I was looking at the advance entry list for the National Open vegaschessfestival.com/enter … ction=OPEN
and noticed that there’s a guy entered in the Championship Section who has requested half point byes for all six rounds. What’s up with that?
According to the list he is rated under 2100, so that means that to enter the top section, he would have had to pay an extra $80 on top of the normal entry fee of $169. That’s a lot of money to pay just for the thrill of seeing your name on the crosstable with a 3-3 score.
I suspect that there was a mix-up on the pre-entry; i.e., the 2100 may have thought he was requesting NOT to get byes those rounds. Several other players have made the same request for their sections. The staff will need to check with those players to see just what it is they are requesting.
Maybe the guy is requesting 6 byes, to reserve the right later to un-request them, thus getting around such rules as “round 6 bye must be requested before the start of round 2”.
If one of the bye rules for this tournament is “Deadline for un-requesting a previously requested bye is the same as the deadline for requesting a bye” (as it should be), then of course that strategy is thwarted.