Potkin Wins European Individual

3 April 2011, Kuala Lumpur - On Saturday Vladimir Potkin won the European Championship in Aix les Bains, France. In the last round the Russian grandmaster drew quickly with Judit Polgar, and eventually edged out Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Alexander Moiseenko and Polgar on tie-break. The tournament ended with much confusion among participants about the way the organizers dealt with the tie-breaks for the World Cup qualification spots.

 

Final Ranking Crosstable For Top 28 players, Euro Individual 2011.

World Cup qualification

At the closing ceremony there was much confusion among the top finishing participants about the way the organizers dealt with the tie-breaks for the World Cup qualification spots. Unlike in previous years the European Championship didn’t have tie-breaks for this. Instead, the following tie-break rules were used:

a) Performance Rating;
b) Median-Buchholz 1, the highest number wins;
c) Buchholz, the highest number wins;
d) Number of wins, the highest number wins;
In case of (a) the highest and the lowest rated opponent will be deleted and the maximum rating difference of two players shall be 400 points. In case of unplayed games for the calculation of (a), (b) and (c) the current FIDE tournament rules shall be applied.

The confusion was about the way the organizers calculated the Performance Rating: besides removing the highest and lowest rating for everyone, also the score against these two players was removed, which led to different results that many had not anticipated. (One effect of this calculation might be that a win against the highest rated opponent works out negatively.) For instance, until minutes before the closing ceremony started, some players thought they had qualified for the World Cup, but then heard that they hadn’t.

According to the tie-breaks, the first 23 players were Potkin, Wojtaszek, Polgar, Moiseenko, Vallejo, Ragger, Feller, Svidler, Mamedov, Vitiugov, Zhigalko, Jakovenko, Korobov, Inarkiev, Postny, Azarov, Khairullin, Kobalia, Guliyev, Zherebukh, Riazantsev, Iordachescu and Lupulescu.

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