What a weekend that was. It started innocently enough with fast feed Tennis (although I could tell that this was the first drill for me this year) and the kids' Music class on Saturday. The Schach-Bundesligawas on, with two remarkable aspects for me:
1. My team (SF Berlin) did very poor. First, we conceded a 4:4 draw against local rival Tegel, lost 0:8 versus the league-topping team of Baden-Baden (against all odds as discussed here), and rounded off the weekend with an equally disappointing 4:4 against Heidelberg. The 0:8 made me believe that the pre-announced pairings must normally benefit the stronger team: The weaker team would usually be more motivated to prepare against several opponents. The weaker team has more ways to find out the whereabouts of the players of the stronger team (e.g., "X" is still playing in that tournament and will not be available for the team), so the stronger team benefits more from knowing the pairings. The weaker player will typically have less opening lines to choose from, creating a stationary target for the favorite. The better player more easily will sidestep enemy preparation (that actually being a more important part of the chess pro's skill set).
2. The sensational 4:4 draw of Erfurt vs. Werder Bremen. Clearly, the defensive MVP was Thomas Casper who held a deceivingly simple endgame hours after everyone else had finished. Insiders know that this was just the right guy for that job...

As for the afternoon: "If line 38 is 125.100 or less and you did not provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual, multiply 3.650 by the number in line 6d. Otherwise, see page 37."

In good ECU event tradition players suspect that they are unwillingly paying part of the costs of the event.
This time, Eric van den Doel sends an open letter explaining the inconsistent pricing of an official players' hotel.

I checked the IBIS prices on HRS; and indeed, it is € 61 a single room per night; plus 9,50 € breakfast. That the players had to pay € 98 (they got some supposedly cheap lunch and dinner) is sad; particularly since the long rental time of two weeks would hint at a base rate even lower than € 61.

So I guess he has a point; in any case not getting any answer is unacceptable.

I do not fully agree with the more enthusiastic comments elsewhere. On the other hand, I might be spoiled by the usually superb playing conditions in the german chess Bundesliga and tournaments such as the Capablanca Memorial which even way after its prime in the 1960s is still a chess player's heaven. Another disclaimer: Suffering from the home-court disadvantage in chess I played badly which may create some bias as well...

Already during Registration and Opening players felt as second class citizens. This continued during the tournament. Let me make clear that I am really measuring the Euro against the Bundesliga and closed tournaments; not against a typical open where I would expect many things exactly as they were in Dresden.

Organizing top-level events means focusing on the needs of the players. Sounds simple, but really players want only few things, including ubiquitous information on schedule, results, games and regulations. They want prompt access to pairings, comfortable playing space, fast access to toilets and water. A plus are free coffee and water (as available in the Bundesliga, at the European Club Fügen and needless to say, in Cuba) and facilities to analyse the games afterward.

I think for most serious players supporting events etc. are less important than the organizers might think. People deserve credit for offering them but we must not confuse popular sports events (where people are taking their holidays and are expecting to be entertained) with professional-level events. That being said -- average Elo at the Olympiad will be less, so the weights might be shifted into the non-professional direction again.

I try to measure the Euro 2007 against those criteria in more detail:

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Admittance was € 8 for regular day visits. The fact that the volunteers watching the doors were usually not very involved into the chess scene ensured that visitors were treated quite equal. Strongest player visiting was Levon Aronian, he was probably sent back to buy a ticket as well.

The 8 € ticket was good for looking at the playing area from above, and to follow the top boards transmitted onto large canvas. You could also sit outside and listen to comments by GM Klaus Bischoff. I liked this very much, finally someone with definite chess knowledge. Players were forbidden to leave the playing area, so Klaus could easily comment on games still in progress.

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Many things have been written about the Euro (quite interesting stuff on rankzero, schachblog and Entwicklungsvorsprung (note that everything is in german, though).

I participated there as well, so I feel tempted to comment on the event. In order to not write a too lengthy article I split this into multiple parts.

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Based on I beat Garry (the Kasparov Number) you can also construct links between arbitrary players. So, feel free to determine your "Martin Number" here: I beat Martin.

I just returned from Fügen, Austria. See the german page of Schachfreunde Berlin or the news portal at Chessbase for lots of material on the event.

Personally (part from chess) I did some speed-hiking to Kreuzjoch and Spieljoch. Facilities and people at Kohlerhof are excellent (swimming, ping-pong, food and the near mini-golf.)

The chess crowd was special; hotel personnel wondered about a strong player engaged in a debate with the salad buffet.

There aren't any. Good news is that I have replaced my outdated Debian system with Ubuntu 6.06. Quite nice (USB support, Tux racer and I got the winmodem (covenant) working).
Bad news is that it is hard to grasp what I did in Gullydeckel some years ago.

Leo's site is great and does provide motivation to finally build an evaluation function for Gully.

There is again an interfacing issue detected by Olivier Deville and explained to me by Jim Ablett. Sorry, folks. I installed Arena and reproduced this; however, the bug still exists.