Location: Cap d'Agde, France
Dates: October 25 - November 2, 2013
Tournament mode: A double round-robin qualifying four players into a knockout phase.
Time control: 25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment per move.
One chess femme, GM Mariya Muzychuk, had a chance to make it through to the "final" among four players, by defeating France's top chess femme, GM Marie Sebag, who impressed the hell out of me a few years back when she earned her third and final GM norm by doing very well at the European Individual Chess Championships, not the women-only event!
Muzychuk did not breeze through to the second part of the tournament, though. First, she had to go through a play-off with two other formidable players to settle the final two spots: Vassily Ivanchuk and Yannick Pelletier! I mean, come on!
From Chessbase.com: The tiebreaker was a double round-robin between the three players, played at three minutes plus two seconds increment, and the very first game threw the mathematical predictions out the window as Muzychuk, playing her Ukrainian compatriot and idol, Vassily Ivanchuk, overcame him in a crazy game in which he overstepped the time. Midway into the game, with a minute left, the transmission broke down, and the low resolution video was all that was left. The live commentators were trying to guess what was happening based solely on the player expressions. When Mariya was seen pointing to the clock, while Ivanchuk displayed a face of despair and dismay, there was no need to be a poker player to surmise what had happened. A couple of minutes later, the verdict was confirmed.
REALLY? Ivanchuk lost a game ON TIME? What?
Muzychuk went on in Game 2 to defeat Pelletier. After Game 4, Muzychuk and Ivanchuk both qualified for the final, but - and I'm fuzzy on this - they needed to do another round of play-off to determine who was in 3rd place and who was in 4th place. Those places were important because 4th place would face Karpov in the first game of the final-final. Got that? I sure don't!
So, Muzychuk had to face Ivanchuk (or Ivanchuk had to face Muzychuk) AGAIN. The upshot was that Muzychuk finished in 4th place.
In the final-final, Muzychuk proved herself a worthy opponent against Karpov's vastly superior experience. She didn't go down for the count until move 103 in the second fricking game, people! Ivanchuk, meanwhile, had crashed and burned against Bacrot.
This information is also from Chessbase which has several photos of the players and Muzychuk shines in many of them. You can also play through the second killer game between Karpov and Muzychuk at the link. 103 moves? OHMYGODDESS.
Report on final games between Karpov and Bacrot.
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