Comments on: The new founding fathers in chess?

By: cyronix

cyronix — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 08:28:59 +0000

Kramnik speaks of honesty.
How did Kramnik get to be wch?
Right he lost in the semi final against shirov,
but got into the final nevertheless, because it was decided shirov is not a worthy opponent and Kramnik agreed to this. I have to say a very honest act from Kramnik.
Kasparov was in bad form and lost his title to kramnik, but kasparov recovered fast, won one tournament after another, was clear #1 on the rating list all the years he played, whereas kramnik was nothing, did not play much and made many shortdraws.
The most normal thing would have been to give kasparov a rematch, but Kramnik didn’t give him a rematch, he also made no proposal for a clear qualification cycle (that is why Kasparov disagreed to play in Dortmund).
Tbh. this influence of the players should be completely taken away, because there are too many players like kramnik, who chose not to play against the strongest player to guard their title, they do not play for our godess caissa, they only play for themselves.

The whole FIDE stuff suxx, matches are best.
But their should be no “Endboss” automatically getting seeded into the final.
The current Wch has to qualify like everyone else in matches.
Just make a 16 players knock out tournament with the best players.
1/8 final 4 games 1/4 final 4 games 1/2 final 6 games, final 10 games.
Just take 8 players by rating, the two previous finalists, and 6 qualification spots.
It could be as easy as that.

By: Castro

Castro — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:23:56 +0000

And, of course, sorry for my extremely bad English… hehehe

By: Castro

Castro — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:22:22 +0000

@Eiae

I agree. We know that journalists are human. This and some of Peter’s recent articles somewhat suffer with that, but it’s important to say one’s heart , views and convictions, as long as bewaring of trying to pass them as facts (and sometimes they’re presented as so. After all, it’s normal, I do that too, even if subconsciently(?), or merely in ironic fashion).
It’s so easy to present Topalov here, or Kramnik there, or Ihliuminov or… anyone! as the bad guys…
My defense of Fischer being the reining champion (now waiting a succesor) is also made of that: a plausible and defendable issue.
Makes one wants to ask, as another of Peter’s interesses: What deserves to be news? And what doesn’t? And — continuing is as to journalism concerns — “Deserving” in which sense?

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:57:01 +0000

Their two statements are not contradictory. Mr. Carlsen wants transparency and predictability, but that could easily be in the context of a semifinal tournament. He just didn’t want FIDE changing things in the middle of the current cycle.

A tournament is a great idea, much better than a match. Having the winner of the random Grand Prix already a semi-final candidate was a bit over-the-top. A real cream-of-the-crop tournament of the best super GMs to see who gets to fight for the world championship is absolutely awesome. I hope FIDE does this and I hope Peter fights FIDE only when they go against Mr. Carlsen’s ideas (which did not include format).

By: Eiae

Eiae — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:19:59 +0000

The interpretations by Peter in this article are made out of context. A good example is that he concludes Kramnik feels he should have the rights for a rematch, when what Kramnik actually said was that if others had that right he should have that right as well. Go read the whole interview and you will see he also says he is OK with having no privileges if it applies to everybody. What Kramnik complains about is the blatant favoritism by FIDE, but Peter totally disregards this and prints quotations out of context.
I love Peter’s work, it’s the best in chess journalism, I just don’t think this particular article is any good and is very atypical of his usual work.

By: Castro

Castro — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:31:54 +0000

Sorry, just to add: Another problem is that the reigning champ would be less than motivated to play your phase 2, because he’d knew he could even loose all of the games, as he’d have a final match with the winner, saving all of his preparation for that…

By: Castro

Castro — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:21:05 +0000

@lulin:
Very interesting idea, indeed, but

First, it is as fair as, say, 10 other different systems.

I once proposed 64 of the top GMs in 3 elimination small match steps, then a doble RR with the remaining 8 players, and then a match winner-WC. It would gather, in this searching for the new champion, a) A lot of many top GMs, from many origins; b) Match strengh; c) Tournament strengh d) Possibility of many different organizing sites, thus easier to find sponsors (for instance, many different cities arround the world could organize just one elimination match step between just 2 players), thus more chances to get almost all of the top GMs playing.

Second, your sistem could also be not as simple as one would desire, precisely because of the money/sponsors involved:

Either you have a huge (I mean HUGE) amount of money to distribute, or you can only gather a small number of 2700+ GMs playing at the same moment, at the same place, because they have their different agendas, with different and interesting alternative offers, all the time. If you end up with just say 15 of the 2700+ players because of that type of reasons, I say it’s somewhat a fake. Also, the SS would be an interesting phase, yes, but only with a larger set of GMs.

By: lulin

lulin — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:26:03 +0000

To be fair and simple, I propose this format for world championship:

1. all 2700 above players (the current champion Anand excluded) play a 9 or 10 round in SS (final record will be based on tiebreak, no rapid chess will be played)

2. the first 5(maybe 7) players from 1 plus the current champion (Anand) play with double RR

3. if the current champion wins in 2, he/she holds the title

4. if the current champion loses in 2, he has the right to be challenged in match format by the winner in 2.

By: guitarspider

guitarspider — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:02:39 +0000

Very interesting points indeed. But I still think the Grand Prix system as a whole was good enough to make a new start. With certain modifications (i.e. no World Cup, no local nominees, etc) it would’ve made for a good start. At least it was a reliable cycle without big possibilities to abuse it and claim privileges. Until Fide decided to change it and seed people and create new tournaments of course.

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:08:38 +0000

Wow. Fire on Chessvibes