Works for boxing (and MMA), doesn't it? A more apt comparison, as boxing is an individual sport, and like chess, is not based on 'seasons' of play (baseball, football, etc.). Baseball's playoff systems are culminations of a season.

Having seasonal champions works a lot better for team sports. The sport's success depends on local team attendance. Fans of the 29 losing teams need to get a fresh start to get them to maintain interest.

An individual sport like chess, depends more on interest in superstar players. It is in chess' best interest to have a legitimate champion, and to keep the championship title strong. The championship matches will generate more interest, and a strong champion will bring a lot more reverence to any other event he plays in.


The top GMs were consulted. They didn't make the decision. Getting consulted is being a whiny crybaby? And all they wanted to do was keep with tradition. Looks to me like the whining/crying is what Carlsen is doing.

Great post above me by Army Eye, in all aspects.

As for my own take.. I have mixed feelings about the system. I do agree that the actual champion should be decided in a match between the current WC and a challenger, to me this is a no brainer. It is a great tradition and I don't see one reason to get rid of it.. However for the candidates cycle.. I am not sure about the candidate matches to be honest.

To me, the problem is that during the chess "season" (any one given year) there are literally no matches played, well despite some absolutely random promotional thingies like Karpov vs Hou Yifan right now. All top players do the entire year is play round-robin tournaments. Now any competent player would tell you that match play and tournament play are two very different animals. So how come after playing tournaments all year, suddenly to select the candidates they want to use matches?

I mean lets take a simple example: Let's say Carlsen absolutely dominates the tournaments for the entire year (something he has done, maybe not absolutely, but he did dominate), gets to No1 in the rankings and most people agree that he is the best player around ATM, while for example Kramnik has very average success, placing around the middle in most of those tournaments. Now the time comes, and Carlsen has to face Kramnik in a candidate match. We all know that Kramnik is a great match player and I would not be surprised one bit if he beat Carlsen like 4.5 - 3.5 or so. But how can we say that Kramnik is a better player, after Carlsen has been dominating the tournament circle for the entire year? For this one match, maybe Kramnik was better prepared, maybe he was a bit more in form, maybe Kramnik is just a bad opponent for Carlsen... Now the definition of "champion" should be "the best out of everyone/all". But to Carlsen, in this case, it is "the best against Kramnik!" as he does not even have a chance to prove himself against the others.

Now on the other hand, if you have a round-robin (or even double-round-robin) tournament, such things do not matter - one has a chance to prove himself against everyone and one such "miss-match" will not hurt your chances so bad. Plus, it seems a quite logical continuation for the season, when there are only tournaments and no matches.

Some people said that matches are more attractive to the spectators, but I don't necessarily agree. I don't know about you, but to me, the San Luis 2005 was one of the most interesting tournaments of all time. Those little words "world championship" give it a certain aura and makes it completely different from Linares, Bilbao, or any other tournament, at least to me. Also, a lot of matches among top GM's are quite boring affairs with a bunch of draws because there is no need to win too many games, all you need is to win one more than your opponent, while in a tournament were only a couple of first places advance there is a need to score wins, thus the fighting spirit is much much greater. Plus, as I said before, tournament eliminates certain miss-matches and lets us see who is the best out of everyone, not against a certain opponent.

Well this has turned in to TL;DR , but hopefully I made my stance clear

im sorrry uknowwho but..... even tho i have huge respect for phil hellmuth,i dont think is the best player around despite is huge succes in tourney.


i think tourney poker and tourney chess has some things in common.hellmuth is great but far from being the world best player, his got huge ammount of bracelet but imo its purely base on him to best exploit bad player but not necessarily be the best player has in, beating the best player.

this is why i think a match is better.
some player are better to exploit bad player than others.wich is great and huge advantage in tourney but not necessairly more effective vs the great players in HU match.

i mean comon,who would u pick 1 on 1 ivey or hellmuth ? hellmuth might be better than ivey in tourney but i think we can all agree ivey has a poker player pwns hellmuth.

i just dont like 2 top player facing each other trough other players by a tourney means much.

if u better than someone, u just beat him ! not i did better vs 8 other player then him,etc.

i beat him 1 on 1 ! the guy cant beat ME ! what do i care if others cant beat him or make a draw ??? not my fault if they arent has good has me right ?

Did you really just compare poker tournaments to round-robin chess tournaments?

This sucks... but then again he has a lot of time to go for the title and he is still improving.

I guess he is not in a rush...



To me honestly...the guy with the highest rating... is most likely the best. So I just look at the ratings. I bet that in a few years from now it will be obvious Carlsen will be above everyone...most likely anyway.

why not YKW ?

concept is same isnt, good players feed on worst players( one accumulated chips and the others accumulates points) to try finish at the top with the most of it .....

now hellmuth might do better vs worst players and win because ivey wouldnt be able to overcome the stack size.

in chess even if the #1 seed beat the # 2 at the end of the tounrey,if #2 did better vs others he win even tho he cant be the #1 seeded.

a bit like petrossian in the 60's.

of course it aint the same game but the tourney concept still apply imo for NOT determining who the best player is imo.

We've had "official" FIDE champions before that weren't "de facto champions", right? If it so happens that Carlsen mops up in tournaments in the next few years, how much will it really matter? I'm quite sure one day, Carlsen will take part in the cycle, but it seems to me some very strong chess players are like prima donnas.

Montrealcorp,

you make a very good point and I agree.




What I want to see is a matchup between carslen and anand.




But then again in all fairness aronian has improved a great deal just as carlsen has and both probably deserve a shot at the title.


Carslen should not have withdrawn from the cycle.

Pitty

Sorry, but he does not make a very good point at all Again, I absolutely agree that there should be a match between a challenger and a current WC. I was merely talking about the way to choose that challenger, and his post did not address that at all.

Montreal, your post does not make much sense, at least to me.. In any big poker tournament there are hundreds and hundreds of fish which good players can abuse, that is true. However, there would be no such "worst" players in that chess tournament. 10 or so best players in the world competing in the tournament, I am curious which ones would you call the "worst", the ones that leaders could "feed" on? Also, you talk about stack sizes and other stuff, but that does not make sense at all, as in chess tournament (especially in double-round-robin where players would play 2 games against each other, switching colors) there are no such disparities, everyone has a same chance in the beginning of the game, so I don't understand what are you trying to say there.

+ , in the tournament setting, in order to qualify let's say Carlsen would have to overcome Aronian, Topalov, Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Mamedyarov, etc. etc. etc. In other words, ALL the best players. In a match setting, he would only have to overcome 2 or 3 of those, as the others would be taken care of. Catch my drift?

just think about zurich 1953

again i know its 100 players in poker.....were talking about concept here...

I am sorry if I sounded dis-respectful, I was not trying to. I respect your opinion, I am just trying to understand why you think that matches to select challengers would be better than tournaments and I can't so far

Again, the similarity is only that it is called a tournament.. There will be no week players, and whoever wants to qualify will have to prove himself against everyone, rather than a couple players. And if it is a double-round-robin, it is actually a tournament of mini-matches, so I just don't see how you can prefer 3 matches against top players to 10 matches against top players to select the best player

This might explain my point a little bit better:

In this NBA season a funny thing happened - first Celtics beat the Heat, but then in their next match Celtics lost to the Cavaliers (giant FU in the face of LeBron hehe). However, it is very clear to everyone that this does not mean that Cavaliers would beat Heat too, even though they beat the team that beat Heat.

Now in the case of Candidate matches, let's say the pairings are Carlsen - Grischuk and Aronian - Kramnik. Carlsen goes on to win and Aronian goes on to win. Later Carlsen goes on to beat Aronian. Can we really say that Carlsen would have beaten Kramnik too, just because Aronian beat him and Carlsen beat Aronian? Now in a double-round-robin tournament, Carlsen would have to prove himself against BOTH Aronian and Kramnik, + all the others.

In my opinion, the challenger has to prove beyond any doubt (Supreme court term hehe) that he is the best out of the rest in order to be worthy to face the current champion. The challenger kinda sorta does that in the match setting, but not fully in my opinion, as he does not face every top player in the process. While in a tournament, the eventual winner would have to prove himself against everyone.

Now I realize that winner-takes-all probably would not be a very good system, so I would offer something along the lines of 10 player (or 8 player) double-round-robin tournament (big ass tournament just like in good old days, plenty of games, plenty of joy for spectators) where first 2 places later on square on in a match and the winner of this match faces the WC. The motivation to fight for first instead of second would obviously be large prize money.

It is all just my opinion of course, but I think that whoever comes through in the end of such cycle would have proven that he is actually worthy to face the champ. I would happily listen to any pros that you might see in this system though, I am sure there are some

how i would do it:

- champion faces a challenger in a match, anything else is weaksauce

- challenger is decided by 16 man double elimination tournament

- get into that by either being in, say, the top ~5 of ratings, winners of the ~five biggest other tournaments (say linares, wijk, dortmund etc), then fill out the field with top performers from one or two huge swiss qualifiers

i have no problem with it if it doesnt consider the winner a WC.
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