Most of those who are blaming Aronian or Radjabov are Magnus fanboys. They wanted to see Aronian losing and Magnus winning. And when they saw 12 move draw of Aronian and Radjabov they got frustrated! :) Well, Cheer up guys, Magnus doesn't have to win every tourney.

strange decision by radjabov not to play. did he lose his nerve? was he afraid of losing to an armenian in the last round, given the history between azerbijan and that country?

understandable that aronian would like to take a quick draw. but radjabov? i'm sad for him that he didn't have the courage to play.

Can we name one sport in which, the goal is not the final result,time waist ,to retain the achieved, or I'm wrong.

I like the point about the last leg of Tour de France and I also notice that in Basketball there are times when a team which is leading will play it safe and run down the clock rather than try to score an additional goal (and fans are not up in arms for these 'offenses'). However just to please those whose sense of propriety is offended, a system can be set up which fines the 'offending' player by deducting from his appearance fee and prize money for the non-contested game/s (decided by a committee set up by the organizers). So with this system Aronian would lose 1/13th of his pay. Since he is paid to contest chess games that is perfectly proportional to his 'offense'. Such an approach will not harm any player much unless he does it too much; and if the organizers are too punitive they will have a harder time getting that player back the following year.

On the other hand there is a very simple system which might help in double round robin tournaments (in which every player can be guaranteed an equal occurrence of colours); it is this - weight draws with black slightly more than those with white - so a draw with black is worth .6 while a draw with white is worth .4 and of course a win with either colour is still worth 1. Therefore if two players meet in the last round with an equal score then white is more likely to not be satisfied with a draw. Another way to express this would be the mathematically equivalent 10 points for a win (with either colour); 6 points for a draw with black and 4 points for a draw with white.

Bottom line however is that chess players salaries are not financed by ticket sales but by sponsors who want to be associated with this great mind sport.
As long as the sponsors are willing to cough up the money for chess AS IT IS
then the protestations of fans are not likely to carry much weight. So those
of you who are really offended can make REAL CHANGE by organizing a tournament
and instituting the rules that you see fit.

all of you chess "fans" are owed nothing. how much did you pay to watch the games? it was a long tournament and these guys can draw the game - their excellent play throughout the tournament put them in this position. in just about every sport, when you are ahead, you can win by 'eating up the clock', and it's well deserved. organizers can make draw rules if they like, but this tournament showed that they do not need to. this was one of the best tournaments in history. any talk of changing the rules of chess is blasphemous.

Now we can understand atleast a little why Fischer hated quick draws. You didn't see him going for a quick draw in the Candidates matches did you, even though he was 5-0 against Taimanov and again 5-0 against Larsen. On the other hand I can't really blame Aronian for it, all he needed was a draw to be solo first anyways.

I agree with most that the Short Draws argument sounds quite silly - and I think it has been adequately answered. Let me try a little differently - Consider boxing: A player scores a healthy lead over his opponent over n-1 rounds. After the break, coming back to the last round, all he has to do is avoid a KO blow by his opponent (his opponent can never catch up on points). So he decides to not throw any punches and simply defend any punches thrown by his opponent.

And yes, he did NOT play the game in that round in the normal sense, the organizers do count the round, and do award the winner.

What is the problem?

Congrats to Aronian for an amazing tournament win!!
And congrats to Harikrishna and Turov!

The tournament has been already replete with so much excitement that I don't understand those who would have expected to see more excitement in the last round - from the point of view of a chess fan, we love to see but look at what Aronian says about his sleeping times; for two weeks, probably all players have been thinking about chess 24 hours a day and it should be really mind-boggling after a certain point. You look at your food in front of you at dinner and what you see is a dubious line in Petroff Defence, or you take a shower and you don't even realize that you just have washed your hair with your shampoo with a nice scent but rather your mind is stuck with that complicated line in Nimzo-Indian. "Enough!", one would easily say after some time, I guess.

I live in Boston and I definitely knew that when I woke up on Sunday morning many of the games would have finished with short draws already and didn't get surprised even for a second when I checked the results immediately - because this is what is happening in many tournaments and the players have every right to do so (especially when they repeat their moves).

Congratulations to the organizers; I think the tournament has been a success this winter in terms of the spectacle and excitement already, even without a real fight in the last round for some games.

PS: For the next year, it would be lovely to have live broadcasting as they do in Moscow during the games (even a standard quality in broadcasting would be enough, if there is any budget problem), and even if I like this old-fashion board demos, it would be again lovely to have the player of the day sit in front of a computer equipped with Chessbase or a program like that, and show his/her game, as they do in Moscow again. There are, in effect, thousands of people who follow this tournament live even if they are not there; and the organizers should do their best to keep this on-line interest alive.

And as always, thanks to Peter and the Chessvibes for the wonderful reports.

shame

Haha, the nutjobs around here busy hating the greatest players of our time as usual

If an organiser/ sponsor would divert from the classical pricemechanism then I believe it is possible to avoid (largely but not completely) the short draws.

One modest way to do is to set a price per scored half point (e.g. 500 euros).
Further finetuning can be done by raising the price per half point above a certain threshold (e.g. above 7/ 13 then price/ half point is raised with another 500 euro).
One radical way to set prices is to only give price/ full point so no price when a draw has been made. (e.g. 2000 euros which means Aronian would earn 14.000 euros).
The radical way is likely too harsh so I think we should search some balanced method. In the end draws will not be interesting financially for the player so there will be a serious financial incentive to avoid the draw.

Everybody forget to congragulate Hari and Maxim, I do so. Aronian Played good chess.

Great tournament, and congrats to Aronian, who was a deserved winner. I was surprised by the speed of the draw, but it's completely understandable from my perspective, for reasons stated repeatedly above. As for all this "moral" stuff, I wonder what all you armchair moral absolutists would have done in Aronian's chair. If one of the "best players ever" wants a draw with white, then good luck denying him.

the most comments are at a poor level, despite a nice tournament

quick draw is fine, Aronian deserved winner.

Giri took a deserved last place too, if only for calling those who beat him coffeehouse players.
And chessvibes should actually stress that statement imo, instead of being so surprised with the Aronian last round draw, like in the 5,5 years of running the site they have never seen a player forcing a last round draw to secure a tournament win again!

congrats to aronian for winning this very nice piece of tournament!
concerning his last game: it's completely understandable--he pulled 9(!) decisive games in a long, 13-round race--give him a break! however, imho, radjabov exactly because of such things (see the world cup for further reference) will not ever live up to the expectations many have from him...
i though caruana would enter the top 10 sooner or later, but so fast?! wow!
thx chessvibes for the coverage, players and organizers for the fun provided

Maybe I overlooked some comments but Caruna had a great tournament as well.