White Mouse Sebag wins trip to Bejing

SportAccord World Mind Games Online Chess Tournament

The online tournament was hosted by PlayChess, the most popular chess server in the world with over 5000 players online every night and 200,000 games per day. The winner gets an invitation to the first SportAccord World Mind Games (return transportation ticket to the venue in Beijing, China, entry ticket to the Games, accommodation, a commemorative medal and certificate). The first edition of the World Mind Games, consisting of events in Bridge, Chess, Draughts, Go and Xiangqi, will take place from 8-16 December 2011 in Beijing. The 32 participants of the chess competition include Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Grischuk, Gashimov and Kamsky; in the women's section Hou Yifan, Lahno, Muzychuk, Ju Wenjun, Stefanova.

SportAccord is the umbrella organisation for 105 international sports federations and organisations. Its mission is to support and to protect the common interests of the sports movement. Activities include the online video portal The Sports Hub, the organisation of multi-sports games, doping-free sport, as well as sports’ social responsibility and sports’ integrity. Sport Accord can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Contact:
SportAccord Marketing and Communication Department – Iwona Lapinska
Tel + 41 (0)21 612 30 78 Fax + 41 (0)21 612 30 71 or Iwona.Lapinska@sportaccord.com

SportAccord MindGames Qualifier

Report by Tournament Director Martin Fischer

This tournament was played on Saturday, 29th October, in two stages. The preliminary with about 220 participants was a 15-round Swiss. A great number of strong players participated, many of them with intention to make it to the final, but most just to enjoy some good and strong tournament action.

During the preliminary participants from Asia played a dominating role, with many players from India struggled for a place in the final. India, as new force in international chess, is no really surprise, and a lot of good young players took their chance and played in the event. A little bit more surprising was the role of Mongolia, although we must remember that players from that country made a good impression during the Amateurs World Championship.

To reach a place under the top twelve and make it to the final it was necessary to score 10.5/15 and have a good tiebreak score. Five players from India and three from Mongolia fulfilled the norm. The final was completed by a young talent from Russia, Vlad Artemiev (13 years old!), who won the preliminary, Marie Sebag, the former French wonder girl, Aleksandar Indjic form Serbia and Nguyen van Huy from Vietnam.

• Click here for a full cross table of the preliminaries

In the final, a round robin, two players broke away from the start with a series of wins. The above mentioned Serbian talent Aleksandar Indjic and Kartihkeyan Pandian from India, whose handel on the server is ChennaiKramnik.

After six rounds we took a short break (five minutes). Some of the dust had settled and it was clear that the race for first place was an issue between the three Europeans in the field. Aleksandar was clear first with a really impressive 6.0/6 score. Still in the fight for the top places were Marie Sebag and Vlad Artemiev, both with 4.5/6.. The Asian players now had to struggle with the late hour at their locations, and were clearly lagging in concentration.

After the break the Serbian player get extremely nervous and failed to convert his commanding lead into a win. In the remaining five games he scored just one point. The decision was a struggle between the young Russian and the only female player in the final. And here experience made the difference: Marie Sebag, though still young, was already a good chess player when her opponent was born. In the final five games of the tournament she survived several dubious – sometimes extremely dubious – positions. In the final game her Vietnamese opponent, probably extremely tired in the early hours of the morning (in Vietnam), blundered his queen, and Marie Sebag was clear first, with 8.5 points from eleven game. She won the trip to Peking.

Final standings (after eleven rounds of play)

You can download the PGN file with all games or replay them on our JavaScript board:

Schedule of the SportAccord World Mind Games in Bejing

Full schedule of all games (in PDF). We will provide futher details on the event in due course.