Ok so his complaint is once a player is mathematically out of contention they will be less likely to put up serious fight, giving players who are still in contention and facing them in late rounds a potentially easier game than somebody who faced them in an earlier round?

That is reasonable, but it is not a given and we have to look at it contrast:

1. Double Round Robin: A top ranked player may end up having a possibly easier match against a lower ranked player than an ealier player late in the tournament did due to a lack of motivation on the lower ranked players part.

2. FIDE Knock Out: A player may 'win' the tournament without having to play a single game against the top half of the field.

What am I missing? This seems like a serious no brainer. I'm not being rhetorical. Am I missing something here or taking something out of context? Or do some people prefer option 2 as is?

DIR, usually when the top seeds go out early the question to ask would be: "did they deserve to be the top seeds", not "does the winner deserve the win?"

You also overestimate the difference between top half and bottom half of a very strong tournament. Beating Kamsky at this one was arguably more difficult than beating Topalov, no matter what the ratings say. And there is a difference between tournament play and match play, the WC has almost always been about match play and, imo, rightly so. Playing the final stages in a match-play format makes a lot of sense to me. Tournaments there are plenty out there.

Gelfand clearly played the best chess at the Candidates and thus earned his right to be the challenger. He won a nice classical game against Grishchuk, a feat Kramnik and Aronian didn't manage despite 8 goes at it. Kramnik was very lucky against Radjabov before being not so lucky against Grishchuk.
I would be all for longer matches at the qualifying stages, so would probably be FIDE but obviously the players' demands in terms of money per game were too high.

Now, as the WC is on, we also see a possible reason for Gelfand's bad results lately. He played his old openings but clearly spent almost all of his work since qualifying for the WC on his "new" ones.

Also, it's not just a "may" that RR-tournaments could be influenced in some unfair way. According to a lot of contemporaries, every RR-candidates tournament from 2nd WW until Fischer's time was heavily influenced by outside shenanigans.

Ok now I think you're just taking this into some strange dimension. Super short term results mean basically nothing in chess. Many of the greatest match and tournament results start with the ultimate winner getting off to a terrible start. Fischer-Spassky is the obvious example. Actually maybe Kasparov-Karpov 1984 is a better illustration since Kasparov was losing on the board. In the first 7 games he was: +0 =4 -3 and went on to not only overcome Karpov but become the most world dominant champion in chess history. More recently just look at stuff like Wijk aan Zee 2011. Nakamura starts off +0 =3 -1 in the first 4 games and goes onto win it scoring +6 =3 -0 in the next 9 games.

Saying Gelfand played the best at the candidates is ridiculous when he didn't have to face a single top player. And the difference between the top and bottom is still huge in this game. There are always a handful of players that just dominate the rest of the world. Gelfand faced 0 of these players purely through luck enabled by the tournament format.

"Saying Gelfand played the best at the candidates is ridiculous"

it may be ridiculous to you but i think you will be hard-pressed to find a grandmaster who disagrees with that statement. Also it isn't true that he didn't have to face a top player. He didn't face Carlsen or Aronian, but at the time their dominance wasn't as clear as it might seem today.

I really hope Gelfand wins the WC, just for the fun and trolling value.

"He's clearly not good enough to play a WC match" - "but he beat the champion" - "yeah but Carlsen..."

Can you please at least try to show a little bit of class and not quote me while cutting off what I say, completely changing the meaning in the process. I said specifically: "Saying Gelfand played the best at the candidates is ridiculous when he didn't have to face a single top player." The candidates tournament wasn't exactly the highest quality chess with every player petrified of losing given the tournament format rather than being able to focus on just playing their best chess. It Just so happens that Gelfand's best chess is already a play-not-to-lose style.

It's amusing comparing his life record to somebody like Kasparov's:

Kasparov: +1087 =940 -475
Gelfand: +654 =1161 -435

Normalized:

Kasparov: +43.44 =37.57 -18.99
Gelfand: +29.07 =51.60 -19.33

He isn't a remotely comparable player yet his normalized loss rate is only 0.34 points below the most dominant player of all time. It would be interesting to develop a simulator to compare their expected results (vs an aggregated field) in these 4 game micro-match knockouts. I'll get on that later today.

that will be interesting, i'm certainly looking forward to it. Although "somebody like Kasparov's" strikes me a bit odd because there isn't somebody like Kasparov except the man himself. I would be more interested to see if Gelfand's draw/loss ratio is comaparable to players of the same strength and era or significantly higher than that.



sry for cutting your sentence off, but i don't think it makes much difference. Gelfand did get to play who he got to play. I also adressed your top player comment in the same paragraph. Show a bit of class yourself and don't exaggerate. I also may not always hit the nail on the head because english isn't my first language.

I don't speak in riddles, I post literally. Like I said, if I wanted to state "world championship match" I would have done so. If posting literally is phrasing something poorly, then I guess I'm a poor phraser guy.

How about (if one is unsure) just asking a poster what they mean before jumping down their throat? Sounds like a good policy to me. :shrug:

lol @ off-handedly, I made a stand alone statement - people do that all the time. Dude calm down and stop doing this:



Yo, yo, yo Desir. All I did was type "+1", I didn't make any (omg) huge statements.

Do It Right is a poster who usually "Does it Right", just take a look at his handle. I liked what he wrote in that post, read most of it actually, so I quoted it and +1'd. I never made any huge statements further defending "his" viewpoints in "this" thread. Slow ya roll player.

Speaking of rolls:



See chess folks, this is a poster who "gets it". Thank you very much EGarrett. Other posters just assumed what I meant and put words in my post that weren't there. You get a gold star for today.

Heck, I even threw Aronian's name in the interest list for a match (any match - gotta be super clear for the Assuming Assumers out there) and last time I checked I'm not Armenian.

Thank you also for pointing out the inappropriate manner with which Mr. Desir replied to me. Respect, is always a preference. The lack of which when communicating with others over mostly "fun" topics, speaks volumes about who one is.

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Just played through game 7. I'm a little surprised that all classical games aren't going to be drawn. I concur with the poster who said that the games *should* get more interesting now, as Anand has something to try and win games for now.

Today's game hopefully should be a good one.

KID today, whohoooo!

A match like this probably just needs a win to take off. Let's hope for some action.

why not just have about half a dozen regional swiss tourneys (heck, we could call it a zonal tournament), feed the top 8 from each through to a larger swiss event (we could call it an interzonal if you like), then the top 12 from that play matches (and by matches i don't mean the 4 game gayness that fide had for this one), with the top 4 obv getting a first round bye (we could call them candidate matches if you wanted). the winner could then roflpwn gelfand

Very interesting game so far, looks like Gelfand is coming out of the opening with a nice position. 2-0 anyone?

This is directed to DIR/ND argument:

I think this is basically argument about opinions and I am definitely not saying that one or the other is right. However, DIR, I find the arguments that you use to support your opinion kind of strange. I don't want to misinterpret anything you said so correct me if I am wrong somewhere:

1) Your main argument as I understood it is that challenger matches suck because it is possible for someone to win without playing the top seeds. True, it is possible. Just like in Wimbledon it is possible for Mardy Fish to win without playing vs Djokovic,Federer,Nadal,Del Potro if they all have upset losses in previous rounds. If that happens, does it mean that he was a undeserving winner? I think clearly the answer is no - he was the strongest player at that particular moment. This is exactly the case with Gelfand and candidate matches. Yes, he didn't face the top seeds, but that's because the top seeds lost earlier themselves, meaning that they were NOT deserving to win in that PARTICULAR TOURNAMENT. Can you argue against that?

2) Now I imagine how you will counter that last statement. "It is one tournament (matches), how can you judge their strength based on that one event, it is short term". Granted, you are right. However, let's move to your proposed double RR event. Apart from the argument that ND used about players being mathematically eliminated and therefore not caring (which you said is not a given - might I say it is not a given that the player will not face all the top seeds in candidate matches =] ), you somehow manage to miss the fact that the double RR tournament would still be short term, and according to you, one cannot judge anything from it, correct? In other words, whoever wins that double RR would be the strongest in that PARTICULAR TOURNAMENT. What does it matter if everyone will have to play everyone? The player who is in the best form/has some luck at that particular event, will win in BOTH instances. Not correct? Tell me why

In other words, you have your opinion and that is great, but you are constantly twisting arguments to try to "fit" and prove that you are "right" in an argument where there is no "right" in general. I am just wondering, if Aronian won the candidates, would you be saying the same thing? Highly doubt it. What if Gelfand luckboxed first in a RR? Bias ain't cool bro

As far as my opinion, I think that the system has to be EITHER some sort of a RR (to which people would still qualify via a mix of rating/some sort of a big knock-out event), or stay as it is now, with just one change - making matches much longer. Oh and another thing - in a WCC match, either play it to certain amount of wins (6 too long? ok, 4 or something), or at the very least remove the tie-break.. It is incredibly ******ed IMO. For as long as I can remember, if the WCC match ended in a draw, the current champ held the title, which means the challenger HAS to win classical games. IMO they should get back to it.

Wow. Nice combination.

He could have hung on a bit longer with 17... Nc6 18. dxc6 Qxc6, but - while at least not losing the queen - that's horrible for Black too.

Go Vishy! :-)

Heh crash and burn Boris, I was already worried about the consequences of him winning the WCh

Pressure changes things. It's easy to sit at a computer in your living room, or even play in a tournament where you aren't expected to win, but facing down being a favorite as the World Championship? It's much harder to deal with.

Gelfand losing in 17 moves when Anand takes him out of his prep.

I know, not the same situation at all, but still: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018015

I really hope Anand convincingly takes this down.

Yes, this is why we can't do Candidates anymore. It only takes one player to help rig, or to throw games to a friend of his, or for a nice payoff when they already have no chance to advance.

Let's just say Carlsen, Aronian, and Naka decided to all draw each other, and play balls-out vs the other 5 players in an 8-person old-school candidates.

1) It may be optimal strategy for them!

2) It is incredibly unfair to the rest of the field - Anand, Kamsky, Kramnik, whomever has to play 14-28 games with no 'free draws' vs the top players.

He lost one game, hard to call that a terrible start. The forfeit had nothing to do with Spassky skill or Fischer playing bad, this is an awful example.

He was down 5-3 after 48 games. In no way did he overcome Karpov [at the board] in 1984, and I'm as big a Garry fan as there is.

Your attempted 'logic' gets more and more absurd. Carlsen opted out - his problem, not anyone else's. I don't know if he was afraid or what but he should be ashamed with his talent.

He had already beaten Karjakin and Jakovenko and Ponomariov to qualify for the Candidates. He then beat a top 10 player in Mamedyrov, then a top player and former FIDE WC finalist in Kamsky who is one of the toughest players to defeat in a match*, coming back from behind in Classical in the final game to win to push into Rapid where he won 2-0.

Topalov lost to the 'inferior' Kamsky. Aronian lost to Grischuk. Kramnik lost to Grischuk. Blaming Gelfand for beating the guy who beat Aronian and Kramnik is absolutely ludicrous.

[So-called 'stronger players' like Caruana, Morozevich weren't even in the top 25 back in May 2011. ]

Anand was the #1 player when this cycle started and is as strong as anyone in a match today, something he's proven time and again.

If Gelfand wins, he'll have beaten players in matches ranked #1, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18 when the Candidates started, with Kamsky being the weakest and whose rating has increased and rank has jumped to 14 since then.



* Match play: Kamsky has beaten Anand, Kramnik, Short, Carlsen, Bacrot, Svidler, Ponomariov, Carlsen, Shirov, Topalov, [Salov, et al]. Oh, and he won the World Rapid title in 2010.

Losses in match: Karpov, Topalov, Gelfand, Anand.

It's very simple. Playing 14 games, including against the best players in the world, is going to be, on average, a much more accurate test of skill than playing 14 games against the worst players who managed to qualify - as Gelfand did. Furthermore as you know there are plenty of 'triangles' in chess. It's not like one 2750 will score identically against a 2700 as another 2750 would. The classic one was for some time Kasparov > Shirov > Kramnik > Kasparov. In a knock out event, these sort of natural skill triangles that occur in chess massively unbalance the results.

There are flaws with double round robins as well but ultimately it completely negates almost all luck of the draw. If you win the tournament, it's because you, like every other competitor, played the the other challengers and came out on top. In a knock out, winning can often just mean you got the luckiest draw and got even luckier with the best players getting eliminated in micromatches - as happened for Gelfand.

If Aronian had gotten first, we would be having a real match today and not this mockery. My mind wouldn't be on "How the hell did this guy even manage to qualify - oh it was another "FIDE KNOCK OUT!!"(tm)" and instead on the world championship. If Gelfand managed to score first in a round robin including the best players in the world? That wouldn't happen so I don't really see the merit in discussing it. The only format you consistently get these completely ridiculous results in is knock outs.

it's far from guaranteed that Aronian would have won any other format at the time. With the form he showed in the 8 games he played, i doubt it. Let me be results-oriented too for once: how can he win a double RR if he cannot even beat the lowest-rated player? So you cannot blame the boring WC match solely on the format of the candidates.

You could still address at least one time the difference between the FIDE knock outs (tm) of Khalifman's time and the current WC cycle. To say they are just the same is pretty far off the mark.

And concerning (really) long matches: If Kasparov had won in 1984/85 (instead of the match being interrupted), you could with some justification have said that the ridiculously long match led to the weaker chessplayer winning

He didn't ask whether I thought Aronian would have won a DRR.

As for the time control aspect, be careful of your argument. In Gelfand's knock out event of the 6 decisive games he played - 66% were decided in rapid/blitz time controls. Something that is completely standard for the format. His opponent in the finals, Grischuk, had 5 decisive games - 100% of them from rapid/blitz time controls.

you critisize the knockouts mainly for producing Gelfand and stated many times that you would have liked to see Aronian.

that's shifting the goalposts. I said there was a big difference between the FIDE knockout WC and the current cycle. For instance, the final is played over 12 games instead of 6 at much longer time controls. The semifinal was 6 games instead of 4 at longer time controls. The others were 4 instead of 2, guess what at longer time controls. I'm not 100% sure but i think also the rapid games were longer and more in number before going into Blitz. Also the qualification process to get into the last 8 wasn't just a 2-game mini match knockout format but a combination of rating, a high-level tournament series (the FIDE GP), one spot for the organizer and one big knockout event.

The world elite except Carlsen was playing. The FIDE WCs of Khalifman's era were largely boycotted.

So far you haven't addressed any of these points.

Chess in general has seen a trend towards shorter matches, shorter tournaments and shorter time controls. If you compare today's cycle with that of the 80s and 90s, this trend is reflected. I don't love it, but it's because the money isn't there.

You stated I claimed Aronian would have won a DRR. I did not. Now you're stating that I've said "many times" I would have liked to see Aronian as if that's some sort of response. Then you claim I'm the one 'moving the goalposts'. Amazing.

Anyhow, you seem to have missed the point of my post. The vast majority of the knock out's events were decided in blitz/rapid. In Grischuk's case 100% of his wins came in blitz/rapid. For Gelfand, all but 2 were. This is a direct consequence of playing knock outs. Players play to avoid losing in the classical games and so you end up deciding all the games in rapid and blitz. Praising the knock out for its long time control is pretty silly when the vast majority of matches end up decided in blitz and rapid.

This post is clearly Doing it Right.

It's important to understood the role blitz/rapid games played in determining the match. As everyone here knows, blitz/rapid games have considerably more variance than classical games.

Yep, it's as simple as that.