Knockout format discussion (was: World Cup)

[billbrock]

@artichoke

@billbrock

Great event, but double elimination would make this event much less random. It’s more than a bit weird for 64 players to go across the world to play a mere two classical games, when a fingerfehler could mean elimination. And with double elimination, the final match(es) could be reduced to two games…

Check out the decisive rook endings in Vitiguov-Morozevich and Caruana-Malakhov: entertaining, but is it serious chess? The first game reminds me of the “Vančura hallucination” in one of the rapid Gelfand-Anand games. And Malakhov could have repeated moves before calculating the win. Great players will do silly things if you give them insufficient time to think.

In both cases, the higher rated player (Moro and Caruana) survived those matches. I was rooting for Vitiugov too but that stability is what makes a guy like Moro a long-termer in the world elite. Correspondingly, the precious experience he’s gotten as a result of getting those top tournament invitations has surely helped him become the tough customer he is. The young 2700 players have repeatedly mentioned the precious opportunity they have here to play against the recognized elite. Even at 2700, they are generally shut out of the “elite” cycle of tournaments.

Of potentially greater concern I think is the large number of world elite who have been beaten by kids. But looking at those matches and watching the games, they all seemed to be decided on the merits! Maybe other players will disagree with me here. Objectively I guess one could look at the move by move sequence of computer evaluations of the positions. I think this would support my view.

The existing format is looking like genius to me. Stunning results but fully decided by merit. We have a tendency in chess to protect the existing oligarchy a bit too much, and once someone gets into the Candidates cycle, they tend to be able to stay for a while. The Grand Prix depends on getting the right invitations. It’s important that the young generation be given a fair chance to kill the old in at least one place, and that’s the World Cup.

This year, I see the elite being pushed out with extreme prejudice, on live webcast. There’s nothing random about these outcomes.

Agree that the winners are very strong players. But we have a player who finished second in the World Cup by winning only one classical game.

It’s a great spectator event, but as part of the World Championship cycle, I’m not sure that anyone other than the winner should qualify.

Having said that, I look at the folks who’ve actually qualified and see a strong counterargument…no second-rate players have ever qualfied via the World Cup.

2013: Kramnik, Andreikin
2011: Svidler, Grischuk, Ivanchuk (no complaints there!)
2009: Gelfand
2007: Kamsky
2005: Aronian, Ponomariov, Bacrot (also by rating), Grischuk, Bareev, Gelfand, M. Gurevich, Rublevsky, Kamsky, Carlsen, Malakhov (took Bacrot’s spot). Of this group, Aronian, Grischuk, and Gelfand made it to the eight-player Mexico City world championship.

[klizzaus]

I don’t like a system that allows a player who won one game, lost one game, and drew fourteen with a classical performance under 2700 to qualify for the Candidates.

While one can win an event and lose rating points in other formats of tournaments (and I’ve seen it happen). I’ve never seen a system other than knockout where it was possible that the second-place finisher scored only 50%, was the 21st seed, and also lost rating points.