Thursday 18 March 2010

The Monster Monster Swiss

The European Individual Championship has just finished, with a win for Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi on 9/11. The organisers of the event (the European Chess Union) seemed to have followed the lead of other zonal organisers by making the tournament open to any player registered by a European Chess Union country, regardless of strength. This resulted in a field of 408 players for the Open Championship and 158 players in the Women's Championship.
Despite the huge fields the organisers didn't seem tempted to use accelerated pairings, probably because (a) 11 rounds was enough to cope with the field (3 rounds more than the minimum needed) and (b) there were a number of GM's who started in the bottom half of the field!
If you want to see the full details from the events (including the number of GM's IM's etc) then click on the links for the results for the Open and Womens Championships.

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