World Mind Games: blitz and blindfold
At the World Mind Games in Beijing, China Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France won the blitz event while Zoltan Almasi of Hungary finished first in the blindfold tournament. World Champion Hou Yifan of China won both the blitz and the blindfold women's tournaments.
A group photo with all the winners in Beijing | All photos © FIDE for the official website
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We already reported about the rapid tournaments for men and women in Beijing, which were won by Wang Hao and Alexandra Kosteniuk. The World Mind Games included two more chess events: a blitz tournament and a blindfold tournament.
The blitz part took place on Monday, December 12th and Tuesday, December 13th. Unfortunately no games seem to have been saved - at least they're not available on the tournament website a few days after the event. We do know that Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the gold medal with a score of 12 points out of 16 games. The French grandmaster finished 1.5 points clear of former World Blitz Champion Alexander Grischuk. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov came third - you can find the full final standings here.
The winner said about his success:
You have no idea how tired I am right now! The fact is that, I usually play blitz events on a good level. For example, I won the European Blitz Championship. But blitz events always demand a lot of energy. You need to have maximum concentration and every time its a new situation. So now I feel just that I want to go to sleep - as soon as possible. (Maxim smiled) Of course, later I will feel happy.
In the women's tournament Hou Yifan of China won gold with 11.5 points out of 15. Former World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova from Bulgaria, who scored 4.5 points in the last 5 rounds, reached second place and third came Anna Muzychuk, who plays for Slovenia.
The blindfold tournaments were held December 14th-16th. Again, Vachier-Lagrave was in good shape and finished on 5/7. However, Zoltan Almasi of Hungary also reached 5/7 (thanks to a typical blindfold blunder by Gata Kamsky in the final round) and in fact clinched the gold medal on tiebreak. Unfortunately FIDE didn't post the tiebreak rules, so we only know that SB was not the first criterium!
World Mind Games 2011 | Blindfold, men | Final standings
Hou Yifan grabbed her second gold medal scoring 5.5/7. She finished a full point ahead of Viktorija Cmilyte (silver) and Alexandra Kosteniuk (bronze). They edged out Yelena Dembo and Elisabeth Pähtz on tiebreak, who also finished on 4.5/7.
We'll finish with a video from the SportsHub channel which gives a nice overview of all the types of games played at the Mind Sports Games. In this summary of the final day, the chess part starts at 10:14. Unfortunately the commentator doesn't seem to know much about chess, and calls Gashimov 'Vunar'. Besides, he first mentions that Vachier-Lagrave wins the gold medal, and then doesn't provide much of an explanation about why Mr Almasi gets it! Perhaps more evidence that the tiebreak systems in chess are way too difficult?
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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