We’re just over halfway through the second stage. On Monday morning the strongest contender was the Bulgarian Evgeni Bozhanov: his bold, virtuosic playing drew cheers from the audience. He’s surely bound to get through to the third stage. Or is he? Nothing is certain in competitions. Five years ago, a young Austrian, Ingolf Wunder, apparently made waves in the first stage, but inexplicably wasn’t selected for the second round. This time he’s back, has made it through and is playing on Wednesday morning. His performance is hotly anticipated.

But how does the Jury make its decision? Jury member Kevin Kenner, interviewed in today’s Chopin Express, explains that “ judgements are often quite intuitive”. But in the finite arena of a competition, where 80 become 40, are then cut down to 20 and so on, by necessity there has to be a numerical marking system. In the first and second stages, it’s down to a simple yes or no, backed up by the scoring system, which comes into its own in the later rounds.

I managed to get hold of the rule book for the Competition. Interestingly, there’s an assumption that the Jury members will roughly agree and mark a pianist in a similar way. Therefore, any individual score that strays from the arithmetic mean by a certain degree will be disregarded. So if a pianist polarises the Jury’s opinion – like Pogorelich did in 1980 – we’re in for trouble. 

But if, at this early stage, we’re still relying on a simple yes/no vote, why did it take the Jury members until well after midnight to make up their minds after stage one last Thursday, when their deadline was 9.30pm? They are voting again tomorrow, when 20 become 10. Put the kettle on – I think we’re in for a long, long night.