingness to use my right of free speech?)

    “Will you give any European born, Jewish player the same treatment as you did to the French born Christian Bauer?”
    Did I make something against Bauer? In that discussion I was mentioning the fact that many non French players were called French and “players from France” would have been more accurate in that article in my opinion.

    “Maybe you are just clumsy, trying to defend your Hungarianess despite your Roumanian birth. I certainly don’t care about that. But you seem to step deeper into the marsh with everything you write.”
    Why are so many getting so often personal? The above mentioned sentence is provocative and attacking. Well, I’m not the kind of guy who doesn’t see where are the winds blowing from. You should try something else, You didn’t succeed this time.

    @Remco:”It’s an Israeli team, not a Jewish team. ”
    OK, we can call them Israeli teems. On the other hand, we should call the French teem “teem from France”, the German teem “teem from Germany”, etc. If You are talking in this sense, You are probably right.

    @Thomas:”Like it or not – you were mixing religion and geography, and this sounds racist.”
    No, I am not mixing religions or nationality with geography. If a teem from a European country plays at the ECC and all players are Jewish, I don’t have problem with that. They are playing for the flag of a European country, so they are a European teem. But if they play for the flag of Israel, they are not a European teem. We had for example Chinese players at the ECC, but I didn’t see any teem playing under the Chinese flag as “Europeans”.

    “should all Israeli citizens (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, non-religious) be deprived of international competitions other than world championships?”
    In my opinion they should have the right to play in any regional championship if the region contains Israel or at least a part of it. If they don’t have the possibility to play at their regional championships, that’s a serious problem, but an injustice doesn’t make just another injustice. FIDE should step in and organize their championship or boycott a regional championship if it’s discriminating any nation. Gelfand and Rodshtein play in international tournaments. This is OK in my book. But under the flag of Israel they should be not allowed to play in a European championship.

    There is a Jewish religion and there are Jews, who form a nation and not every Jew is religious. So, I was talking about players, who have the right to play at the ECC under the flag of Israel or any other, not European country. The same happened when Jewish players (or Israeli players if You prefer) had the right to play at the European chess championship, playing under the flag of Israel.

    “Other countries are or were temporarily excluded from international competitions for political reasons: North Korea, ex-Yugoslavia/Serbia-Montenegro/Serbia. In those cases, it referred to the government.”
    I haven’t seen a North Korean teem in European events in my life. And I’m happy with that.

    “BTW, for what it matters: I am not Jewish but “passive Christian”, and I am also critical of Irsaeli politics.”
    You are, who You are, I’m interested in Your thoughts, Your personality is not part of this discussion in my opinion. My personality shouldn’t be part of this discussion either, but some people don’t seem to respect this.

    @Arne Moll: I was talking about accepting non European teems to play at the ECC. It’s absurd IMO. It’s as absurd as seeing a European GM in the list of the participants of the Japanese football championship. At least, the event remained chess event, but it’s name is untrue.

    “Don’t feel the troll!”
    Interesting. I thought this saying was “Don’t feed the troll”, but You surely know the saying better, than a programmer. But I understand why You said this. I was always talking with full respect with everyone and never called anybody names, as I never cursed anyone and haven’t accused anyone of anything: this is just not my level of personality. Being called a troll by a member of the Chessvibes teem, I won’t visit Chessvibes again. Good day.
32. val on October 14th, 2009 22:59
    

    As one poet remarked on another occassion: Everyone´s afraid of his dreadful trait to call a spade a spade.

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