It has been a couple of weeks since the World Cup finished in Baku, which also meant that we had reached the end of the road for our World Cup Quiz. Roughly 20 contestants made it through the initial qualifying questions, and there were several still on the same score by the time the semi-finals had finished. It transpired that nobody had guessed Karjakin or Svidler to win (thus landing a 3-pointer at the buzzer), so we contacted the highest scorers to make a further prediction on the final as a tiebreaker. When the dust settled on the rapid play matches we still had 2 contestants standing and, although probably not quite as exhausted as Svidler and Karjakin themselves, we decided that it would be unfair to find further ways to whittle it down to one winner.
Therefore I am happy to announce that the joint winners of our 2015 World Cup Quiz were Marija Čačić of Croatia and Lucas Van Foreest of the Netherlands. They have both kindly sent a picture of their prize…
Overall the competition was successful, with a large number of entries. Maybe we will have another try at another big event (Candidates 2016 anyone?)
As was mentioned in a previous post, the qualifying answers were 1.e4, Rauf Mamedov and the Najdorf. The answers to the main questions are also listed below:
- Who will win the World Cup? Sergey Karjakin
- How many top seeds (1-64) will be knocked out in round 1? 13
- How many round 2 matches will end in Armageddon Blitz? 1
- Predict the four semi-finalists. Pavel Eljanov, Peter Svidler, Anish Giri, Sergey Karjakin
- How many quarter finalists will be rated over 2730? 6
- Which non-GM will go furthest? Cristobal Henriquez Villagra
- Which round will Levon Aronian reach? 2nd
- How many 1-1 draws will Michael Adams have? 2
- How many Black wins will there be in round 4 (excluding playoffs)? 1
- Predict the score: Radjabov – Sevian 1-1
- Predict the score: Robson – Vovk 0.5-1.5
- Predict the score: Fier – Granda Zuniga 0.5-1.5
- How many Russians will there be in round 3? 8
- Who will be the youngest quarter finalist? Wei Yi
- How many non-European players will make it to the 4th round? 5
- Which female player will go furthest? Hou Yifan
- How many Chinese players will lose in round 2? 3
- How many players seeded 110-128 will be whitewashed in round 1 (2-0)? 8
Congrats to the winners, and both made excellent book choices!
Congrats to the winners, and wow – super generous of QC to do something like this for fun. Unbelievably above and beyond!
i was mailed for prediction of Karjakin – Svidler match but saw the mail too late 🙁 because i was in chess tournamnet
my bad luck
hoping QC will do Similar competition for Candidates 2016
@Rachit
We most likely will…