I do not see any Serbian names as yet... Vladimir Portugalov from Belarus is there too...

Rishi

I am kind of a specialist myself - french players, as well as my results on most online tests, can certify it... Well, this promises to be an interesting parallel tournament : who will make more mistakes ?
Too bad there is no special prize for this title...

Edited by Ours brun 2011-04-17 10:33 PM

I am very sad that I will not be able to come to China. Sights of Beijing are very attractive, as well as money prizes. There are several reasons why I have to miss this tournament. First, my wife and I in May waiting for another child. The term is 10th, but as you know, it could be before or after, and I could not plan a long trip. Another reason is that currently we have serious problems in our organization, financial problems also exists...

I hope this tournament will be traditional and that we will see next year. I wish good luck to all participants. Let the best win!

Nikola

Thanks Nikola and here is wishing you the best in advance for your baby :)

Thanks Nikola and here is wishing you the best in advance for your baby :)

With Jakub Ondrousek joining in... it is going to be a lovely fight to see which of the three make it to the final 2... Thomas, Jan or Jakub... going to be a very interesting tournament...

And don't count out Florian or H. Jo or other familiar names. The Final Four at WSC 5 are all there, plus three others in the top 10, before you even count in the notable absentees from that tournament. Too few spots for too many good solvers. Makes me wish there were a greater weight given to the first day than just selecting a top 10 since I think I can predict at least 8 of those names right now. It will all come down to a 40-minute 8-puzzle part with no intermediate checking. Expect surprises.

Edited by motris 2011-04-19 9:25 PM

Oh definitely... and as you said, none can be counted out... its just that the 3 of you are sure to be there in the top bracket :)

Nikola, Congratulations on becoming father (on Saturday) - you had a tremendous puzzle-weekend as well, you are in podiums for all the contests you participated this weekend.
LMI Sudoku (3rd), IPC Qualifier (3rd), Scrabble Variations(1st). I hope you have good results at French qualified too!

Thank you very much, Deb.

You can see the picture of the Zivanovic family here:
http://blognadin.blogspot.com/

Nikola

Edited by Nikola 2011-04-25 7:16 PM

Congratulations Nikola!!! The baby is indeed very beautiful... God bless her :)

Thank you, Rishi!

Good luck to everyone in Beijing
Hopefully we'll see some live results at http://www.bist2011.com/result.htm

Yes...The results are coming in now.

I cannot tell you about the preliminary results, I thought they would be published but it seems like they will not. So, here are a few news : rounds 1 (classics), 2 (variants) and 3 (variants) have been played this morning and we already got the results for rounds 1 and 2; incredibly, the first two places have been quickly taken by two players called Jan and Thomas, I wonder if you already heard about them ?

Otherwise, detunedTom is easily beating Rishi and I regarding the number of mistakes made. Let be happy for him, he will at least get one crown !

Very strong competition, as expected. Very nice puzzles. Very good weather. And very soon, rounds 4, 5 and 6.

See you.

Thanks for the update. It is interesting to see that Jan and Thomas have tied after 2 rounds, although I wonder why would Jan be placed above Thomas. May be alphabetical

You are not doing bad either, with a quick spot in top 10. Good going.

Thanks. I hope I will do better (in particular, less mistakes) this afternoon. Regarding Jan and Thomas, I do not remember their respective scores on rounds 1 and 2; but tied scores are supposed to be decided regarding the fact that some rounds and puzzles "prevail" on other ones. This could explain Jan being first and Thomas second.

I suppose you got some echoes from indian players ? I know Rishi did not do as good as expected, but Ritesh took a good start, I think. I could not see Gaurav and Sumit's results yet.

yes, Rishi in particular had 2 bad rounds, hope he will be able to catch up.

Thomas's detailed report here - http://motris.livejournal.com/

Round3 results in - http://images.qianlong.com/mmsource/images/2011/05/21/333-1.JPG http://images.qianlong.com/mmsource/images/2011/05/21/333-2.JPG...

Yes,

I had a real bad start.... but thankfully the last 4 rounds have been good... I have climbed to 17th spot behind Gaurav and hopefully the climb will continue and the 6th round was also good... lets see what happens...

Rishi

Well done Rishi on moving to 15th. With one more round to go tomorrow, lets hope for the best. Gaurav isn't far behind either.

Congrats to Gaurav Korde and Rishi Puri for their performances! Unfortunate to miss the playoffs, but creditable scores. Ritesh and Sumit were not far behind and suddenly I'm getting a good feeling about next month's finals. Its going to be intense with a lot more contenders for the titles.

One of you should give details about the experience and the competition.

Great Show!!! Congrats to all Indian Players

just came back home... I must say it was probably the best organized tournament i have attended so far. The semifinals and finals rules and puzzles could have been better.
As for my performance, its a bit disappointing that i was some 100 points away from my best performance. Those single blank cell and digit switches didnt really help. But the other point of it is that even my best performance would have gotten me just into the top 10. And not to mention almost everyone made mistakes and had lost good chunks of points including thomas, jakub, janoslaw, yuhei, byron, tom collyer etc Almost everyone in top 15 (except Bastien, kota and hidieki jo) had lost atleast 80-100 points. So goes to show that we are still way off the top players. Need to get into that practice mode once again in order to stand a chance to compete for a good spot in any of the WSCs.

Overall it was a pleasure participating in such a wonderful event. And Congrats to Jakub for his 1st trophy. He really deserved one for a long time. And tough luck to snyder for being the top player in the tournament again and still unable to get into the finals!