My Worst Ever Tournament?

Partly reconstructed charcoal-burners' hut from the days before electricity became widespread

There are many ways to measure a player's performance in a tournament.

The simplest is to count the number of points scored, using the traditional chess scoring system of a point for a win, a halfpoint for a draw, and nothing for a loss.

By that method, my score at Calvià of four points out of nine (+2=4-3) may not sound so bad.

But, as we all know, it isn't the number of points that determines success or failure, but against whom those points are scored.

The best objective measure is not games won or lost, but rating points won or lost, and my loss of 63.6 Fide elo means I had a very bad tournament indeed.

To put a loss of 63.6 in perspective, it means my expected score at Calvià, based on the opposition I faced, was 7.18 points out of nine, ie 3.18 points more than I scored.

Two other objective ways of working out how well players did is to calculate their tournament performance rating (TPR), and to note where in the final table they finished, compared with where they were seeded.

My TPR at Calvià was 1730, according to ChessBase, or 1729, according to chess-results.com - either way, more than 300 points below my Fide rating of 2035.

I was seeded 29th, but finished tied for 78th-94th (89th on tiebreak).

There is a fourth objective method of measuring performance, and that is something I devised to keep track of how I perform in various openings.

This could be done by simply totalling wins, draws and losses, but as my basic points score at Calvià shows, this can be seriously misleading.

One could also work out a performance rating for each opening, but again this can be misleading, eg a season's performance at an average rating of 1900 is good if one's rating that season was in the 1800s, but bad if one's rating was nearer 2000.

My method, which consists of awarding merit and demerit points, keeps track of relative performance, and can be used for as many years as you want, without compromising the system.

I award myself, or, rather, the opening I use, a merit point if I beat someone higher rated, or draw with someone at least 160 elo higher.

Similarly, I charge the opening a demerit if I lose to someone lower rated, or draw with someone at least 160 elo lower.

[If you are wondering why 160, it is because, when I devised the system, most of my games were British Chess Federation graded, and the BCF issued three-figure grades, rather than four-figure ratings. I settled on 20 BCF as being the cut-off point for draws; at the time, that translated to 160 Fide elo.]

The system could be refined to give different values for white and black openings, and decisions have to be made about what to do with games where both players have the same rating, or, conversely, where one player has a higher international rating, and the opponent has a higher national rating.

I count games where players have identical ratings as double-jeopardy games, ie ones where both a merit and a demerit are possible.

But where players have conflicting ratings, ie one is higher internationally, the other nationally, my current practice is to say no merit/demerit is at stake.

At Calvià I faced nine lower-rated opponents. I lost to three of them, and my four draws were all against players rated more than 160 elo lower, so I suffered seven demerits, something I can never remember doing before.

For comparison, here are my results at other 'major' tournaments played this year, ie tournaments which consisted of at least seven rounds (I am ignoring weekenders, and also club and county games that are played over many weeks, rather than over consecutive days).

EVENT                                     MONTH          SCORE     ELO                     MERIT/DEMERIT

Mariánské Lázně 50+               Jan                   +3=4-2     +8.8 Fide                1-1

Weimar 50+                              Feb                  +2=3-2      -11.6 Fide               0-2

Bad Wörishofen 60+*               Mar                  +4=1-4      -10.8 Fide               0-1

World 65+ Teams (Durrës)       Apr                  +6=1-2      +58.4 Fide               6-0

Bregenz 60+*                           May                  +3=1-3     -23.6 Fide                0-2

Bad Neuenahr 65+                   May/Jun           +6=1-2      +53.4 Fide              3-0

Bischofsgrün 55+                     Jun                   +4=4-1      +34.4 Fide              2-0

Magdeburg 65+                        Jul                    +2=3-2      -36.4 Fide               0-2

British 65+ (Warwick U)           Aug                   +3=2-2     -13.2 Fide^               0-1

Czech 65+ (Olomouc)              Aug                   +4=3-2     +7.2 Fide                 0-2

European 65+ Teams (Crete)   Aug/Sep           +4=2-3      +19.4 Fide               3-0

Bad Bertrich 50+                      Sep                   +5=3-1      +35.4 Fide               3-2

Calvià U2350                           Oct                    +2=4-3      -63.6 Fide                0-7

*And women aged 55+.

^But gained 7.8 ECF.

Calvià is an outlier in every respect - it is my only major tournament this year in which I lost more games than I won; my loss of 63.6 Fide elo is 27.2 elo worse than any other tournament; my merit-demerit score of 0-7 is five demerits worse than any other tournament.

Calvià is also an outlier in another respect - it was my only major tournament this year (so far) which was not restricted to 'seniors', by which term Fide includes 50-year-olds (and 49-year-olds, if their 50th birthday is in the calendar year).

However, only one of my nine opponents at Calvià was a junior, so I can hardly blame a succession of underrated opponents as being behind my shockingly bad result.

Indeed, my one junior was almost certainly not underrated - at least, he had a bad event, losing 21.6 Fide elo, finishing 84th on tiebreak, against a seeding of 69th.

But there is another way in which Calvià is an outlier - the first seven rounds started at 20:00.

True, I was usually getting back to my hotel room before midnight, but I was going through my game, including writing it up for Beau Chess, before going to bed, which once did not happen until 02:40.

Almost every day I did not get up for breakfast until the alarm went off at 08:00, which is very unusual for me as, on those rare occasions when I do set an alarm, for example when I have a plane to catch, or am meeting someone early in the day, I nearly always wake up before it rings.

It is probably significant that the one night I got to bed before 10:30 (this was after round eight, which started at 15:30), I still nevertheless was woken by the alarm at 08:00.

In other words, although I did not fully realise it during the tournament, I was seriously tired, which may be why I was also eating more than usual - tiredness induces hunger.

I am not making excuses for my dismal performance at Calvià, but I am seeking an explanation, and I hope I have found it, as the cure for tiredness is pretty obvious.