Your chance to win 20 Quality Chess books!
Quality Chess has established itself as one of the best publishing houses in the chess world. Founded by GM John Shaw and GM Jacob Aagaard this company has made it their motto to make the best quality analysis and teaching material available to the chess audience. And now they are offering 20 books as a prize to the winner of a quiz! Yes, you read it right 20 quality chess books, the price of which approximately come to € 600 (!). In this article you will find the questions and the procedure of taking part in this Olympiad quiz.
The quiz topic is the Baku Olympiad.
The prize is: Ten Quality Chess books of your own choice and ten Quality Chess books of their choice. They will send the books with FedEx or UPS to your home address.
Deadline: One hour before the start of play on September 2nd, 15.00 Baku time.
Quality Chess will be the final and only arbiter of what the correct answers are! In this event of a tie, the tiebreaker will be how close to correct you are on Question 3.
The entry HAS to follow the following layout (see example below). If you do not, they will ignore the entry. The layout is based on making it easy to copy and paste it into an excel sheet. Here are the requirements:
Send an email to OlympiadQuiz2016@qualitychess.co.uk
Write whatever you want in the topic line.
You start your mail with your nickname followed by the answers:
NICKNAME
Answer 1
Answer 2
And so on. Each on a new line. Just the answer: number or one word.
The answers should be followed by your full name and address where you would like the books sent to. Please make sure that this is a place where someone can sign for the parcel. Updated with bold and underlining. No address, no entry!
If your entry does not follow this setup, sorry, you will not participate this time around.
Q1 Will Russia win the Women’s Olympiad?
Q2 Will any women player score a 2750 or higher performance?
Q3 Which place will Scotland finish?
Q4 Which place will China finish?
Q5 Which place will Russia finish?
Q6 How many games will Giri draw?
Q7 How many games will Carlsen play?
Q8 Will Scotland end above their seeding?
Q9 Will John, Colin and Andrew combined achieve their expected score?
Q10 Will Mihail Marin get a performance rating over 2600?
Q11 How many games will Sam Shankland play for the US?
Q12 Will any player score a 2850 or higher performance?
Q13 How many norms will the Iranian team score?
Q14 How many individual games will the winning team lose?
Q15 Will any player be caught cheating?
Note that Questions 3-15 refer only to the Open section.
Example of an entry:
sagarchess1
No
Yes
40
2
1
4
8
Yes
Yes
Yes
7
Yes
2
2
No
Sagar Shah
ChessBase India
301, Dhamji Shamji Trade Centre,
Vidyavihar (west),
Mumbai 400086
India
This is all that you have to send in your mail to Quality Chess in order to participate in the quiz.
The reasons for my answers:
Here I have given the reasons for my answers. Well, it will help you to navigate some of the tricky questions posed by the QC team.
Q1 Will Russia win the Women’s Olympiad?
1. The Chinese team seem clearly stronger and seem all set to win the gold!
Q2 Will any women player score a 2750 or higher performance?
2. Hou Yifan is a safe person to put your money on!
Q3 Which place will Scotland finish?
3. The Scots are seeded 62nd, so 40th place seemed like a good guess. (Answer this question carefully. It's going to be used for the tiebreak!)
Q4 Which place will China finish?
4. Although China won the gold last year, this year I have a feeling that Russia will take the gold and hence China goes to number two spot!
Q5 Which place will Russia finish?
5. Number 1! Yes I do think Russia will win this year!
Q6 How many games will Giri draw?
6. After a bad performance at the Sinquefield Cup where he finished last, and awaiting the birth of his child in October, Giri has a lot to prove at the Olympiad. My guess is that he won't be in a peaceful mood and hence four draws!
Q7 How many games will Carlsen play?
7. Carlsen played nine games out of eleven in the Tromso Olympiad. This year I think he will go for eight!
Q8 Will Scotland end above their seeding?
8. Well I hope they do, because my answer to the third question was 40th which is 22 spots above their seeding!
Q9 Will John, Colin and Andrew combined achieve their expected score?
9. John Shaw is 2454, Colin Mcnab is 2434 and Andrew Greet is 2455. I think they will be sufficiently motivated to surpass their own Elo.
Q10 Will Mihail Marin get a performance rating over 2600?
10. Judging from Mihail Marin's Facebook posts where he has been practicing not only chess but also tennis with his Romanian team, I don't think it will be a problem for him to surpass 2600!
Q11 How many games will Sam Shankland play for the US?
11. Samuel Shankland is the reserve board for the US team, but I think with his excellent performance in 2014, where he won the gold on the last board, he will definitely more chances than Ray Robson. So 7 games seems fine!
Q12 Will any player score a 2850 or higher performance?
12. For sure! 2850 doesn't seem like such a difficult barrier.
Q13 How many norms will the Iranian team score?
13. With Alireza Firouzja and Parham Maghsoodloo in the team I do not think two GM norms are sure to be scored!
Q14 How many individual games will the winning team lose?
14. As I think Russia is going to win the gold and with Kramnik, Karjakin, Tomashevsky, Grischuk and Nepomniachtchi in the team I think they would be losing just two individual games. (one for Nepo and one for Grischuk in time pressure!)
Q15 Will any player be caught cheating?
15. With careful anti cheating measure instituted, I don't think anyone will be caught.
Do not forget to browse through the Quality Chess library for the list of all their wonderful books! You should be prepared with your ten books if you win the prize! :)
ChessBase India wishes you good luck with the quiz and hopes that the 20 chess books will come to India at the end of the Olympiad!