World Championship match Carlsen v Caruana

ChessPlayer123 wrote: »

I feel like there doesn't need to be any change, Carlsen or Caruana could've won in classical if they played better. I don't think it is the "classical" world chess championships, just the world chess championships. The best chess player in the world. If you're not up to the task in quicker time controls then you don't deserve to be considered the best chess player in the world.

This is nonsense. You might as well decide a tie in the Masters or British Open by having the players play pitch and putt to decide the winner.
In 2012 I found myself in the surprise position of being tied for the lead with four others going into the final round of the Irish Championship. I was to play Stephen Brady as black in the final round so my chances of winning were slim but I made it quite clear before the game that in the event of me tying first place with two others I would not be participating in any kind of play-off, not because I am no good at blitz (I'm about the same as in classical) but because I don't see it as "real" chess. In my mind I would have been joint Irish Champion regardless of what the history books might have shown.
If I had been in Caruana's shoes yesterday I would have simply defaulted and refused to play in that sham play off but probably they would have got him for breach of contract and witheld his 450k if he did. The whole thing was completely unsatisfactory, we are now left with the feeling that the match may just as well not have been played at all. We are left with a "champion" who could twice only better his challengers in a different discipline to that which he is supposed to be the champion of. They should decide the next match by a game of table tennis or maybe draughts just for a bit of variety.

I really enjoyed the match and watched almost every round from start to end.

I think there could be ways of refining the event to suit both the viewer (who wants to see results and probably more rounds) and the sponsors/FIDE/world chess (who want to make money/monetise the event and, you'd hope, spread chess/grow the game).

I think the stop/start nature of 2-2-2-2-2-1-1-TBs (20 days) holds the match back as a viewing sport where 4-4-4-2-TBs (19 days) or 4-4-2-2-2-TBs (20 days) would keep your day count similar, increase the number of games by 2, and increase the fatigue factor (but not by enough where the standard drops off a cliff). Over 4 consecutive days of play, I think the chance of a win would increase quite a bit (in your first 2 or 3 sessions depending on the model above), the viewers could sink their teeth in a bit more and you'd have an extra 2 games to market while for the nitty-gritty final rounds, you can rest up a bit.

However, this would require players to sign their contracts. If the money is there, I don't think they'd object but I obviously can't say with any certainty.


To go against the general thread, I don't mind the tiebreaks as they are currently. Rapid isn't pot-luck, these guys still play at an incredible standard during it. Obviously not perfect, but its better than say a penalty shoot-out in football in live-or-die games. At some stage, you have to seperate the two and this seems as good a way as any to me. I didn't hear Fabi objecting to it as a means to find a winner.

The only alternative I would suggest for tiebreaks would be to add an additional 2 classical games on 0-day rest ...1,1 followed directly by rapid games the next day. Those formats would then look like (with my own formats above):
4-4-4-211R (20 days)
or
4-4-2-2-211R (21 days)
where R is rapid (and blitz) games.

Joedryan wrote: »

I saw this suggested by somebody on Twitter so I cant take the credit for it, how about this:

18 games. 1 rest day after every 6 games.

That should sort out the men from the boys

The match might go on for 3 weeks, but its a World ch match, cant see the issue.

That sounds sensible but doesn't solve the problem of a tied match.
I don't see why we can't just have joint world champions. When Botvinnik and Bronstein drew 12-12 (or whatever it was) was Bronstein any less deserving of being called world champion? Is Caruana a lesser player than Carlsen now?
The thing about tradition is that once you break with it you have lost it forever. The world championship was seriously undermined by the Kasparov v Short match leading to "champions" like Ponomariov and Khalifman. The abandoned Karpov v Kasparov match that went on forever was another farce and then the final nail in the coffin was the introduction of this infernal blitz/rapid b,,,ls,,t.
Today's snowflake generation seem to have the attention span of a gnat. Everything is about instant gratification, penalty shoot outs, 20/20 cricket, tennis tie breaks, sevens rugby, etc etc.I hear that they are now even building 12 hole golf courses(God help us). My one hope is that most of these things tend to go in cycles, maybe when everything gets shortened to its minimum people will see how shallow it all is and the trend will be to revert to quality and substance.