I just have to comment on this photo of the top two seeds during the opening ceremonies, Hump Koneru and Anna Muzychuk:
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| Humpy: You know I'm going to wipe you all over the board. Anna: (Gasp!) Humpy: I'm going to win this sucka! |
I had been thinking that Ruan Lufei had died; I mean, where has she been? Not playing chess -- not unless she's disguising herself as a chess dude these days and/or going by a fake name. I haven't seen her name listed in the more popular or prominent events. Of course, I don't examine each and every chess tournament everywhere around the world, either... But here she is now, voila! Resurrected from the ashes, as it were. Did she piss somebody off and had she been banished to the never-never land of not playing chess? Did she get bored with her graduate school studies? Whatever, darlings. She sassshays into Ankara with her artificially low ELO (kept that way in purpose, I think) and is rolling through the players while filing her nails, snore. Don't be fooled by the R4 charade enacted by Ruan and Zhau Xue. It was like scripted Michael Jackson video from "Thriller."
Stay tuned for the next batch of rounds. If I'm reading the schedule correctly, 2012 Ankara is the last event in the Women's Grand Prix for 2011-2012. Figuring out points and all that stuff -- I'll leave that for someone else.
Here's some info from the FIDE.com website -- beware, however, relying on this as writ on stone because FIDE regualrly changes things depending on which way the chess political winds (and who's coming up with the most money) are blowing...
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FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012
The FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012 is a series of six chess tournaments exclusively for women, which formed part of the qualification cycle for the Women's World Chess Championship 2013. The winner of the Grand Prix (the one with most Grand Prix points) will challenge the 2012 Women's World Chess champion.
Blah blah blah...
...160 grand prix points for first place, 130 for second place, 110 for third place, and then 90 down to 10 points by steps of 10. In case of a tie in points the grand prix points are shared evenly by the tied players. Players only counted their best three tournament results. The player with the most grand prix points is the winner.
Grand Prix standings
Hou Yifan won the Grand Prix with a perfect score of three sole wins at the fifth Grand Prix in Jermuk [she won Rostov, Shenzhen and Jermuk, top 3 scores are counted for the total.]. Should Yifan win the 2012 World Championship[,] the runner-up will be her challenger in the 2013 Championship. Muzychuk, Humpy, Ju Wenjun and Zhao Xue are the only in contention of the Grand Prix runner-up.
So, it's pretty much been decided already who the challenger in 2013 will be, and the other players are only in this event now for the prize money, which is very good for female-only events, and I don't blame them one bit for participating. Hey, chess femmes have to make a living too and chess dudes do this stuff all the time. No wonder Stefanova is sleep-walking her way through Ankara.
Do you see, now, why introducing Ruan Lufei into the mix in this final tournament of this Women's Grand Prix series is dirty pool? She doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming a challenger, not even if she wins Ankara outright, but she's a great spoiler for other player's chances, and the Chinese know that full well. All rigged as far as can be arranged in favor of the Chinese "winning" the women's world chess championship title.
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4 comments:
"She sassshays into Ankara with her artificially low ELO (kept that way in purpose, I think) and is rolling through the players while filing her nails, snore."
I think that is a gross exaggeration since she has only beaten lower rated players thus far, and now she has lost to Humpy Koneru.
"Do you see, now, why introducing Ruan Lufei into the mix in this final tournament of this Women's Grand Prix series is dirty pool? She doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming a challenger, not even if she wins Ankara outright, but she's a great spoiler for other player's chances, and the Chinese know that full well. All rigged as far as can be arranged in favor of the Chinese "winning" the women's world chess championship title."
I certainly hope that the Chinese intend to take the other spot for the 2013 match: anything less would be a lack of fighting spirit. However, I not convinced that Ruan Lufei's inclusion in this tournament is "dirty pool" or "rigged". If they wanted to cheat, it would have made more sense for them to have Hou Yifan play since she would have better chances against Humpy Koneru and Anna Muzychuck. As it is, resting Hou Yifan by replacing her with a lesser but still strong player makes sense to me both for legitimate Chinese team strategy and for the overall variety of play in the Grand Prix series.
Eugene, you do remember where Ruan Lufei finished in a recent Women's World Chess Championship, do you not? That's what I'm talking about - she's a much higher calibre player than she is given ELO credit for and I stick by my assertion that it's been done deliberately so the Chinese can use her as a sleeper. They are trying to guarantee themselves the women's title like the Russians used to do back in the "old days." Hou Yifan has already won the Grand Prix, what will be determined by this tournament is who her challenger will be in 2013. I suspect that even if she had wanted to play in Ankara (something we have no way of knowing) she would have been kept home so - as you point out - she can 'rest.' If you see nothing unfair in this manipulation, that's your privilege. I know what I think about it!
"Eugene, you do remember where Ruan Lufei finished in a recent Women's World Chess Championship, do you not? That's what I'm talking about - she's a much higher calibre player than she is given ELO credit for"
I note that she did not win any of her mini-matches in the long games in that event, even against non-Chinese players. That is part of the problem with that system and the reason for all the complains about the system when it was used for the overall FIDE world championship: her reaching the final could be very much by luck in the rapids (besides the base skill that her rating is a rough gauge of). (Or you could say that she was trying to keep her rating low by not winning until the rapids, but that seems like a silly risk to take if the idea is to get an all-Chinese final.)
"Hou Yifan has already won the Grand Prix (...) I suspect that even if she had wanted to play in Ankara (something we have no way of knowing) she would have been kept home so - as you point out - she can 'rest.'"
I actually think that getting her to rest is a Good Thing for Hou Yifan. If I were an evil Chinese team official able to force my players to collude, then I would force her to play instead so that she can take points off the top foreign players, then "accidentally" lose to the Chinese player designated to be her challenger.
I can see where you are coming from in that this "evil Chinese team official" could be getting the best of both worlds by getting the rest for Hou Yifan and also the points taken off from the top foreign players by Ruan Lufei, but it didn't happen against Humpy Koneru, and we'll have to see if she has any success against Anna Muzychuk. Also, I note that Zhao Xue defeated Ju Wenjun, yet Ruan Lufei drew Zhao Xue. If Zhao Xue has been designated as the Chinese winner, then that draw is just a wasted half point in the fight for an all-Chinese women's world championship 2013.
What might be evidence of a conspiracy is to take a look at the current Grand Prix standings:
http://grandprix.fide.com/standings.html
Three players ranked above Ruan Lufei are not playing: Hou Yifan, Kateryna Lahno and Nadezhda Kosintseva.
Invitations to these events are presumably given out some months before they start, perhaps before Jermuk. Nadezhda was not doing all that well until Jermuk, but Kateryna was already in the running, so it comes as a surprise that Kateryna was not invited to Ankara, or otherwise declined the invitation.
As for Ruan Lufei being "resurrected from the ashes" for this tournament: she played in Jermuk. The suspicious period would be between October last year and June this year, but as you say, she is doing graduate studies, so missing two consecutive grand prix events is not all that surprising to me.
What are the regulations regarding invitations and how can be tendered to any particular player and how many they may accept? I don't think all players could play in all events and would not be invited to do so. There must be some system in place where the qualifying players pick and choose which Grand Prix tournaments they want to appear in, perhaps rated by 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices.
I think the Chinese chess officials have taken a cue from the recent scandals that happened during the summer Olympics with some of their over-trained and exhausted and brow-beaten athletes. The Chinese did not receive good publicity for some incidents that came to light and some of their young athletes crumbled under the unrelenting pressure because their system makes the stakes so incredibly high for an athlete to win. It's no secret that the Chinese want Hou Yifan to replace Judith Polgar as the world's best female chessplayer of all time. And, the young lady is perhaps not so maleable as she used to be, since she is growing up; these situations must be 'delicately handled.' They pushed too hard a few years ago and Hou Yifan lost ratings points - gasp!
I would be more inclined to believe Ruan Lufei being in this particular event was just the luck of the draw, except for her playing schedule this year. And yes, I am aware that she is in graduate school. So why play chess at all at this time of her life? All the more reason the timing of particular events is, well, my readers can draw their own conclusions. I know what I think:
January 2012: no games
March 2012: no games
May 2012: no games
July 2012: no games
August: 11 games
September: this is her first event
Not exactly what I'd call a crowded calendar.
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