Great to see Kramnik eliminated. Don't get me wrong, I like his play a lot, but in world championship matches you can't watch him. His chess is so destructive and boring that it is more fun to watch paint dry.

That's true; in a longer match (or with more time to prepare) Grischuk might have taken a different approach, so it's not really fair to extrapolate. And I can't criticize his match strategy too much: it worked.

I completely agree with Grischuk's comment with the caveat that this qualification system didn't have a lot of fans even from the onset. It's a bad system in my view, and that of many others. It doesn't make the finalists any less deserving.

Imo there's no ideal system. 4-game matches is better 2-game matches in terms of limiting the luck factor, but pretty much any system of short matches will put a premium on playing low-risk chess, which is not always great for the spectators.

Also there's the issue of selection into these candidate tournaments. Why did Grischuk and Mamyedarov get in (no offense) and not Gashimov, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Shirov, etc.?

I think the best system would be a large swiss-style tournament, with the top finishers seeded into a round-robin or a series of matches.

I really like the idea of the old system with zonals and interzonals where, in theory, anyone has a chance to become World Champion.

The elite players want to get paid by the game. It's twice as expensive to hold a tournament like this with 8-game matches as with 4, or with 16 players instead of 8. In general, they aren't the ones complaining about the format.

Mamedjarov was selected as the hosting country's wildcard, before the event was moved to Russia for political reasons. Gashimov is at war with the Azeri federation and i believe was also lower rated at the time than Mamedjarov.

Grischuk qualified via the FIDE grand prix, thanks to Carlsen chickening out. Ivanchuk, Karjakin and Shirov played in this grand prix series too but didn't make it IIRC.

With the exception of the selection of Mamedjarov, the qualification process was imo fair and square. Gelfand got in via the World Cup, Topalov as the loser of the last WC match, Radjabov and Grischuk via the grand prix (some people say Radjabov was gifted a vital win by Mamedjarov but FIDE is not to blame for that), Kamsky i believe as loser of the last candidates final and Kramnik and Aronian via rating.

A swiss tournament has the disadvantage that as you go down the ranking, the ranks get increasingly random. Usually, depending on entrants and number of rounds, very few spots are determined accurately. Otherwise, everything depends on the last round result. So it's not really practicable to determine more than 2-3 qualifiers via a swiss.

By the way, anyone still has the chance to become world champion. The open continental championships seed players into the world cup, the winner of which goes to the candidate matches.

Apparently any discussion of whether a 6-game final match would lead to different strategies than a 4-game match is now moot, as the players appear to have taken it upon themselves to convert it into a 4-game match. Back to back draws in a *combined* 32 moves? We're well past the point of "At least it's good fighting chess that just happens to be leading to draws" at this point imo...

Usually I find the complaints about draws overdone, but they seem a little more convincing this time. The players don't often have an explicit strategy to draw as quickly as possible in order to reach faster games! (Although it's unfair to levy that complaint against Grischuk here, it definitely looked that way in his previous match.)

The final position in this game is pretty level to my eyes. I'm surprised to see they used so much time to reach it. (I'd sooner criticize the draw in game 3, when the position was much more interesting and unbalanced.)

But it is disappointing as a spectator, even though I respect the sporting aspects. I still think longer matches would have fewer problems like this, but maybe I'm wrong. You need at least one player who wants to fight! It would be nice to see this match settled in the long games, but that looks increasingly unlikely.

Whoever wins this is going to have a lot of work to do before meeting Anand, if he wants to avoid a bloodbath, that's for sure.

What I don't understand is that it's more or less zero-sum. The draws can't be good for everybody, right?

More or less, yes. I'd think that both players believe Grischuk has more to gain from moving to tiebreaks. Gelfand didn't get anything with white, OK, but he may live to regret not playing out the third game.

And this can't be helping Grischuk get invitations, although I'm sure that he (correctly) reasons that all will be forgiven if he gets to play Anand and puts on a good show. Although this display won't help that match find sponsors.

Gelfand wins in the final classical game. If my math is correct, that's only the 3rd decisive game in 30 in the tournament.

boo, gelfand wins

wow, I thought Black was doing quite well.

Wow, I really would never have predicted Gelfand would be the next WCC challenger. Congrats to him.

guess Ra5 was a too gung-ho after all

There has been some absolutely groanworthy poker comparisons regarding Grischuk's match tactic in the chess media during the last few days, congrats if you missed them

people are not rational.

Blah matches,Gelfand will lose to Anand for sure.

On a related topic:

Gelfand in the press conference (according to twic):

"But I think statistically my chances were very good because I think it was the first victory by white in these matches, so it was very unlikely that there would be no victories by white in such a cycle."

i really hope he's joking there...

I'm not sure that Gelfand is as hopeless against Anand as people seem to believe. He has proven himself to be a great match player many times now. He hasn't won many tournaments in recent times, but neither has Anand.

LAW OF AVERAGES!!!1! one

yes, N_D is clearly not familiar with the laws of 1)regression to the mean and 2)being due

as i've played lots of swiss system tournaments i'm very familiar with "regression to the mean" and "being due (a loss)". I call it the Icarus-effect.

around here that one is usually referred to as the elevator effect

The elevator effect or open-yoyo is the normal course of event (winning against weaker players, losing against stronger ones). I'm referring to getting results against better players until you're flying too close to the sun, ending in a crash.



Something like that (taken from a tournament of mine).

So apparently it's worth studying Kramnik games

I was wondering when Danailov would appear:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7254

Although I think he's right in some points this time (about the format for WC).

He's not really a favorite in blitz vs. Kramnik. He knew he was the inferior player and just wanted to get to the higher variance games. A 2-game blitz match amongst these players is nothing more than a coin flip.


It was his best chance to advance, sure, but doesn't exactly scream out ambitions for being a world champion.