World Cup Quiz – Round 1 update

The eagerly anticipated World Cup began in Baku on Friday afternoon, and the chess community can undoubtedly look forward to over three weeks of high quality competition and drama.

For Quality Chess aficionados, however, there was much more than a World Cup at stake. Just as the first turn is often the most exciting part of a Formula 1 Grand Prix, our readers were glued to the initial 10 seconds of action to see which opening move would prevail. It transpires that players choosing the closed games simply have too many fiddly move order options available to them, while if you want to play 1.e4 you tend to just play 1.e4. In the end the result was fairly decisive, with 1.e4 streaking to a 6 point lead after round 1.1 and holding on comfortably in the return leg.

The second qualifying question saw an early ‘shock’ as Rauf Mamedov knocked out Evgeniy Najer in normal time, while Eltaj Safarli and Csaba Balogh headed for the rapidplay tiebreaks. Balogh drew first blood in the 10+10 section, and after an incredibly exciting Berlin (yes, you read that correctly) in the second game, Hungarophiles (and our office’s designated move counter) rejoiced as Balogh saw himself through. All credit to Safarli, who seemed to take his defeat in an extremely gracious manner, in what must have been a crushingly disappointing moment for him on home soil.

From the main section of questions, number 6 was also answered definitively. The young Chilean IM Cristobal Henriquez Villagra earned himself a place in round 2 and a Wikipedia page in the space of a few hours. His opponent will be well known to our audience – Positional Decision Making in Chess author and former World Championship contender Boris Gelfand. Those who are taking the competition really seriously may have noted Boris was seeded to play Anish Giri in round 4, clearing the Dutchman’s path even further as a favourite for the youngest quarter finalist.

Answers

A) 1.e4

B) Rauf Mamedov

2. 13

6. Henriquez Villagra

10. 1-1

11. 0.5-1.5

12. 0.5-1.5

16. Hou Yifan

18. 8

5 thoughts on “World Cup Quiz – Round 1 update”

  1. How about an additional question…….

    During which round will the increasingly abrasive commentary pair-up of Miroschenko & Sutovsky descend into a punch-up?

    They appeared to take a big step closer today

  2. This is slightly off topic, but I would like to ask representatives of Quality Chess, what’t the format of the phone number which is accepted in their internet form.

    I have tried everything, country code + area code and its variants, but it doesn’t suit the desired format apparently…

  3. @Watergun7, I’m not sure which page you’re talking about. Maybe include a url here. I’ll take a look tonight and remove any phone formating restrictions. (the default required format is a UK phone number)

  4. @Jesse Gersenson

    I am talking about the following page, while making an account at Qualitychess…a) http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/secure/register.php?next=

    While it is possible that I made some mistake ( initially I just used the auto-function of Google and the format was such as was accepted at Amazon ), I did made some research and I tried various formats as suggested on various pages ( Wikipedia, Microsoft ) which include brackets.

    However, as I said, it is possible I made some mistake.

  5. @Matt My prediction is that Miro will simply walk off at some point. In two rounds he’s gone from looking mildly annoyed to close to flat-out hostile. Compelling stuff.

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