12 August 2010, Germany – Found an interesting article on a chess tournament held in Germany where 701 players were playing all at once in one huge hall and the pairings and results were done and displayed on computer screens around the hall. Please read on for more details of this amazing organisation of the tournament.
Chess mania in Mainz
I travelled to Mainz for the Chess Classic organised by the indefatigable Hans-Walter Schmitt who put together a superb event despite operating on a reduced budget.
By Malcolm PeinPublished: 5:37PM BST 10 Aug 2010
Traditionally, the Chess Classic includes a challenge match, which Vishy Anand wins, plus the World Rapid championships and Chess 960 or Fischer Random tournaments. This year Anand came but only to do a simultaneous. The Grenke Leasing World Rapid was a sight to behold.
There were seven hundred and one players and it ran incredibly smoothly. Mr Schmitt’s team run a paperless tournament. Results are put into computers, one for every hundred boards and the pairings, computer-generated, are displayed on multiple screens with players in alphabetical order.
The enormous Rheingoldhalle, adjacent to the Hilton hotel and on the banks of the Rhine is a first class venue. I can strongly recommend a visit.
The tournament was incredibly strong, with 165 GMs and IMs. The top ten players averaged 2727 and five; Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, Alexei Shirov and Sergey Karjakin are ranked in the top twenty.
After day one there were a dozen players on 5/5 including Grischuk, Aronian, Anand’s trainer Rustam Kazimdzhanov and US champion Gata Kamsky. I witnessed some incredible games but most are lost, as with twenty minutes plus a five second increment, there is no time to record. Thankfully, the top ten games are played on sensory boards. 2009 British champion David Howell was on 4.5 and Nigel Davies was on 4, having lost only to Karjakin.
To read more, please click here.
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