As we (Chessbase) reported yesterday, the second seed in this Championship, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, had just begun his second-half surge when he ran afoul of the “zero tolerance” rule that punishes any player who is not seated at the board when the starting gong for a round sounds with immediate forfeit. The Azeri GM arrived “about ten seconds late” (he said) for his round eight game and was defaulted.
Today he topped it by breaking a different rule: the Sophia Rule which forbids players to offer or accept draws before move 40. In his black game against Alvar Alonso Rosell, rated 2513, the two agreed to a draw after move 19 and were immediately defaulted. The game was scored 0:0.
Alonso Rosell,Alvar (2513) – Mamedyarov,Shakhriyar (2752) [E90]
13th EICC round_9 Plovdiv BUL (9.76), 29.03.2012
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.e4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.h3 c5 7.d5 b5 8.cxb5 a6 9.a4 Nbd7 10.Rb1 axb5 11.axb5 Nb6 12.Be2 e6 13.dxe6 Bxe6 14.0-0 d5 15.exd5 Nbxd5 16.Nxd5 Nxd5 17.Bg5 Qb6 18.Qd2 Nc7 19.Bh6 Nxb5 0:0.
Another game, lower down on the table, ended in a similar default:
Baron,Tal (2497) – Safarli,Eltaj (2645) [E05]
13th EICC round_9 Plovdiv BUL (9.80), 29.03.2012
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 Be7 5.Bg2 0-0 6.0-0 dxc4 7.Qc2 a6 8.Qxc4 b5 9.Qc2 Bb7 10.Bd2 Be4 11.Qc1 Bb7 12.Qc2 Be4 13.Qc1 Bb7 14.Qc2 0:0.
But hang on, we hear you cry, why was the Akopian-Malakhov 16-move game quoted above allowed to stand, while these two were forfeited? Baron-Safarli was also a three-fold repetition, but – and this is the critical difference – while Akopian and Malakhov formally asked the referee permission to abandon their game, Baron and Safarli did not. They simply signed the scoresheets and quit.
Full article here on Chessbase.
All players should boycott.
This is like a chess tournament held inside the movie “Brazil”.
This is nonsense. The Spanish with Ng5 Rf8 Nf3 Re8 will become very popular I predict.
Sad,… What happens when the common sense gland is removed …
Pfft…The Arbiters of this event should be forfeited themselves for being such morons. I think this ridiculous event has set records for the amount of forfeits they’ve handed out. It’s simply beyond understanding. It sheds a very bad light on them. These sad peope (The organizers) should not be allowed to organize anything. As it’s obvious they can’t.