<HeHateMe> The crosstable here is a bit misleading

Hou tied for first with Short, and according to chessbase won first prize (along with 'top woman') due to her better performance in the classical phase

The blitz playoff was for the title and the cup only

I guess Gibraltar doesn't want to declare them co-champions, and can only give the title and the cup to one person....

Maybe they decided it's more exciting to have a blitz playoff for the title, rather than use traditional tiebreaks?

If they based the title on traditional tiebreaks for the classical games, Hou would have won that as well

That, along with the 10,000 euro 'first woman' prize, means she cashed for 30000 euros

Short got second prize, which was 12,000 euros

So Short got the title and the cup....Personally, I'd rather have the cash and the satisfaction of having the best performance

But usually they don't use performance tiebreaks to determine cash payout....At least not in US swisses

The players who tie for the same score usually get the same amount of money....Regardless of tiebreaks

It's like giving Tiger Woods $1M for having the best score at the US Open, but giving Phil Mickelson the trophy and title for winning the playoff round.

According to the official tournament site, Short won the 20,000 euro first prize

actually, in bazna it was clear <2 full rounds> before the end that even <if> everything went karjakin's way (in terms of tie-breaks) in the last two rounds, he could at best end up 0.25 points behind carlsen <if> they scored the same number of points.

and everything did go karjakin's way in the last two rounds, except the inconvenient bit that carlsen drew his two games, thereby securing the tournament victory. one can't rule out that carlsen would've tried harder to win one of his two last games if it weren't for the fact that <he knew> two draws would be enough to secure 1st place and an <unshared>, big first prize check.

no, it was about how the 32,000 for 1st and second should be split. the difference between first and second was "only" 8,000.

and <strongest force>, i can't remember you making any similar comments when

1) nakamura won gibraltar in 2008 by beating bu in blitz tie-breaks after bu having had <much better> tie-breaks and a <much higher> tpr than nakamura in the classical part of the event, or when

2) nakamura won san sebastian 2009 by beating ponomariov in blitz tie-breaks. also there ponomariov had the better sonneborn-berger tie-breaks in the classical games. (i.e. nakamura had more wins against the tail-enders in the event.)

i think that's the most common approach in europe, too, riverbeast. in fact, even in most round robin events it's usual to split the money when two players are tied on points, even if they might use some tie-break criteria to declare one player the "winner".

Some may ask why Polgar, who was a top seed, should be playing for £30,000 whilst other male players could only win £20,000.

Even Hou went home with more than Nigel Short.

When I was looking at the prize structure before the tournament, I thought that if Hou won an amount larger than the female £10,000 first prize, then she should only win that amount and NOT also the ladies prize. If she won less than £10,000, but was the top woman, then she could claim the £10,000 top woman prize but nothing else.

I think it rather unfair that she wins £12,000 for second place, and £10,000 for top woman.