Millionaire Open - Millionaire Monday participants

All Things Chess
1

Millionaire Monday – Qualifiers and Tiebreaks

(Note: the tournament used a player’s peak post-event rating between 12/1/2013 and 9/30/2014 for section and prize eligibility. The top 4 players after tiebreaks - which are taking place as I write this - advance to Millionaire Monday playoffs.)

Open Section – Overall

MM Qualifiers:
GM Wesley So
GM Ray Robson

Tiebreak Participants (2 spots):
GM Yu Yangyi
GM Sergei Azarov
GM Daniel Naroditsky
GM Zhou Jianchao

Open Section – 2350-2499

MM Qualifier:
IM David Karatorossian

Tiebreak Participants (3 spots):
IM Dagur Arngrimsson
IM Farai Mandizha
FM Ruifeng Li
IM Ronald Burnett
IM Cesar Zuluaga
FM Kazim Gulamali
FM Luis Flaquer

Open Section – Under 2350

Tiebreak Participants (4 spots):

FM Ylon Schwartz
Joshua Sheng
Qibiao Wang
Azamat Kashebayev
James Canty

U2200 Section

MM Qualifier:
Mbugua Bo Githoro

Tiebreak Participants (3 spots):
Matthew Meredith
Nicolas Varley
Danyul Lawrence
CM Rustam Bunyatov
Mukhtar Kaken

U2000 Section

MM Qualifiers:
Aderemi Adekola
Coel Oshiro
Sushrutha Reddy
Joshua Bromberg

U1800 Section

MM Qualifier:
Zhiji Li

Tiebreak Participants (3 spots):
Fred Williams
Iris Kokish
Pierre Damis
Dean Mitrovich

U1600 Section

MM Qualifiers:
George Terarakelian
Artem Verdiyan
Benjamin Franco
Richard Pointer

U1400 Section – Overall

MM Qualifiers:
Christian Silvestre
Adnan Al Joubi
Keith Brown
Marcus Matthews

U1400 Section – Under 1200

MM Qualifiers:
Zhenjiang Li
Anton Butenko
James Gettinger

Tiebreak Participants (1 spot):
Varun Kumar
Aaron Wilson
Aaron Hargrove
Suiming Pau

U1400 Section – Under 1000

MM Qualifiers:
Steven Owlett
Herbert Antoine

2

GM Zhou and GM Yu qualified for Millionaire Monday in the Open section, along with GM So and GM Robson.

3

So it turns out that we were spared the drama of a player going for a norm rather than the big money at the top. How about the class players in the open section? Are any of them potentially casting norms aside for dollars? This event appears to have been a class act all the way!

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I didn’t realize that there were going to be playoffs for the class prizes as well.

Alex Relyea

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The 1st Millionaire Open has been rated and posted, see
uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201410134032

6

I counted 13 players from IL. Which states had the highest turnout for this event??

Larry S. Cohen

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It is disappointing that I can’t figure out how to find which players went to the final fours, much less who won, on their site.

Alex Relyea

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California, by far.

9

They’re working on improved standings display.

There were a lot of moving parts at this event - and a lot of “Hmmm, never had to do THAT before” as well.

10

I’m at a loss here. How is it that GM So won 1st place with 6.0 when 6 players outscored him with 6.5?

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The final standings you see were for the Open section after nine rounds, but they do not reflect the final prize distribution.

After seven rounds, the top four places in the Open section were pulled out of the main draw and sent off to Millionaire Monday, where the top four prizes would be determined.

The top scores in the Open after round 7 were:

GM So, GM Robson - 6/7
GM Zhou, GM Yu, GM Naroditsky, GM Azarov - 5.5/7

So and Robson immediately qualified for the four-player Millionaire Monday playoff. The four GMs on 5.5/7 moved into a round-robin tiebreaker Sunday night.

The top two finishers in the tiebreaker were Zhou and Yu. They qualified for the last two Millionaire Monday spots. Naroditsky and Azarov were left in the main draw, and played the last two rounds of the Open section.

There is no way to completely take the Millionaire Monday participants out of the wall chart - they did play rated games, after all. So, they were simply withdrawn from the main draw, and rounds 8 & 9 were paired according to FIDE rules.

This information is also available at millionairechess.com/tournament/schedule/. Hope this helps.

12

Over at chess.com there are like 3 threads about this tournament. Do you guys think this will air on ESPN in the future?

13

Thanks, Boyd. I hadn’t read the schedule. :slight_smile: