Tournament Prediction Game 2017 (PPP) 🡺 "Tata Steel Chess 2018"

He left the commentry room pretty quickly.

What about Qb7 instead of Qc6 for Magnus? My friend saw that and it seems strong for White (we don't have any engines though).

I want to take part.

My winner is Ian Nepotniatchi

Hi buddy. I'll host PPP/TPG for the Candidates, make sure to check in here. If you want to participate in this game, there are Speed Chess Championship and Tata Steel Chess left  Stay tuned

It's not spelled like that. Don't worry, it is an impossible mission anyway.

Well done Thomas, just checked your tournament/group and very impressed by it!

Indeed well done. Lol the 1300 player beat an IM? What does the big K after the score mean?

I am not impressed

I am not impressed with you either, pdela

Shhhhh... Be quiet! 

K means it was by default. I think that would be around the time the main GCT event started, when Malcolm does his little speech before the round.

I wasn't too happy with my performance, should definitely have done better against the sub 1800s but oh well. Two draws against 2000s I will take though (in fact all my draws were holding slightly worse endgames).

Just like pdela, I am not impressed by those results. But to be honest, being undefeated in rated OTB means I'm not easily impressed.

But I imagine you haven't played too many GM's in rated OTB games  Does going 21 consecutive games unbeaten impress you though?

I'll post a summary of my games soon, just to take you through part of my journey

I admit I haven't played any rated games againts GMs...however I once played a game against a woman that had the age to someone's grandmother. It was a tough game, I had a losing position after the opening. I realized I had to do something and, inspired by Emanuel  Lasker, I decided to change my style to make my opponent uncomfortable. I started moving slowly, and soon the poor granny got drowsy. In the end, she got asleep and I won in time.

As for your game streak, well, that impresses me but only a bit.

Round 1; Black against a 2180 WIM. Try playing the Dutch Leningrad, and get hit with an early h4-h5 which I had never seen before (then again I have only been playing this for a week!). It gets a bit complicated, my king gets stuck in the centre, but when trying to attack my opponent's king I miscalculate and hang my queen.

Round 2; White against a 2002. Scotch Steinitz, I go a pawn down but we go to an opposite colour bishop ending, which I manage to hold.

Round 3; Black against a 2587 GM. Play 1.c4 d5, some stuff happens, and then I miscalculate a trade where he gives up his queen for two rooks, gets them both on the back rank and then wins a piece and also mates me. So got annihilated basically.

Round 4; my opponent doesn't show up so I get a default win.

Round 5; Black against a 1371. We go into a Giuoco Piano (which I don't know massively well), and I hold things together until he straight up hangs a knight. I convert it pretty easily (with some help from an opened f-file and my DSB hitting on f2).

Round 6; White against a 10 year old girl rated 1180. She played very well for her rating, but in a Scotch I managed to get some tactics going and she has to give up her queen, but she ends up flagging instead.

Round 7; Black against IM Malcolm Pein (for those of you not in the know, he organises the whole festival each year). Another Dutch, another h4-h5 push (the pawn even gets to h6), and I seem to hold things well until I blunder a pawn. There were some very interesting tactics at the end, but I end up in a mating net and try to throw some checks to see if I can find anything, but to no avail. We had a quick chat after the game and he w

Round 8; White against a 1607. We play a Scotch (might have been a Mieses, I can't remember if that was this round or round 10); I got into a bit of trouble but I find a way to trade down into an opposite colour bishop ending a pawn down, which I manage to hold.

Round 9; Black against a 1546 in a sort of reverse Reti (1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 d5, I really did not know what to do so I just played some moves and hoped for the best). We get into a same colour bishop ending with symmetrical pawn structures; I let his king get in a much better position before he closes up my bishop, and I flag as I live on the increment.

Round 10; White against a 2012. Another Scotch, and I go into a slightly worse rook ending, but I manage to hold it.

Round 11; Black against a 1879. Another Dutch with a h4-h5 push (if someone has some tips as how to face this in a Leningrad kind of position, then please pass them onto me!), before we get into some very crazy tactics that put me into an unclear ending. We then manage to reset the clock while playing (having to get an arbiter over to sort it out), and I then proceed to butcher the ending, and then I make a clearly losing move in time trouble while at the same time moving one of my opponent's pieces accidentally (causing even more confusion), before I realise my position is hopeless and resign. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds!

Round 12; had a bye. Probably needed the rest after the last round

Round 13; White against a 2406 GM. Play a French Exchange, play it terribly, lose an exchange early on, and then it sort of fell apart after that. I eventually lose on time in a losing position.

Round 14; Black against an 1816. Play 1.c4 d5, reach an even queen endgame, but I make an illegal move with my queen (I was in check), which then forces me to hang my queen to block the check (and so I resign).

Round 15, White against a 2181. We play a Modern with a double fianchetto from Black; I hang my e-pawn very early on while going for an attack on the kingside. It got pretty unclear, but then Black got two connected passers on the 6th; so I try to get some more complications going, but end up losing it.

The wheels came off a bit from round 7 onwards (scoring 1/8 to finish off isn't brilliant to say the least), I know I could have done so much better against the U1800's, but with it being blitz and the very fast format it is (15 rounds in 4 hours with very little break between games), once you hit a rough patch it's not very easy to recover. I got a TPR of 1755, which is likely to be my FIDE blitz rating (or there abouts). It's probably the rating I would put myself at, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Also, I bumped into Nepomniachtchi in the toilets, and saw Aronian giving autographs and taking photos with spectators outside (seeing as this was an hour into the game I thought that it was a very odd thing to do in the middle of a game, but he said he "made a draw"). The studio where they do the post match interviews is actually a lot smaller than it looks on the stream (but that's the same with any TV studio). Maurice also has a very loud, booming voice when giving interviews and talking to the camera (I'm pretty sure they must turn his mic down when he does them ). I was also in the auditorium when Magnus resigned against Nepo; almost straight after it happened most of the people in there headed to the commentary room to hear their thoughts (and it was packed to the rafters in there!). And another fun fact as well: If you ever see the players drinking tea/coffee from blue mugs, those mugs are bought from Ikea, so not quite everything is top of the range, no expense spared.

I also got to catch a glimpse of a few other well known personalities as well (Mike Klein, Peter Doggers, Fiona Steil-Antoni, Simon Williams, Nils Grandelius to name but a few). I highly recommend going to one of these and playing in a side event and taking it all in, it was a great experience all in all (the side events are all free entry for U25's, so do it while you can!). I also 'forgot' to hand back my pass as well, what a shame

Sounds like a blast!

IIRC the entry form also said free entry for women, but i could be wrong

You are correct, also free entry for GM/IM/WGM/WIM titled players (so if you need some more motivation to go get those titles, there it is!).

Total score in Norway, Sinquefield and London (the 3 "mega-tournaments" of the year) for the 8 players who participated in all 3:

Aronian: +3 (+6-3=18)

MVL: +3 (+5-2=20)

Carlsen: +2 (+6-4=17)

Caruana: +2 (+5-3=19)

Nakamura: -1 (+2-3=22)

Anand: -2 (+3-5=19)

So: -2 (+2-4=21)

Karjakin: -3 (+2-5=20)

All in all a fairly evenly-matched field, it seems. The highest scorers have 15/27, and the lowest has 12.

We have 2 winners @ltdunn and @NewArdweaden and two 3rd place finishers @me and @ThomasJEvans! Congrats to all

P.s: Thomas, would you set up those standings? I still don't know how, haha.

 So there's a tie for the first place...