What a day! 62 players joined us today for an amazing tournament on a sunny and beautiful day 🙂 9 rounds of chess would decide who could bring home the titles of ETH Chess King and Queen. One thing was certain: it was not going to be easy to win this tournament. No less than 10 players with a FIDE Rating of 2000 or higher were contending for victory today, showcasing the high level of the tournament. After a brief introduction, the first round started and the clocks started ticking. All players had just one goal in mind: become the ETH Chess Champion.
It is at this point that I usually mention in these reports that our favorites win the first few rounds and quickly continue to the more exciting later rounds. The high level in this tournament does not permit me to do so in this case 😮 In the first round, our previous ETH Chess Queen Anna got beaten by a very strong new player: Pau Juan. In the second round, the winner of last tournament, Yun, was defeated by a strong Anton De Ruig. This exceptional victory immediately gained Anton the Beater-off-Odds award for winning a game that our rating system did not expect at all. Congrats Anton!
Round three followed with some exciting games between very strong players. On the first board, Theo beat Vincent Lou and both our previous ETH Chess King Kirill and another of our tournament winners, Vincent Christien, drew their games. Round four continued this series of strong players playing each other: Batu managed to beat Theo on the first board. Just like that only two players – Anton Hul and Batu – remained with all their points. A player a bit down the line deserves special attention here as well: Joshua had an excellent score of 3/4, outperforming his results achieved in our previous tournaments. He would eventually win our Underdog award for most surprising performance!
Would the fifth round be decisive? Anton and Batu played each other on the first board and could gain sole lead in the tournament… Fate, however, decided otherwise as they drew their game. Going into the break, 9 (!) players were still within 0.5 points of each other and nobody was certain about their spot. Round 6 and 7 further emphasized the high level of the tournament: none of those 9 players achieved a perfect score in these two games… This further leveled the field, with the only exception that Anton Hul was now the sole leader with 6/7.
Round 8 and 9 were going to be decisive. Theo recovered after his earlier loss against Batu and managed to beat Anton Hul in the eight round. Now Theo suddenly was sole leader, with 6 players following him only 0.5 points behind. Nothing was decided, and even Theo could not draw his last game to secure his tournament victory because of a lower tie-breaking score than the other players. However, he kept his cool and won the last game against Thomas. The new ETH Chess King was born. Congrats Theo! Anna managed to end shared fifth with 6/9 and therefore successfully defended her title of ETH Chess Queen. Congrats Anna!
Below you can find a list of all prizes with the players that won them 🙂
- ETH Chess King: Theo Stijve
- ETH Chess Queen: Anna Adzic
- Silver Medallist: Anton Hul
- Bronze Medallist: Vincent Lou
- Best Non-ETH Player: Pau Juan Bartroli
- Underdog: Joshua Müller
- Best U2000: Michael Zeller
- Best U1750: Yasin Yuece
- Best U1500: Ahmad Mahmood
- Beater-of-Odds: Anton De Ruig
Before I end this note, I will quickly comment on our introduction of the Polyrating: our very own rating system. We will be extending this system over the next months and provide detailed descriptions on how we exactly calculate this 🙂 For now: we have included the tournament performance computed with this system in the final ranking. This ranking you can find below along with pictures below!
Thank you for joining everyone! See you next time!
| Rank | Name | Score | BH | BH-C1 | Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Theo Stijve | 7.5 | 50.5 | 47.5 | 2239 |
| 2 | Anton Hul | 7.0 | 54.0 | 49.0 | 2193 |
| 3 | Vincent Lou | 7.0 | 54.0 | 49.0 | 2172 |
| 4 | Mustafa Batuhan Iliev | 6.5 | 49.5 | 46.5 | 2093 |
| 5 | Kirill Zaitsev | 6.0 | 53.5 | 50.5 | 2086 |
| 6 | Thomas Allard | 6.0 | 52.5 | 48.5 | 2055 |
| 7 | Pau Juan Bartroli | 6.0 | 52.0 | 47.5 | 2041 |
| 8 | Vincent Christien | 6.0 | 50.0 | 46.0 | 1987 |
| 9 | Yun Pan | 6.0 | 49.0 | 46.0 | 1946 |
| 10 | Anton Künzi | 6.0 | 46.0 | 43.0 | 1883 |
| 11 | Michael Zeller | 6.0 | 44.5 | 42.5 | 1946 |
| 12 | Anna Adzic | 6.0 | 44.0 | 41.5 | 1707 |
| 13 | Hongwei Zheng | 6.0 | 42.5 | 39.5 | 1777 |
| 14 | Elia Steinfeld | 6.0 | 41.5 | 38.5 | 1660 |
| 15 | Markus Fasching | 5.5 | 48.5 | 45.5 | 1855 |
| 16 | Chaojie Li | 5.5 | 48.0 | 44.5 | 1869 |
| 17 | Fionn Smith | 5.5 | 43.0 | 40.5 | 1708 |
| 18 | Anselm Schönbächler | 5.5 | 41.0 | 38.5 | 1681 |
| 19 | Anton De Ruig | 5.5 | 41.0 | 38.0 | 1673 |
| 20 | Ruslan Shumilov | 5.0 | 47.5 | 42.5 | 1812 |
| 21 | Darius Mathis | 5.0 | 45.5 | 43.5 | 1678 |
| 22 | Alessandro Bruno | 5.0 | 45.0 | 41.5 | 1680 |
| 23 | Yasin Yuece | 5.0 | 43.5 | 40.5 | 1585 |
| 24 | Miguel Orbegozo Rodriguez | 5.0 | 41.0 | 38.0 | 1538 |
| 25 | Menderes Eroglu | 5.0 | 37.0 | 32.0 | 1683 |
| 26 | Felix Philipp | 5.0 | 35.5 | 33.5 | 1489 |
| 27 | Oliver Rutkowski | 5.0 | 35.5 | 33.5 | 1482 |
| 28 | Andreas Spanopoulos | 5.0 | 33.5 | 31.5 | 1398 |
| 29 | Lukas Lewark | 4.5 | 43.0 | 40.0 | 1567 |
| 30 | Ana Marija Vego | 4.5 | 41.5 | 39.0 | 1591 |
| 31 | Peter Feller | 4.5 | 39.0 | 36.5 | 1467 |
| 32 | Alexandre Terrail | 4.5 | 39.0 | 36.0 | 1505 |
| 33 | Dan Tecu | 4.5 | 38.5 | 36.0 | 1509 |
| 34 | Joshua Müller | 4.0 | 46.5 | 43.5 | 1531 |
| 35 | Vladislav Koshelev | 4.0 | 46.0 | 42.5 | 1575 |
| 36 | Mert Unsal | 4.0 | 44.5 | 41.5 | 1511 |
| 37 | Pau Gallardo | 4.0 | 40.0 | 37.0 | 1456 |
| 38 | Parth Kothari | 4.0 | 38.0 | 35.5 | 1415 |
| 39 | Javier Alego | 4.0 | 36.5 | 34.0 | 1409 |
| 40 | Ahmad Mahmood | 4.0 | 36.0 | 32.0 | 1383 |
| 41 | Yann Spillmann | 4.0 | 35.5 | 33.5 | 1336 |
| 42 | Christopher Narayanan | 4.0 | 35.5 | 33.0 | 1364 |
| 43 | Mirco Paul | 4.0 | 33.5 | 31.5 | 1321 |
| 44 | Alexandre Nozadze | 4.0 | 33.0 | 31.0 | 1280 |
| 45 | Shrey Mittal | 4.0 | 29.5 | 27.5 | 1220 |
| 46 | Hardik Shah | 3.5 | 38.5 | 36.5 | 1393 |
| 47 | Juan Garcia Amboage | 3.5 | 38.0 | 35.5 | 1407 |
| 48 | Ramon Alhambra | 3.5 | 31.5 | 29.5 | 1127 |
| 49 | Valters JÄ“kabs Zakrevskis | 3.0 | 42.5 | 40.5 | 1377 |
| 50 | Neryvaldo Galvao | 3.0 | 38.5 | 36.0 | 1308 |
| 51 | Brunel Altabba | 3.0 | 36.5 | 34.5 | 1269 |
| 52 | Kevin Wu | 3.0 | 36.0 | 34.0 | 1236 |
| 53 | Aurèle Huillet | 3.0 | 35.0 | 32.0 | 1220 |
| 54 | Doan Dai Nguyen | 3.0 | 34.5 | 31.5 | 1185 |
| 55 | Giorgs Cechladze | 3.0 | 33.5 | 31.0 | 1143 |
| 56 | Peter Karoly | 2.5 | 33.5 | 31.0 | 1085 |
| 57 | Nicola Kong | 2.5 | 32.5 | 30.5 | 1183 |
| 58 | Dario Monopoli | 2.5 | 32.5 | 30.5 | 1172 |
| 59 | Kenny Lay | 2.0 | 32.5 | 30.5 | 1237 |
| 60 | Fred Damberger | 2.0 | 29.5 | 27.5 | 1049 |
| 61 | Alexander Martinez Ciani | 2.0 | 26.0 | 24.0 | 1084 |
| 62 | Alessio Rimoldi | 0.0 | 21.5 | 21.5 | 926 |
