Play Fantasy Chess Olympiad

Tim Harding

A bit of fun:

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/2-days-left-for-your-fantasy-chess-olympiad-picks

explains: "Players have to select a team of ten Baku participants and they score points based on their performance."
and here is the entry form:

http://fantasychessolympiad.com/fco2016-entry-form/

Round 1 starts noon (our time) on Friday so there isn't much time left to enter.

cdeb

Seems you can't pick most of the Irish team for some reason?

Still, a bit of fun. I've entered.

reunion

I've entered too. Played last Olympiad but it really struggles with keeping attention.

I'd prefer to select more people (i.e. 20 people) or have a rating limit on your players (your budget is 10,000 rating points for instance). It would make it more than just a selection of high rated players, like why bother showing me a 1800 rated player?

cdeb

cdeb wrote: »

Seems you can't pick most of the Irish team for some reason?

Duh me; they block the teammates of players you've already selected...

reunion wrote:

I'd prefer to select more people (i.e. 20 people) or have a rating limit on your players (your budget is 10,000 rating points for instance). It would make it more than just a selection of high rated players, like why bother showing me a 1800 rated player?

Sounds like it makes more sense alright, though I've never played before so don't know how it pans out.

There is always the chance of a lower-rated team's player doing quite well - like Sam Collins getting a gold medal back in 2002 or whenever it was - but yeah, my team is USA/China/Russia plus a token Irish player.

reunion

cdeb wrote: »

my team is USA/China/Russia plus a token Irish player.

My team is China, USA, Russia, Ukraine and someone else

But it's a team of 2700s. Without doing massive research I don't know why I wouldn't select the highest ratings I can.

cdeb

reunion wrote: »

Without doing massive research I don't know why I wouldn't select the highest ratings I can.

It's probable there's a benefit to selecting someone who's aiding a teammate to get a norm by taking black in all games, as there's an extra bonus point for obtaining a result with black.

But how you work out who's doing that of course is another question!

Still, a bit of fun anyway.

Tim Harding

reunion wrote: »

My team is China, USA, Russia, Ukraine and someone else

But it's a team of 2700s. Without doing massive research I don't know why I wouldn't select the highest ratings I can.

I tend to agree. Although there are always some high-scoring individuals on weak teams (they keep getting opponents they can beat because the rest of the team lose) it's very hard to predict who they will be. While writing my article for worldchess.com on olympiad history, I found that in one Olympiad the Zimbabwe top scored 9/9, nearly half his team's points.

Typically younger players tend to score best in Olympiads so I also took that into account.

I didn't choose any Irish players.

I wish I had read their tips before composing my team as I fear my reserve in the women's event might not get many games; it's better as they say to pick a fifth player who is likely to play a lot.

For my number 5 in the Open I chose Wei Yi, who I suspect will play quite a few games. Last time China played Wang Yue on top board and he drew almost all his games (lost to Caruana I think) while the younger guys played to win so I think they might do that again. I suspect they will have Ding Liren on 2 not 3.

On board 3 I chose Wesley So who probably really will be board 3 and must be the strongest on that board I think.

I think it's a no-brainer to pick Hou Yifan on 1 for the women but after that it's hard to choose, especially the last two boards.

To follow the event I have put all my choices into a spreadsheet so I can easily see how it's going and to create some interest while watching, but if the team does badly I'll probably abandon it after a few rounds.

reunion

Is there a way to log on and at look at who I chose?

Picking 10 players from a field of 1,615 (181 Open and 141 Female teams) seems really low.

Tim Harding

reunion wrote: »

Is there a way to log on and at look at who I chose?

Picking 10 players from a field of 1,615 (181 Open and 141 Female teams) seems really low.

The whole idea is you pick a team of five Open players and five women's tournament players.

After you have entered they will send you an email listing your choices. But you now have less than two hours to enter! I think entries close when play begins.

reunion

Tim Harding wrote: »

The whole idea is you pick a team of five Open players and five women's tournament players.

After you have entered they will send you an email listing your choices. But you now have less than two hours to enter! I think entries close when play begins.

I completely forgot that they sent me an email with my player choices!

Just 5 players in each tournament seems low. Usually the point of a fantasy game is to get you interested in the whole tournament.

Ficheall

Based on no research and only going for the few names I recognised, I've gone with
Carlsen, Karjakin, So, Yangyi Yu, and Gawain Jones, and
Hou Yifan, Irina Krush, Natalija Pogonina, Anna Ushenina and Zeinab Mamadjerova,
with Russia, China, US and China, Russia, Ukraine to win.

Tim Harding

Ficheall wrote: »

Based on no research and only going for the few names I recognised, I've gone with
Carlsen, Karjakin, So, Yangyi Yu, and Gawain Jones, and
Hou Yifan, Irina Krush, Natalija Pogonina, Anna Ushenina and Zeinab Mamadjerova,
with Russia, China, US and China, Russia, Ukraine to win.

What score did you get today?

I threw in a couple of less obvious names: Rapport [Hungary, didn't play today]; Adhiban, So, Nepomniachtchi, Wei Yi; Hou Yifan (didn't play today), Mariya Muzychuk, Tania Sachdev, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Anna Cramling Bellon [Sweden]. Today's score 31 thanks to a lot of wins with Black.

The "reasoning" (if you can call it that) behind the selection of female players 2-5 and also Rapport was that I had seen them in action in Gibraltar. I also thought that:
a) Hungary may not be meeting most of the top teams so Rapport, who has a unique style of play, might score heavily against the board 1 opponents he is likely to get;
b) Sweden will be in the middle of the women's event probably and with the support of her mother (top board for Sweden) and her father (Spanish GM Bellon) who is their team captain, I reckon Anna may do well. After all you choose young racehorses on the basis of their breeding?

Ficheall

Tim Harding wrote: »

What score did you get today?

How are scores calculated?
Aside from Magnus and Hou who didn't play, mine were all correct today, though this is hardly surprising for the first round..
Your suggestion of picking a strong player on a weak team is a good idea..

cdeb

You get 0 points for being rested, 1 point for losing, 2 points for a draw with white, 3 for a draw with black, 4 for a win with white and 5 for a win with black.

I think.

Ficheall

Ah, cheers. 37 then.

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

You get 0 points for being rested, 1 point for losing, 2 points for a draw with white, 3 for a draw with black, 4 for a win with white and 5 for a win with black.

I think.

Yes except that they don't make it clear of you get 1, 3 (or 4) for a win by default if there is no opponent.

Tim Harding

Ficheall wrote: »

Ah, cheers. 37 then.

You say you had two players rested so the most you could have scored is 8 x4 (wins with Black).

cdeb

He's probably going off my (incorrect) scoring system.

It's two points for a draw with either colour. You only get the black bonus for a win - so 3 points for a white win and 4 for a black win.

Plus then some random bonus points for correctly predicting the winner/top three/medal winner, etc.

Tim Harding

Disappointing day for my team: three rested, most of the rest had White and Wei Yi (who should have brought in 4 points) only drew with a 2373 from Belgium.
So only 16 points and an aggregate of 47 so far. I expect Ficheall is ahead of me now?

cdeb

For what it's worth, my Open team is Carlsen, Karjakin, Yue, O'Donnell and Jones. My Women's team is Yifan, Gunina, Batsiashvili, O'Gorman and Santeramo.

So I make it 15 for round 2 and 20 for round 2, for a score of 35 - assuming Conor O'Donnell is deemed to have won yesterday.

But Yifan and Santeramo have yet to play a game in the Women's section - I presume they travelled?!

Tim Harding

cdeb wrote: »

For what it's worth, my Open team is Carlsen, Karjakin, Yue, O'Donnell and Jones. My Women's team is Yifan, Gunina, Batsiashvili, O'Gorman and Santeramo.

So I make it 15 for round 2 and 20 for round 2, for a score of 35 - assuming Conor O'Donnell is deemed to have won yesterday.

But Yifan and Santeramo have yet to play a game in the Women's section - I presume they travelled?!

I don't know Santeramo; any special reason for choosing her?
I expect Hou Yifan will come in now the opposition gets stronger.
You are probably a bit unlucky that you have picked three players who are in fact competing on top board (this was predictable), where there tend to be more draws and could all meet each other.
If I had known England would put Nigel Short on 5 I would have been tempted to pick him instead of Wei Yi.

cdeb

No particular reason at all for Santeramo other than that I couldn't select from the top couple of teams any more. I didn't really put much thought into it at all.

I had presumed that the board order they were in in the game was their order during the Olympiad, but of course in hindsight, there was no real reason for that to be the case.

But I could reasonably have expected Yifan and Santeramo to have played 3 times so far, with maybe two wins as white and one as black (as the seeds are predictably cruising so far) - so 13 points lost there.

And had Alice managed to hold on to her big advantage again Spain, I'd have been quite the visionary in my selection!

Ficheall

Didn't do so well today. 29+20=49 so far..

cdeb

The league tables are finally updated on the website so, although there's still some small technical glitches - about 20 teams are still on 0, but that's being sorted.

1371 teams all told - and I'm ahead of 15 of them. That's the way to do it. Only way is up now!

66 is your leader. But arguably, leading early is a sign that you've omitted stronger players who would have been rested in the early rounds, so you would expect they'd drop back as we go on.

49 is good enough for 650th or so - obviously lots of teams on the same score at this early stage - and 47 points is only enough for 875th, give or take.

For convenience as we go along, I presume Tim is "Grischuk and Mam."? There's no other details given other than your daily score. However, 13 teams have scored 29+20, so can't see Ficheall's team. My own team is the innovatively-named "Benildus"

cdeb

Underway again so.

No multiboard feature for the Open again - slightly annoying.

First result of the day sees Taiwan's 1365-rated board 4 hammer her Guam opponent, delivering mate in 16 moves, by which time she was already two pawns, a piece and a queen up.

reunion

Here is my team if anyone is interested (would be nice to update the first post with people's teams!)

77 points, solid 13 points behind the lead. Joint 201st or 244th officially. I think 71 is the mean at present (based solely on 69 pages of teams and at page 35 the points are at 71).

mikhail

C'est moi: http://www.fantasychess.online/#/team/57cc7665a43bf14533b0d7de

mikhail

reunion wrote: »

I think 71 is the mean at present (based solely on 69 pages of teams and at page 35 the points are at 71).

That'd be the median.

cdeb

Just rather than put this at the start, here's the current standings -

80 - Mikhail
77 - reunion
60 - cdeb
?? - Tim Harding (thought you were Grishchuk & Mam, but that team is coming up as Russian?)
?? - Ficheall (TBC after round 3)

90 is the leader at the moment.

reunion

mikhail wrote: »

That'd be the median.

Confirmation that my maths has gone downhill since the leaving cert

Fair play with the team! Joint 88th or 116th!

Also the highest scoring Irish team!

Tim Harding

Hou Yifan lost to a player rated 2243!
Big blow to my team (The Patzercrushers) and probably a lot of other teams too.
Wei Yi and Goryachkina only drew.
As I have been out most of the day and busy since getting home, I have not put my team's results in the spreadsheet yet.

I'm really regretting not picking my old pal Nigel as my fifth player now, though he didn't play today in England's shock massacre by the Dutch. Ages ago on the English Chess Forum I recommended they play him on board 2 but they didn't listen to me.
As for Luke McShane OMG why didn't they select Matthew Sadler or even Keith Arkell (great team player) instead?

LATER: updated the spreadsheet now. The Patzercrushers all played today but one of the other ladies lost too. Score for the day is 24 and aggregate after four rounds is 95. My star man is Ion Nepomniachtchi who has 15 (4/4 with three wins as Black). I am so happy I learned how to spell his name!

Ficheall

It's all gone a bit pear-shaped...
29+20+26+15=90...

cdeb

After round 4 so -

101 - Mikhail
98 - reunion
95 - Tim Harding
91 - Ficheall (I think you've a slight error in your score below? I have you with one point more than you do)
76 - cdeb

115 is the leader now.

Tim Harding

It turns out that the player who beat Hou Yifan is Latvia's Minister for Finance!

Today young Aleksandra Goryachkina is sitting it out. The other Patzercrushers will be in action in a few minutes, but Nepo' has White today so I can only hope for 3 points from him.

Tim Harding

Disappointing round for The Patzercrushers yesterday.
So I am going to enter the "Week2Sprint" they've just emailed us about.

I think I can drop Richard Rapport but need a new top board and new women's bottom board which needs more thought.
They said the new lists reflect the boards players are actually on.
Definitely I am going to sack Wei Yi and bring in Nigel.

cdeb

At the break -

124 - Mikhail
121 - reunion
116 - Ficheall
115 - Tim Harding
101 - cdeb

138 is the leader now. Mikhail is the top scorer in Ireland (all 21 entrants). I was joint top scorer in Ireland in the last round, which means I'm storming up the table.

cdeb

I see they've been making welcome small changes to the table format as they go along; you can now see your exact position when you click into your team.

reunion has overtaken mikhail at the top of our table -

141 - reunion (157th)
140 - Mikhail (187th)
135 - Tim Harding (366th)
132 - Ficheall (519th)
122 - cdeb (1013th)

You can see how much of a difference one point makes; reunion is 30 places and 1 point ahead of mikhail. I've had two decent rounds and am up 300 places!

Also, I see one of my favourite teams names - "R to d2" An Irish team too; fair play for that one!

reunion

What a difference the bonus' make! I moved nearly 200 places just on the bonus alone! -

267 - reunion (88th)
262 - Mikhail (160th)
258 - Ficheall (237th)
240 - cdeb (825th)
236 - Tim Harding (948th)

Highest placed Irish team - 276 - 3 Cheers for Ramirez

mikhail

Well done, reunion.