Chess and Ping Pong 2016

4th CHESS PONG TOURNAMENT: RECORD OF PARTICIPANTS, NEW WINNER. THE CHESSERS BEATS THE PONGERS

On Saturday 11th June the 4th chess pong tournament  was held again, this time in Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, in the Lluïsos de Gràcia site.

 

Chess pong is a combination of table tennis and chess. We have tried different systems in every edition and this time there was a new format also. It was a table tennis game at 28 with the possibility to finish 28-28 and draw and for every point of advantage 10 seconds less in a blitz game, meaning that minimum starting with 20 seconds. If the game started with chess, then for every 10 seconds you could save in the game if winning you got 1 point in table tennis, so if giving mate in 40 seconds you could start 26-0 in table tennis.

The favorites were the usual contestants  from the other tournaments, like Enric Bosch and Dani Luco from the table tennis world and Josué Expósito, 2297 in blitz and Albert Ezquerro, 2125 in blitz and winner in the first two editions. Of the newcomers, the catalan GM Dani Alsina, stood out , 2521 elo and 2418 in blitz. This time the number of participants rose to 36, not bad, the numbers in the other editions were 17, then 21 and last year 25. Some players also travelled a way to get there, one came from Zaragoza and a father and a son from Andorra.

After 6 rounds with the swiss-system, the first 8 started a knock-out and the others were doing also a knock-out in groups of 4 to establish all the positions. These 6 rounds  showed great matches, as the better in table tennis Bosch against the better in chess Alsina. In chess Alsina  won spending between 40 and 50 seconds, that was 25-0 for him in table tennis, but Bosch has remounted a 27-15 to win at the end 29-27. Also the other ponger Luco was not in the first 8 losing the last round against Javier Morais 1959 in chess where Morais gave the mate to Luco with the flag falling down. It was also necessary to do an extra-match between Xavi Grau and Jose Muñoz to determine the last place for the quarter-finals because they were with the same points and same bucholz.

The quarterfinals the first 4 passed trough the semifinals and here arrived one of the matches more repeated in the chesspong, Ezquerro against Bosch, the only winners until now of the tournament. Ezquerro was able to score some points in table tennis, losing 28-8 and with 1 minute 20 Bosch tried a Larsen opening but Ezquerro had no excessive problems to get victory. In the other semifinal after losing some seconds in table tennis Alsina won a rook + pawn vs rook ending to Expósito.

In the great final Alsina got enough points in table tennis losing 28-21 and with 3 minutes 50 had equalized in time rapidly and with an attack to the short castle with knight + rook + queen and Ezquerro with the queen badly placed was the new winner of this edition that after seeing the number of participants and the enthusiastic that they are is pretty sure that a new edition will arrive maximum next spring.

The complete classification was as follows.

Jugador escacs pingpong mitjana
1 Dani Alsina 2579 1700 2.140
2 Albert Ezquerro 2296 1740 2.018
3 Josué Expósito 2406 1700 2.053
4 Enric Bosch 2000 2350 2.175
5 Javier Morais 2110 1750 1.930
6 Enric Barba 2140 1760 1.950
7 Francesc Fernández 2226 1700 1.963
8 Xavier Grau 1751 1900 1.826
9 Dani Luco 2022 2250 2.136
10 Carles Costas 2067 1700 1.884
11 Bernat Luco 1770 1820 1.795
12 José Muñoz 1850 1850 1.850
13 Armando López 1995 1720 1.858
14 Neil Clifford 1950 1700 1.825
15 David M Centeno 2202 1700 1.951
16 David Muñoyerro 1700 1700 1.700
17 Carles Fraile 1851 1850 1.851
18 Teresa Muñoz 2050 1700 1.875
19 Francesc Mateu 1819 1805 1.812
20 Pere Padrós 1730 1730 1.730
21 Ricard Barnet 1833 1700 1.767
22 Ramon Mariño 1700 1700 1.700
23 Natàlia Artigot 1700 1760 1.730
24 Marc Martínez 1722 1700 1.711
25 Pau Castrillo 2143 1850 1.997
26 Caterina Llauradó 1709 1700 1.705
27 Martí Martínez 1700 1700 1.700
28 Elisabeth Rivas 1700 1700 1.700
29 Francesc Solà 1925 1740 1.833
30 Oscar Ferrer 1751 1700 1.726
31 Ferran Iglesias Jr 2168 1700 1.934
32 Nerea Sarrió 1819 1800 1.810
33 Josep Capellades 1700 1700 1.700
34 Xavier Folch 1800 1760 1.780
35 Fernando Iglesias Sr 1758 1700 1.729
36 Carme Devesa 1700 1700 1.700
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