11/9/07
International Masters of Chess Compete in Lubbock This Week
Nov 9, 2007 04:31 PM CST
Texas Tech is welcoming some of the best chess players from all over the world to Lubbock this week.
Participants include ten internationally acclaimed players from Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Russia and the United States. They will compete against each other through nine rounds of play over eight days.
Each player has an average rating of 2,527, well above the 2,400 required to earn the U.S. Chess Federation’s highest class designation of senior master.
Children from a number of Lubbock schools are invited to attend the event each day to participate in special activities and raffles. SPICE was created in part as a tool for chess education and outreach.
Here is the full story.
Very nice games by the players, full of fighting spirit.
“Each player has an average rating of 2,527 …”.
Who writes this stuff?!
Actually, average ELO is 2515 until Kamil Milton arrives, presumably Category 11.
Note that the decimal parts of the average FIDE rating round down, not up.
q.v. http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/event/bermop02/r2.html
“Due to the dropping out of two players at the last minute, organizers were scrambling to find replacements that had the right FIDE ratings to keep the category. Unfortunately, organizer Nigel Freeman had two very good replacements, and a bad assumption about FIDE category rules! It turns out that he was operating under the assumption that all decimal parts of the average rating rounded up for category purposes. However, it turns out that they don’t!”
So this is a 2526-tournament, not 2527. What category is that?
Difficult to find FIDE’s regulations on the calculation of average ELO, and on the categorisation of events.
Looks like ‘bands of 25’:
Category 10 = 2576-2500
Maybe Cat 11 = 2501-2525
and Cat 12 = 2526-2550
so, without Milton, this event looks like Category 11, and with him (at 2526, not 2527) it is still Category 12.
Can you be a Category 11 event with only 9 players?
When was the last time a Category 11 event was held in the USA?
A better URL for the reference to the Bermuda Open, 2002, the missing players, and the rounding-down rule for FIDE ELO averages, is:
http://www.tinyurl.com/2dolvu
What difference does Catagory make?
This SPICE Cup Tournament is happening and it is live!
This is history in the making for Texas and Texas Tech University.
Congratulations to Susan Polgar, Paul Truong, and Texas Tech University!!!
~The Masked Rider~