So far in this PRO Chess League Season I\u2019ve been focusing on the San Francisco Mechanics, since they asked me to be their official team blogger. But for a change let\u2019s look at what else has been happening in the rest of the league through the first three weeks. This gives us a chance to talk about what some of the leading teams are doing right, instead of what the Mechanics have been doing wrong!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, here are\nthe standings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
| Atlantic Division<\/strong> Montreal (60.5) New York (56.5) St. Louis (46.5) Montclair (45.5) Webster (44) London (19.5) Miami (19) Pittsburgh (18.5) <\/td> Pacific Division<\/strong> | Australia (59.5) Chengdu (58.5) Seattle (44) San Jose (38) Dallas (33) Minnesota (32.5) San Diego (27) San Francisco (19) <\/td><\/tr> Eastern Division<\/strong> | Tbilisi (58) Armenia (56.5) Moscow Wizards (46.5) Mumbai (46) Delhi (33) Volga (32) Estonia (20.5) Moscow Phoenix (19.5) <\/td> Central Division<\/strong> | Norway (56) Baden-Baden (51.5) Barcelona (47.5) Berlin (34.5) Amsterdam (32.5) Ljubljana (32.5) Cannes (31.5) Marseille (26) <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some general thoughts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The numbers in the standings are a combination of game points and match points (10 points for a won match, 5 for a draw). At this early point in the season, you would get the same standings if you forgot about game points and just looked at match points. Seven teams have perfect 3-0 match scores: Montreal, New York, Australia, Chengdu, Tbilisi, Armenia, and Norway. Six teams have gone 0-3 so far: London, Miami, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Estonia, and the Moscow Phoenix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, things will change next week with the first Battle Royale, when we will have eight-team all-play-all tournaments instead of the two-team matches we have seen so far. The bonus point schedule will be more complicated: 24 for first, 20 for second, 16 for third, 12 for fourth, 9 for fifth, 6 for sixth, and 3 for seventh place. (Eighth place, of course, gets 0.) This is sure to scramble up the standings quite a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s amazing to me that there have been only three drawn matches so far: Baden-Baden vs. Marseille, Minnesota vs. San Diego, and Minnesota vs. San Jose.) This is quite surprising because the match format tends to produce close matches, and there have been tons of 8\u00bd-7\u00bd and 9-7 results. If we call those matches \u201cclose,\u201d then Norway, Armenia, and New York have all had nothing but close matches. This leads us to one so-obvious-it\u2019s-stupid observation: with so many close matches, the teams that do well are the ones that can pull out that extra point or half-point consistently. And another, perhaps less-obvious observation: although we tend to pay attention to the headliners on board one, there are actually more points to be picked up on boards three and four, in my opinion. A 2800 player can\u2019t really play very far above his rating, but a 2300 player can get hot and score at a 2500 or 2600 level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Atlantic Division is really weird, with five teams that seem super powerful and three that are struggling. If it continues, this trend could set up some interesting situations near the end of the season. Only four teams make the playoffs, so one of those five super teams (Montreal, New York, St. Louis, Montclair, Webster) won’t even make the playoffs. Two teams get “relegated,” and you can bet that the three weaker teams (London, Miami, and Pittsburgh) will be fighting hard to be the one that gets to stay in the league next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now here are my\nthoughts on the teams that have gotten off to 3-0 starts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Montreal Chessbrahs: <\/strong>Definitely the story of the season so far. Last year they finished seventh in their division and were \u201crelegated,\u201d meaning that they had to play in a tournament back in November just to qualify for the league. This year they are totally kicking butt, with the highest point score in the league, and this week they won a big showdown against the St. Louis Arch Bishops, a team that has Fabiano Caruana on board one and Wesley So on board two!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why the big\nimprovement over last year? I don\u2019t know, because the PRO Chess website does\nnot show last year\u2019s rosters, but I suspect that a big ingredient has been the\naddition of free agent Ivan Saric, who has merely scored 11\/12 (tied for best\nin the league so far) and has a performance rating of 2825 (compared to his\nFIDE rating of 2689). Also, Eric Hansen, the original \u201cChessbrah,\u201d has been\nplaying really well, with a score of 9\/12. Here\u2019s the scariest thought of all:\nMontreal has gotten out to the best start in the league without even having the\nservices of their #1 player, Anish Giri! So far he has 0 points in 0 games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as I said\nabove, maybe headline players are overrated. If you put in Anish, maybe you\ncan\u2019t play both Ivan and Eric (because of the rating cap of 2500 for the team).\nIt\u2019ll be interesting to see what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New York Marshalls:<\/strong> As mentioned above, they have been winning the squeakers. Their game score is barely over 50 percent, so nobody jumps out as a star so far, but Sergei Azarov on board two has been a steady 8\/12 for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Australia Kangaroos:<\/strong> They have to be considered a surprise story too, winning their matches by big margins. However, their Twitter feed says that their 10-6 victory over San Jose this week was a bit misleading, because they had \u201cA LOT of luck.\u201d Whether lucky or not, they have been helped hugely by Aleksey Sarana on first board, who has also scored 11\/12 and way outperformed his FIDE rating (performance 2823, FIDE 2634), and also by Raymond Song on board four (5\/8, with a performance of 2586 compared to his FIDE of 2305). One has to wonder whether this sort of performance is sustainable for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chengdu Pandas:<\/strong> The Pandas have followed hard on the\nheels of the Kangaroos. (I\u2019ll leave you to ponder whether this sentence could\npossibly make sense in any other context!) Chengdu has been the most democratic\nteam in the league, fielding almost completely different lineups every week.\nOnly Zhao Jun (6.5\/8 on board two) has played in two matches. This makes it\nreally hard to point to a star player for China, but the three-headed monster\nof Ding Liren, Yu Yangyi, and Li Chao (10.5\/12 combined on board one) is pretty\nimpressive. Chengdu made it to the league final last year, losing to Armenia in\nthe end, and they have to be a favorite to repeat that performance this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tbilisi Gentlemen:<\/strong> A newcomer to the league this year, and\nno, I don\u2019t know the significance of their team name. They have been the exact\nopposite of Chengdu: they have played the same lineup in every match. Baadur\nJobava has been good on board one, but the real stars have been Nika Volkov\n(6.5\/12 on board four) and Giga Quparadze (8.5\/11 on board three). They are\nexhibit A for my claim that there are more points to be gained on the lower\nboards; Volkov\u2019s FIDE is 2115 but he has been playing at a 2535 clip. Not that\nthis is necessarily surprising: his chess.com rating for bullet chess is 2777\nand his blitz rating is 2731! He is clearly not your ordinary 2100 player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Armenia Eagles:<\/strong> You would expect that the defending\nchampion would be crushing their opponents, but every match has been a tight\nstruggle. No board on their team has scored better than 7\/12. Again, board four\nmay be the difference maker, where Artak Manukyan and Anna Sargsyan have scored\n6\/12 against much higher-rated opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Norway Gnomes:<\/strong> It\u2019s remarkable to see Norway doing so well because their roster (unlike in past years) does not seem to include a certain World Champion. However, they have managed to win three close matches in a row with Jon Ludvig Hammer (3\/4) and Aryan Tari (5.5\/8) at the helm. No one else on the team has a score better than +1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Will teams like\nNorway, Armenia, and New York continue to win the cliffhangers? Will powerhouse\nteams like Chengdu and St. Louis eventually dominate? Will the early-season\nsurprises like Australia and Montreal continue to outperform their ratings?\nStay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So far in this PRO Chess League Season I\u2019ve been focusing on the San Francisco Mechanics, since they asked me to be their official team blogger. But for a change let\u2019s look at what else has been happening in the rest of the league through the first three weeks. This gives us a chance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1363,3669,171],"tags":[4258,4257,4262,4256,3635,426,4255,4260,4259,85,4261,3686],"class_list":["post-5663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-news","category-pro-chess-league","category-ruminations","tag-armenia-eagles","tag-australia-kangaroos","tag-battle-royale","tag-chengdu-pandas","tag-eric-hansen","tag-luck","tag-montreal-chessbrahs","tag-new-york-marshalls","tag-norway-gnomes","tag-ratings","tag-tbilisi-gentlemen","tag-team-chess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5665,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663\/revisions\/5665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |