I don't know what the FIDE rule says but it seems strange to me that you could become a GM without playing *any* GMs.

"Unexpected result happened on the last board as Olga Girya, who had showed perfect result before the seventh round, unexpectedly lost to Victorija Ni." (Round 7 Report)

http://astana2013.fide.com/images/s...

At the Women's World Team Championship in Astana, Sveshnikov was helping Viktorija Ni to prepare for the games.

What part of this don't some people understand?

And yes, the second team should not have been there at all. They were there, however, with the sole purpose of throwing their match to the China-1 team, which they did.>

(1) What did I say that was "incorrect"?

China's women's team was in Israel in 2005 not as China's B team but because FIDE deemed it to be the strongest national women's team around. If they had thought another national women's team was the strongest, they would have invited that one instead. (Had that team belonged to a country other than one of the 8 open teams' countries, then no country would have fielded more than one team.)

On the other hand, had there indeed been a "China 2" in Israel, it would have been China's second string team, comprising those players not quite strong enough to be selected for the first team. Such a team would have been (a) all male & (b) far less likely to lose 0-4 to anyone. As you know, there was no such team.

(2) The event in question was organised by FIDE, & it was FIDE who decided for better or worse to invite the Chinese women's team to participate in the World Team Championship in Israel.

So are you claiming then that FIDE invited the Chinese women's team "with the sole purpose of throwing their match to the China-1 team..."?

What evidence do you have for that extraordinary claim? And why on earth would FIDE want to do such a thing?

Consider that she won against a former womens world champion as well as the current womens world champion, both of whom performed above their own rating. Irina never lost a game and this is certainly her most impressive performance to date.

I know she seems to be a hard worker who takes her game serious, so its almost as if her efforts suddenly caught up. Her game against Ushenina was fantastic the best game I reviewed of that event.

I mentioned FIDE only in response to the claim that YOU made in your previous post: <And yes, the second team should not have been there at all. They were there, however, with the sole purpose of throwing their match to the China-1 team, which they did>.

To which I replied, <The event in question was organised by FIDE, & it was FIDE who decided for better or worse to invite the Chinese women's team to participate in the World Team Championship in Israel.>

I was making the obvious point that it was FIDE, not the Chinese chess federation, who were responsible for the presence of the Chinese women. Having invited the 8 national open teams (based on geography &c), FIDE decided also to invite what they considered to be the strongest national women's team, who happened to be the Chinese women. Had they felt that, say, the Russian women's team were the strongest, then they would have invited them instead, in which case it would have been Russia that fielded two teams.

For example, is there anything in the way the Chinese women played in that match that was obviously different from their approach in their 0-4 loss to the USA?

Obviously, collusion in such a context is extremely difficult, if not impossible, either to prove or to disprove. But that being the case, how can you be so adamant that there was indeed collusion? Where does your certainty come from?

FIDE were wrong to invite the Chinese women's team to Israel, & for at least two good reasons.

(1) The Chinese women were so much weaker than all the other teams, which risked distorting the overrall results.

(2) It put the two Chinese teams, when they played each other, in a difficult, highly invidious position. The Chinese men outranked their female compatriots by (IIRC) about 250 Elo points per board, so a 4-0 whitewash was on paper a perfectly normal result. However, achieving such a result risked accusations of collusion from certain quarters. So the men all had to try to win but risked being suspected of cheating if they succeeded.

<Beholder: Oh, I see your point now. Ok, so they were not invited for the sole purpose of throwing their match.

Please provide the exact ratings and calculate the expected result. I'm sure it will not be 4-0.

Anyway, yes, I agree that <collusion in such a context is extremely difficult, if not impossible, either to prove or to disprove>.

And as to that <how can you be so adamant that there was indeed collusion? Where does your certainty come from?>

GM JOEL BENJAMIN'S ICC GAME OF THE WEEK:

Please provide the exact ratings and calculate the expected result. I'm sure it will not be 4-0.>

Please note that I did NOT say that 4-0 was THE "expected result"; I said that it was A "perfectly normal result", ie one of potentially several normal results. Obviously, a "normal" result doesn't necessarily have to be THE statistically most likely result.

I'm sure you would agree that it would be absurd to be surprised (let alone suspect foul play) every time a chess match of only 4 games fails to end in what is precisely the statistically most likely result out of all the 9 results that are possible.

Anyway, as requested, I've taken the trouble to look up CG's record of the 2005 match & found the following pairings with ratings.

Bu Xiangzhi (B) 2637 vs Wang Yu (W) 2396

Ni Hua (W) 2603 vs Gong Qianyun (B) 2374

Zhou Jianchao (B) 2516 vs Yang Shen (W) 2326

Chong Liang (W) 2515 vs Hou Yifan (B) 2220

This gives an average Elo rating difference between the men & women of 239 points per board.

I recall reading somewhere that someone rated 200 points above his opponent would be expected to score 76% against that opponent over a sufficient number of games. Unfortunately I don't know the formula for calculating how much difference to that expected score an additional 39 points rating difference makes.

However, extrapolating, (assuming it's valid to extrapolate), to teams of 4 playing only one game per board, I'm going to stick my neck out & suggest that, taking account of the rating differences, a score of 3.5-0.5 would have been the most likely result statistically of the 9 results possible, followed by 3-1, & then 4-0 as the 3rd most likely result. This is a suggestion rather than a calculation &, if my reasoning is flawed, I will happily stand corrected.

Inevitably there's a subjective element in interpreting any result as "normal". That said, although I don't know the absolute percentage probability of a 4-0 result, I'm sure that, given the huge ratings gap, it was statistically unsurprising & in that sense perfectly "normal".