Quote:
Originally Posted by TexAg06
I think ArmyEye said it well on page one. Here's a portion of his post.
Specifically regarding this event, I would rather have seen Carlsen and Kramnik both take safe draws in the last round and then play some sort of head-to-head games to determine the winner. Instead, Kramnik was basically forced to play wildly which resulted in one of his worst games in a long time. Perhaps this is my sports background talking, but I'd much prefer to let the players face each other somehow and determine a winner that way. Like they say in sports, settle it on the field.
As DiR said, like it or not, chess is moving in the 3-1-0 direction which is probably a good thing to increase the game's popularity with the general public. But for a world championship candidates tournament like this, I'd prefer the format that encourages the best quality chess to be played.
I know this is an extreme example, and I'm not advocating this by any means, but if victories and not draws is all we're after, why not play a 128 player rapid knockout event? We'd have tons of decisive games there.
No one said that "victories and not draws is all we're after."
Besides that though, there's a major flaw in your post. You assume that the highest-quality chess somehow leads to more draws.
Houdini and Rybka draw far less than humans do, and they are well over 3000-strength.
High-quality chess =/= Safe or drawing chess.
