Byes

Last round in the Belgian interclub for the first time in my career I forfeited the game. Well in fact it was my son withdrawing as I didn't manage to bring him to the playing-hall. This season is not easy for my family to organize the transport. I play for Deurne while my son plays simultaneously for Mechelen. Last season half of the teams played at home while the other half played away each round. That made it possible to shuffle Hugo between the teams so he could always play at home. However this year Mechelen decided to play all teams together home or away. So this meant we couldn't avoid anymore "far" away matches.

46km from Kontich to Turnhout can't be considered very far away but if you take public transport then it takes one way still 1h 40 minutes. Besides you can't expect a 9 year old boy to do this trip alone which means mom and sister are forced to accompany him. My wife doesn't drive by car so they have to use the public transport. You could of course wonder if this kind of effort isn't excessive for playing 1 single game against somebody rated below 1300 elo.

Eventually their train was cancelled and the next one would come the earliest more than one hour later. I didn't have a backup-plan so the only thing left was to inform the team and the opponent that I couldn't avoid the forfeit anymore. I was embarrassed as I let them down. I knew in advance how unreliable trains are in Belgium but the club persuaded me to let Hugo play anyway. I won't repeat this anymore. Nobody benefits from such failure. I wrote 6 years ago on this blog already how much I detest forfeits see forfeits in the interclub.

I always considered it important to keep promises. Recent years I became more flexible in this as I became much more dependent of elements I can't control like family, work,... So today it happens that I make an appointment of which I know in advance that I maybe will cancel it later. I don't want to justify it but it is just the choice I make to optimize my time. I notice most arrange the same way their schedule. It is the evolution of which I talked in my previous article about the growing individualism in our society.

Many tournament-organizers understand today that you need to take this into account if you want to revert the current trend of decreasing participants. Today a lot of potential participants would drop out if you force everybody to play every round in a tournament. So that is why we see more and more tournaments allowing participants to take voluntary byes on the condition it is announced in advance. By informing the organizers in advance it allows them to remove the people taking a bye out of the pairings so everybody willing to play still has an opponent.

Some organizers take it even a step further to improve the attractiveness of their tournament by also given half points for the not-played rounds. The advantages of this are less fluctuations in the pairings and people taking a bye will barely feel any competitive disadvantage. Especially that last element caused some players not to take any bye in the past as too often their tournament would become uninteresting.

Many amateurs but also professionals like to use these byes. In old times you often had to decide between 2 tournaments when they overlapped. Today it is possible to play them both as you just take one or more byes for the first round(s) as it often doesn't matter for the final standings. A tour de force using the Swiss gambit was performed last summer at the Masters of Bruges. The Spanish grandmaster Oleg Korneev didn't play the first 2 rounds but still won the tournament. He surprised everybody by playing only 7 out of 9 rounds but was in the end proclaimed as tournament-winner thanks to the tie-break of winning the direct encounter against the co-winner see below game.

[Event "Brugge Belgium, Brugse Meesters"] [Site "?"] [Date "2018.08.16"] [Round "?"] [White "Korneev, Oleg"] [Black "Wan, Yunguo"] [ECO "A48"] [WhiteElo "2513"] [BlackElo "2501"] [Result "1-0"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 Bg7 4.e3 c5 5.c3 O-O 6.Be2 cxd4 7.exd4 d6 8.h3 Nc6 9.O-O Nd5 10.Bh2 e5 11.c4 Nb6 12.d5 Nb8 13.Nc3 N8d7 14.a3 Qe7 15.Re1 a5 16.b3 f5 17.Bf1 Qf6 18.Nb5 Nc5 19.b4 axb4 20.axb4 Rxa1 21.Qxa1 Na6 22.c5 Nxd5 23.Nxd6 Naxb4 24.Bxe5 Qe7 25.Bc4 Kh8 26.Bd4 Bxd4 27.Nxd4 Qf6 28.Ne8 Nc2 29.Nxf6 1-0

It is a well played game of Oleg but many wondered if the tie-break should've not been changed here. Can we state that somebody playing less games has more right to win the tournament? Of course the rules of the tie-break were known to everybody in advance but shouldn't we consider to change them for a next edition of the tournament?

Besides by playing fewer games, you are also fresher in the remaining games which is an advantage over the loyal participants playing all games. I doubt this was the case for Oleg but in the just finished Ilse of Man we saw many players taking a bye during the tournament. 19 from the first 100 players having played the last round, took use of this possibility. However even more remarkable is that the 3 first finishers in the final standings: the Polish top-grandmaster Radoslaw Wojtaszek, the Azerbaijan top-grandmaster Arkadij Naiditsch and former-worldchampion Vladimir Kramnik all took a bye. Below you find a crucial game of the tournament-winner Radoslaw winning against the British top-grandmaster Michael Adams played in round 8.

[Event "Chess. com IoM Masters"] [Site "?"] [Date "2018.10.27"] [Round "?"] [White "Wojtaszek, Radoslaw"] [Black "Adams, Michael"] [ECO "E04"] [WhiteElo "2727"] [BlackElo "2712"] [Result "1-0"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 dxc4 5.Nf3 c5 6.O-O Nc6 7.Ne5 Bd7 8.Nxc4 cxd4 9.Bf4 Be7 10.Nd6+ Kf8 11.Nxb7 Qb6 12.Nd6 Qc5 13.b4 Qxb4 14.a3 Qc5 15.Qb3 Na5 16.Qb4 Qxb4 17.axb4 e5 18.Bxa8 exf4 19.Rxa5 Bxd6 20.Rxa7 Bxb4 21.Rd1 fxg3 22.hxg3 Bc5 23.Ra5 Bb4 24.Ra6 Ke7 25.Bc6 Rc8 26.Rxd4 Bc5 27.Bxd7 Nxd7 28.Re4+ Kf8 29.Nd2 g6 30.Kg2 Rd8 31.Rc4 Be7 32.Ne4 h5 33.Rc7 Ne5 34.Raa7 Re8 35.f4 Ng4 36.Nc3 Nh6 37.e4 Bd6 38.Rc6 Rd8 39.Nd5 Kg7 40.Kf3 Ng4 41.Rb7 Kf8 42.Ra6 Bc5 43.Rc7 Bd4 44.Ra4 Bg1 45.Rb4 1-0

If the tournament exists next year keeping the same format then I expect to see much more byes. The winners have likely unintentionally proven that it is often more interesting to not play chess each round than playing all rounds.

It is of course perverse as a tournament is organized to let people play chess. I think we need to revise the byes. Maybe the prize-money must be adapted to the number of pairings somebody has been subjected to. At least we must make sure that players having played all the rounds are favored by the tie-brake above people having taken one or more byes.

The prizes in the last Open Leuven were split in case of equal points so the tie-break wasn't very important. Still I did notice that a tournament-performance isn't a good system to use to rank the players when the rules allow participants to get half points for byes. For the first time in my career I took 2 byes in a tournament as Open Leuven overlapped with Open Le Touquet. I had only played 19 standard games in 2018 which is very few and Leuven was my last chance to get some more practice. Friday 2nd of November I was still at noon in Le Touquet supporting my son while in the evening I showed up in Leuven to play myself the 3rd round. With only 1/2 I got as opponent the 82 years old Belgian Karl De Smet whom gave me a good fight. At the end of the game I felt exhausted but I anyway managed to validate my big rating-advantage.

[Event "Open Leuven 3de ronde"] [Site "?"] [Date "2018.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "De Smet, K."] [Black "Brabo"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "A80"] [WhiteElo "1595"] [BlackElo "2290"] [PlyCount "94"] [CurrentPosition "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"] 1.d4 { (I missed the first 2 rounds of Open Leuven as it overlapped with Open Le Touquet. That is why I get still in round 3 a much lower rated opponent. Still I didn't underestimate him as Karl is a 82 years old very experienced correspondence player.) } 1...f5 2.Nc3 Nf6 { (Last year I experienced serious troubles with d5 against the Belgian FM Matthias De Wachter. After that game I decided to check the mainline with Nf6 as the solution for d5 didn't appeal to me as it is not very practical.) } 3.g3 { (While preparing for this game I had found a correspondence-game of Karl which continued with the mainline Bg5. G3 has been played a few times but doesn't seem to work very well together with white's second move.) } 3...d5 4.Bg2 e6 5.Nf3 c5 { (This is the most aggressive approach but black can also choose to play it slower.) } 6.e3 Nc6 7.O-O Be7 8.Re1 { (I found still some games with b3, Ne2 and a3. Karl plays very fast and chooses for a different solid move.) } 8...O-O 9.Ne2 Bd7 10.c3?! { (Also solid but black now gets a free hand on the queen-side. More accurate is b3.) } ( 10.b3! b5 11.Nf4 Ne4 12.dxc5 Bxc5 13.c4 bxc4 14.bxc4 dxc4 15.Nd2 Nxd2 $11 { [%eval -29,31] } ) 10...Qc7?! { (I looked for many minutes at c4 but feared some counterattack from white in the center.) } ( 10...c4! 11.Nd2?! b5 12.f3!? e5 { ( I missed this strong idea in the game.) } 13.b3 a6 14.a4 Qb6 $17 ) 11.dxc5 Bxc5 12.Ned4? { (White's play lacks aggressiveness. Better is Nf4.) } 12...Rad8?! { (More ingenious is Nd8 after which e5 becomes even more effective as white can't exchange anymore at c6. It is a nice example of the superfluous-piece. I choose for simple development which still is enough for some advantage.) } 13.Qe2 a6 14.Ng5?! { (White prepared f4 to cover e5. However this creates new holes and doesn't avoid e5 in the end. In this difficult position the engine recommends a4.) } 14...Rfe8 15.f4 Bd6 16.Qd1 g6 17.Ndf3 Bf8 18.Bd2 Bg7 19.Rc1 b5 20.Nd4 e5 21.Nxc6 Bxc6 22.Qb3 h6 23.Nh3 Kh7 24.a4?! { (A couple of days after the game Karl admitted that he totally missed this blunders a pawn. The least damage is fxe5 with only a large advantage for black.) } 24...bxa4 25.Qa2 Qb6 26.Qb1 Rb8 27.Rc2 Bb5 28.Nf2 Bc4 29.Bc1 exf4 30.gxf4 Re7 31.Bf1 Bxf1 32.Rxf1 Ne4 { (I definitely don't choose the fastest win but my opponent never gets any chances anymore to save the game.) } 33.Nxe4 Rxe4 34.Bd2 a5 35.Qc1 Qc5 36.Kh1 Rbe8 37.Qd1 Qc4 38.Bc1 R4e6 39.Rg2 Qe4 40.h3 a3 41.bxa3 Bxc3 42.Qb3 Bg7 43.Qa2 Rc8 44.Qf2 d4 45.exd4 Bxd4 46.Qg3 Rc3 47.Qh4 Qd3 0-1

I also won the next 2 rounds and suddenly in round 6 I joined the leaders. Some players joked if I would also perform a Korneevke following the example of Oleg Korneev at the Masters of Bruges. That would've been an even bigger stunt but in the end didn't happen. In round 6 I was defeated in a good game by the Swedish grandmaster Ralf Akesson and at the same time also later tournament-winner. However I still managed to win the last round and catch the -2300 rating-prize (100 euro). In  the final standings I was placed in front of other players with equal points having not taken any byes thanks to the better TPR. TPR is calculated by taking the percentage-score in combination with the average rating of the opponents. Obviously by not playing 2 rounds my percentage-score is much better. Also the opponents in the first rounds drag the rating-average drastically down.

I don't doubt that we need to allow byes if we want to attract more participants in a tournament. Still I think we made things too profitable for the players taking byes. The nice participants playing all rounds should not be penalized. A well organized tournament also guarantees a fair split of the prizes between the winners. I have made a couple of proposals but I don't doubt that a smart guy can invent something better.

Brabo