12.09.2006 ALEXANDER KENTLER. CROSSROADS – THOSE EVIL TIE-BREAKERS!

The last game is over, the Higher League of the 59th Russian championship became history. It will be remembered for a brilliant advance of the young, who refuted the opinion about system crisis in Russian chess. Those who suggested giving up on ‘ungifted’ 20-year-olds and focusing on long-run work with 10-year-olds, proved wrong. Look who advances to the Superfinal: the eldest, Grigoriants, is 22, Khismatullin is 21, the winner Inarkiev and Alekseev are 20, Tomashevsky and Vitiugov are 19, and Nepomnyaschij is just 16! Another 16-year-old Khairullin took the 9th place. Such things cannot happen by a chance, and one can only be happy for these players and wish them to continue progressing.

The last days of the event cost the players and their supporters a lot of nerves. This tournament provided yet another example that the Buchgolz must not be used in qualifiers, and one must not assign prizes according to it. For those who is unaware, there was no Hort system, and the prizes were distributed as follows: 1st place – $20,000, 2nd – $14,000, 3rd – $10,000, 4th – 7,000, 5th – $5,000, 6th – 3,500, 7th – 3,000, 8th – 2,500. There were two tie-breakers: 1) limited Buchgolz (disregarding the least scoring opponent), 2) aggregated score, or ‘progress’.

The fact that the prize money were not shared (according to Hort system at least) gave the ‘best’ player with 6 points 14,000 dollar, and only 2,500 to the ‘worst’, which is in my opinion crying injustice! But this is not the most important problem. Let us examine who and how influenced the order of places in a 6 points group.
I make no secret that during the event I supported Nikita Vitiugov. I like his chess and human qualities, and in addition he is an active contributor to our site. After the last round pairings were published, I counted that in case of a draw with Khismatullin and any normal outcome in other games, Vitiugov finished not higher than 3rd and not lower than 5th. Therefore I was very glad when their game ended in a quick draw. However, my happiness did not last for long.

First of all, six former opponents of Nikita lost their games, one by one. Then those trailing by half a point started winning (four players out of five!). Thank God, Volkov won his game. Now Vitiugov’s place depended on a game on the 17th table, Amonatov-Chuprov. It looked like it must end in a draw, which would give Vitiugov the 5th place. But the grandmaster lost the game in a few moves. Consequently, Chuprov's previous opponents Grigoriants and Alekseev, surpassed Vitiugov in both crosstable and money. Another player who had met Chuprov, Muscovite Najer, stood level with Vitiugov on Buchgolz, but lost due to inferior 'progress'.

This is not about money. One can also blame a 19-year-old for making a quick draw in the last round, albeit he had Black pieces. I think it would be fair if the fate of the top spots did not depend on those not playing against the contenders!
In my opinion, performance is a more fair tie-breaker, and even average rating of the opponents (with or without the weakest one) fits better than Buchgolz. Even ‘progress’, as much as I dislike it, is made by the player himself, and not by others.

I feel sorry for Najer, who won his last three games and finished 8th. Last year he qualified for the Superfinal, but had to withdraw due to illness, and now he runs into another disappointment... But it is already history – and does anybody care?