The special events have become more and more important with each year as we keep trying to improve the Reykjavik Open and the overall experience for our guests.
The Golden Circle has been a mainstay now for many years and this year we had several events that we have had before like the blitz tournament, the soccer match just to name a few. Also we had the pleasure of Kasparov visiting and signing books for players and guests.
My favourite this year was the pub quiz which had a record number number of participants. I had the pleasure of being “Quizmaster” along with fellow organiser Stefan Bergsson. In the past this event has been brilliantly organised by FM Sigurbjörn Björnsson but this year the duties were passed on even though he had two “guest questions”.
The format has been the same throughout the years (I believe the first time we did this was 2009). We have 30 questions about chess and chess related matters and you can score 1 point for each question so a maximum of 30 points are possible. The biggest score in the events history was achived by the late Heini Olsen from the Faroe Islands.
Answers being filled in
Players form a team of two and simply write down the answers on a piece of paper, placing the number of the question before the answer. After the quiz has finished teams find other teams to swap their paper with and the answers are given so there is another team that goes over the answers so there is no “funny business” 🙂
The Quizmasters with the photographer Fiona
This year people in general seemed happy with the quiz which had a good variety of questions but in my opinion ideally it should have been slightly easier with more teams scoring in the mid 20’s.
The quiz was won by the formidable team of Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam the editor of New In Chess and Icelandic GM Helgi Olafsson who has both a tremendous memory and knowledge of the game. Perhaps the quiz was slightly more difficult than should be normal because the presence of this partnership was known beforehand 😉
Helgi trying to recall some things before writing down an answer
Hamitevici and Groves had the most fun in this event and scored 3 “fun-points” on top of their traditional score
After teams had received their paper after the answers were given, teams were asked how many points they got through raising of hands. The number of correct answers required was then slowly increased and accordingly the hands got fewer until there was only one winner with 21 points out of the 30. The runners up had 20 answers followed by 19 for the 3rd place finishers.
Hands being raised
Runar Berg and Juan from Brasil. Runar had all the moves from the tripled pawn position where we asked from which opening it arised
Several Dutch teams participated
Jon Gunnar Jonsson in the middle who has usually been a member of the highest placed Icelandic team each year in the quiz….this year was no different
And finally the winners!
If you want to have a go at the quiz….here are the questions:
