Cold shower! Can't blame Fabi though. Excellent game spoiled by a not so obvious blunder. Karjakin made the only move that wasn't losing. Nice for him that it was the winning move.

I like to actually see the players. This is the only way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On the other hand, it will be an interesting World Championship. Karjakin is no pushover and he is as much of a grinder as Carlsen. The only downside will be the ugly press conferences with two autists at once.

Caruana just resigned

I have to admit that I underestimated Karjakin. He always seemed like a trained monkey without much talent to me. The way he lucked out on Svidler in Baku also wasn't that impressive. He played like a machine in this tournament though and if it wasn't for the accident against Anand, he would have won with quite a margin.

Well, it's good courtesy to allow the opponent to get a forced mate position, but it would have been even better to let him play the mate out on the board.

Who was the one person who picked Karjakin in the poll to win?

i lost a pretty big bet on the karjakin-caruana game. anyway congrats, he'll get creamed by magnus anyway

Sad days, sad days. Definitely think FIDE should take suggestions from curtainz as it's better for the challenger to be a bit less random and also for the current champ to have to "prove it" as well.

Having said that, can't be too salty, Karjakin certainly "deserves" it for his chess play over the last couple of weeks. Buuut, I'm not sure anyone would say he's the 2nd best chess player in the world. Also, I hate him so he deserves nothing.

Caruana probably even played the best overall (imho anyway) but not by a ton given he really should have converted those two wins vs. Topalov.

Caruana had to overpress because of the dumb, dumb, dumb tiebreaker. This is how we decide the world championship contender..

It was loafes. Well done, congrats!

One can view who has voted for an option of a public poll by clicking on the number of votes for that option.

TomCowley voted post-factum, his ballot doesn't really count.

Was rooting for Fabi, but I'm glad at least that it's not Anand again.

The really bad result though was that there was a decisive victory so now there won't be as much pressure to reform the tiebreak system.

Anish said it best in his media interview that it's much more random than people assume it is. Too bad he doesn't seem upset about it or maybe he could cause a big media stink.

Something "above" Greg Shahade will have to carry the torch, though, b/c the tie-breaks in most major tournaments are less than amazing and it seems silly there can't be a match-off for this tournament given the funding it gets.

Do you think most players would be fine with 10k less prize fund and a match for a tie or would players all come down based on how likely it is they think they can win. E.g. Lower rated players should increase variance and never have a playoff.

I felt Karjakin was a dark horse here with reasonable chances, though I'd actually rather Fabi had won it. Still anyone but Anand is acceptable

I only bet on sure things.

(from reddit)

Read that like three times as rubber dicks. Was wondering when did old nerds become gangstas.

The mind sees what it wants to.

Tie break system for this event was a ****ing joke.

But it's to be expected from lol FIDE so I'm not too worked up about it.

well he's right in that this format has a ****load of variance compared to the old system of candidates matches, but unfortunately we're not allowed nice things in the 21st century

There's no call for complaints about the tiebreak system. People are acting like Caruana suddenly stumbled into a situation in the last round and only then became aware it was must win. He has a goddamn team of seconds and I think they could have devoted 10 minutes after round 7 to determine "we are unlikely to do well in tiebreaks so you need to press for the entire second half".

You think Anand played so many decisive games by accident? Or because he's an experienced professional who knew decisive games would be favored in the tiebreak, so he played sharper positions and went for wins and risked losses?

Add to that people saying "oh it's just totally random, they should have a playoff instead". There's no good tiebreak other than playing an unlimited match, and that's not realistic in today's climate. At some point, even if they had a playoff, it comes down to rapids or armageddons, and you can hardly argue that this is somehow less random when players like Khalifman can become world champ in this scenario.

I don't think that whether Caruana was aware of the situation is the issue (but I don't buy that Caruana wasn't pressing in the second half). The issue is just that it's a crap tiebreaker. (I also don't buy that Anand based his strategy around that)

No playoff system is perfect, but even a single armageddon game is a better tiebreaker than awarding it to the player with the most losses

Oh, I don't think the tiebreak was unfair, I just think it's a bad tiebreak.

I would want the tiebreak to satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives, e.g.: Any tiebreak where only two players can win, but the outcome is determined by the result of a third player is bad.

For sure the tiebreaks will be arbitrary (the common example always being whether we should favor more wins or fewer losses) but this one could be better.

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