A very special tournament will take place in San Sebastian from 28th of December till 6th of January. The program includes A, B, C tournaments and blitz competition.
It is devoted to the famous chess tournament which was held one century ago in San Sebastian and won by José Raúl Capablanca.
A and B tournaments will be played by using a new “Basque System”.
The prize fund of the event is 100 000 euro (the first prize is 20 000 euro + electric motorbike).
The list of participants includes 10 players rated over 2700.
General information:
As you all know, the very first super tournaments, as we know them today, took place in the former casino of Donostia-San Sebastian in 1911 & 1912, being the first winner certain rookie called Jose Raul Capablanca. We wanted to celebrate this Centenary organizing a very special event, from Wednesday Dec-28th, to Thursday Jan-5th, right in between 2011 and 2012.
It will be a knock-out tournament with some modifications, as the players who get eliminated will keep playing in a parallel group. And the main novelty is that, following David Bronstein’s idea, matches will consist of two games of classical chess played simultaneously. So no one has the advantage of playing the first game with the white pieces.
The idea came up to our mind when Professor Ignacio Palacios Huerta, from the London School of Economics (specialized in fields like Games Theory, Psychology applied to Economics, and Decision Taking), gave a speech during the Grand Slam Final, in Bilbao 2010. Ignacio shared with us the results of a very interesting research, in which he demonstrated the importance of having the white pieces during the first game in a chess match. According to his research, “when two players play a series of chess games against one another, alternating who plays with the white pieces, the player who plays with the white pieces in the first game – and so plays with the white pieces in the odd games – wins more matches than the player who plays with the white pieces in the even games”. And, the more levelled these players are, the more relevance this phenomenon gains. (more info: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/12/Penalties.aspx)
This combination of Bronstein’s old idea and Palacio’s modern analysis, we have christened as “Basque System”.
27 of December
During the opening ceremony a friendly match between French and Basque players was held. Each team had 6 participants. Basque team was represented by Felix Izeta, Unai Garbisu, Alex Franco, Mikel Huerga, Santi Gonzalez, Patrice Etchegaray and French team consisted of Sebastian Mace, Fabien Libiszewski, Eric Prie, Alex Delorme, Christophe Philippe, Jean Baptiste Mullon. Despite the tough struggle both matches were drawn. Results: http://www.grosxake.com/ The main organiser of the tournament in San Sebastian GM Felix Izeta was playing on the first board for Basque team and won both games against French GM Sebastian Mace.
28 of December
According to the rules only 64 players can participate in A-group but 79 players showed their will to play there. Thus the last 15 participants of the A-group were decided during the preliminary round. The first round of A,B,C tournaments will start at 3 p.m. (local time) on 29th of December.
Official website: http://www.donostiachess.com/
Nice tournament.