Maxime Vachier-Lagrave: World Junior Champion
Sergei Zhigalko led or co-led from round 4 all the way to the finish, but despite this it was Maxime Vachier-Lagrave who won the World Junior Championship title on tiebreaks. From rounds 2-6 they had the exact same score, and the rest of the way (excepting round 9) there was an alternation between Zhigalko's being half a point ahead and their being tied. In round 7, Zhigalko won and Vachier-Lagrave drew; in round 8, the opposite. In round 10 Zhigalko won, in round 11 they were tied, and the same pattern occurred in rounds 12 and 13. Normally this would greatly favor Zhigalko in the tiebreaks, as a player in the higher score group would normally play stronger opponents, but it didn't happen this time - or didn't happen enough to give Zhigalko the overall victory. In the end, the players both had 10.5/13, but with his last round victory over Dmitry Andreikin, top seed Vachier-Lagrave won the title.
Zhigalko, obviously, came in second, and then there was a huge gap - a point and a half! - to the next score group. Three players had nine points - Michal Olszewski, Ivan Popov (who drew with Zhigalko in the last round), and Alex Lenderman. (The other U.S. representative, Ray Robson, finished with 7.5.) The nine-pointers are given in tiebreak order, so Olszewski was the bronze medalist. Congratulations to the winners!
(Final crosstable here.)
Zhigalko, obviously, came in second, and then there was a huge gap - a point and a half! - to the next score group. Three players had nine points - Michal Olszewski, Ivan Popov (who drew with Zhigalko in the last round), and Alex Lenderman. (The other U.S. representative, Ray Robson, finished with 7.5.) The nine-pointers are given in tiebreak order, so Olszewski was the bronze medalist. Congratulations to the winners!
(Final crosstable here.)
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 6:40pm
In hindsight, was the boys' tournament already "decided" in the first two rounds? In round 1, Zhigalko drew against Jacques Blit (ARG, 2350). In round 2, he was paired against Belgian FM Maenhout (2303) who had drawn against Lenderman the day before. Something extra to claim for the Belgians? ,:) Their four players overperformed (three of them by more than 100 points), and they had detailed blogging coverage (http://wkjeugd.blogspot.com/< - in Dutch, too much for me to translate ...).
Anyway, congratulations to both players - kudos to Vachier-Lagrave also for showing up in the first place and risking his reputation. As far as Lenderman and Robson are concerned: both showed that they are worth their ratings or a bit more - I guess medal hopes or dreams had been exaggerated and unrealistic in the first place?
I was mostly referring to posters on Susan Polgar's site (more hype around Robson, I sincerely hope he can handle it) and also to one person here claiming halfway through the tournament that Robson's performance was "almost" comparable to Vachier-Lagrave's.
[DM: Then the place for the comment was (primarily) Susan Polgar's site.]
Black: +6 =0 -0
White: +2 =5 -0
One could argue that it hurt Zhigalko to have White in the last round. :-)
So the only question I'm aware of is whether there are restrictions on which rounds you can drop in such cases. If you're only allowed to drop later rounds, then he probably doesn't get it; if earlier rounds can be dropped as well, then it's a shoo-in.