Young guns outshoot experience.

The fifth edition of the clash of the generations match took place in Amsterdam from the 12th to the 22nd of August.
Boris Gelfand scored heavily for the 'Experience' team but otherwise his team-mates failed to find any consistent form. The Rising Stars quintet won by the narrow margin of 26 to 24.

This double round Scheveningen event involved two teams of five players, one being of experienced players averaging 42 years-old and the other being made up of five youthful players with an average age less than half their opponents!

Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura scored best for the 'Rising Stars' with 6/10 whereas Boris Gelfand was the highest overall scorer with 7/10.

The team result was as follows:

Team nameAverage ratingAverage ageExpected scoreFinal Total
Experience team2684.44225.524
Rising Stars Team2677.61824.626

The tournament was played in the NH Grand hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam with the collaboration of generous chess benefactor Joop Van Oosterom, who is also responsible for the Melody Amber series.

The victory by the 'Rising stars' team avenges their 27.5-22.5 defeat in the 2009 version.

Here are some particularities of this unique event:

1. Rate of play: 40 moves in two hours, followed by 30 minutes plus an increment of 30 seconds per move.

2. Prize-fund: each member of the winning team receives €2000, the players of the losing team receive €1000 each. In case of a 25 - 25 tie, each player receives €1500. In addition, each player receives €500 for each point he scores.

3. There is a special bonus prize for the ‘Rising Stars' team: the player with the highest score will be invited to the 2011 Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament in Nice, provided he or she scores over 50%.

See below for the play-off to earn this coveted place!

High scorers © official site.

Gelfand's seven points enabled him to amass 12 welcome rating points and Giri, despite a last-round loss, gained the same amount.

Experience team statistics:

NameRatingCountryAgeExpectedActual scoreElo +/-
Boris Gelfand2739ISR425.87+12
Peter Svidler2734RUS345.85.5-3
Peter Heine Nielsen2700DAN375.34-13
Loek van Wely2677NED3754-10
Ljubomir Ljubojevic2572SRB593.63.5-1

Rising stars team statistics:

NameRatingCountryAgeExpectedActual scoreElo +/-
Hikaru Nakamura2729USA225.66+4
Fabiano Caruana2697ITA185.25-2
Wesley So2674PHI164.94.5-4
Anish Giri2672NED164.86+12
David Howell2616ENG194.14.5+4

With Nakamura and Giri both finishing on 6/10 a Blitz play-off match was organized to determine who would earn the right to play in the prestigious Amber event in 2011.

Amber CandidateRatingGame 1Game 2
Hikaru Nakamura272911
Anish Giri267200

Of course Nakamura isn't only the higher rated of the two, he is also well-known as one of the best Blitz players in the world.

So there was no surprise in the play-off.

Nakamura against Svidler © official site.

It will be great to see Nakamura playing in the Melody Amber tournament.

Peter Svidler was second highest-rated for the Experience team and duly obtained their second highest score.

For more information concerning the event go to the Official site


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