Chaotic Spanish League reaches semi-finals
The first phase of the Spanish Team Championship has concluded. Today the semi-finals will be Escuela Int. Kasparov-Marcote vs. Reverté Albox and Solvay vs. Linex-Magic. The new system being used this year has led to problems already.Alexei Shirov and Ruslan Ponomariov | Photo © FEDAThe 2010 Spanish Team Championship takes place August 23-28 in the Polideportivo La Benedicta sports complex in Sestao in Northern Spain. Spain's top ten teams, the División de Honor, compete over six rounds in this stage. The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest of the game with a 30 second increment from move 1.Spanish Team Ch 2010 | Teams & Players
Rounds 3-4
In our previous report we stated that "the final two rounds will settle the qualification for the play-offs later this year", as it's always been. However, this is not true. In fact the Spanish federation changed the system completely, and after four rounds it has become clear that it hasn't been an improvement.A similar system is being used as in this year's U.S. Championship. After four rounds of Swiss, the first four teams play semi-finals and the winners play a final to decide the champion. The first four rounds we re paired according to the Swiss system.In team competitions this is asking for trouble, if you ask us, and indeed already in the fourth round the first problems arose. What was the case? After three rounds Escuela Int. Kasparov-Marcote, Reverté Albox and Solvay were on five points, Linex-Magic on four and the rest of the field on two points or less. The teams of Linex-Magic and Solvay had to play each other, and so a draw would secure a spot in the semis.And indeed the players agreed to draw all games before the first move - something the arbiters found out about. The round was delayed for fourty minutes and at some point the arbiters were threatening to declare one team as the winner and one as the loser. All this was told to us by one of the players in Sestao.Eventually the match was played and the teams drew quickly on six boards. Ironically, Linex-Magic and Solvay meet each other again, today.On Wednesday the teams of Solvay (with Indians Harikrishna, Ganguly and Negi on the first three boards) and Reverté Albox (with Dreev, Krasenkow and Mchedlishvili) drew on all six boards.
L-R Indians Parimarjan Negi, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Pentala Harikrishna
L-R Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Nigel Short and Alexander Moiseenko
Games rounds 3-4
Game viewer by ChessTempo
L-R Jan Gustafsson, Jan Smeets, Francisco Vallejo and Vugar Gashimov
Photos © FEDA
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