breakfast wrote:My impressions:
It's better to give the players the right to choose the partner, starting from #1 (Catalin Taranu).
So, he will be able to choose the weakest opponent from top 8 (will be fair).
This is an interesting idea, I think. But what if Taranu chooses Silt, for example? Then Silt, who was very successful so far, suddenly gets a very strong opponent. That seems unfair to Silt?
Perhaps the choice should be by the top four (in order), but only from the bottom four? (i.e Taranu, then Silt, then Shikshin, then Mitic get to choose from the list Debarre, Kachanovkyi, Dinerchtein, Burzo/Surin)
Silt vs Artem pair seems to be unfair. Ondrej Silt was 2nd in preliminary (very successful perfomance), but got a very hard opponent.
Yes, this is because Artem was very unsuccessful. Had the tournament continued as McMahon, like in previous years, then Silt-Artem would almost certainly also have been in the next pairing.