Another classical timed tournament/match decided by blitz. Awful, IMO. Why not just hold a blitz tournament?
Then we wouldn’t have had 13 days of exciting classical chess. The motto of this story is if you’re putting up the money then you can decide on how a winner is determined. If you want to have your own preferred method of determining the winner then put up your own money and run your own event.
Some of the classical chess was exciting. Much of it wasn’t.
Money certainly talks. That’s an explanation, but not a cogent reason, IMO, to do it the way it was done here. I’d rather see them break the tie by drawing lots than by blitz. It’s been said that blitz isn’t chess. Better still, use a tie break system. Several are readily available. Use tournament performance. Giri’s was 2891. Carlsen’s was 2885. Have them play games at G30+10. That would be better than blitz.
Tournament performance measures are not the best measure for a tiebreak, especially for the highest rated players in the event. Sonnenborn-Berger is the usual tiebreak for a Round Robin event. The use of Rapid or Blitz tiebreak games gives the tied players more control over the final placement and is exciting, almost too exciting for the spectators. I once saw a spectator fall off a chair onto the table, scattering pieces and clock. The players ended up splitting the money after the tumult. The aversion to tied results creates odd ways to break them. Having penalty kicks decide soccer games, and Shootouts in hockey are not satisfactory representations of the games IMO. A tied result after hard fought contests is not so bad. It is the sponsor’s money and he can do anything he wants. After all, one Candidates match was determined by the spin of a roulette wheel.
Have playoff games, at a gradually increasing speed of play. If the main event is 40/120 SD/60 inc/30, then the first playoff game could be G/120 inc/30, the second G/90 inc/30, etc, until one player leads by 2 games. You wouldn’t get up to blitz speed until perhaps the 10th playoff game or so.
Bill Smythe
I suppose the person or company that hosted the event and paid for it decided the way to tiebreak. Although a longer time control for tie breaking would be nice, generally the event has to wrap up the day it’s suppose to wrap up and blitz is the only way to get a tiebreak done as soon as possible.
It’s a bit different with matches since there are only 2 players, but with a tournament, players are only going to make plans for the expected duration of the tournament. Staying longer than the calculated budget for the travel, and expenses go up quick for every day longer than planned.
The question sort of answers itself. I went over most of the rounds, and the games were as good as I could have hoped for. I wouldn’t have paid much attention to a blitz event. Before you sneer, check out the game scores.
It’s sort of an oversimplification to say that it was “decided by blitz”. It was decided down to two players by a 2 1/2 week round robin of most of the world’s strongest players. If an organizer can round up that kind of field for such a long tournament, it’s a major accomplishment. Even if I were unhappy with the tiebreak method, which I am not (they actually played some chess, which is not to be taken for granted), I’d be willing to cut the organizer some slack.
Aren’t a lot of games decided by a pseudo blitz where one player or both are down below 5 minutes? True there aren’t as many pieces on the board as in a pure blitz game, but the time factor is often times there.
I don’t think that’s a good analogy to blitz for the reason you gave although time trouble causes blunders in both instances for sure.
Typically any prize money is split and the blitz tiebreaks are for the title of “winner” and an opportunity to hold a trophy at the awards ceremony. I don’t think the players really care a whole lot about it. Of course they are competitive and want to win, but I don’t think Giri is too upset with his performance.
Obviously for tournaments or matches where more is at stake, e.g. a Candidates spot, tiebreak methods are more important.
I’ve come to the conclusion that they are all unfair, and someone will complain no matter which method is used.
-Matt
The prize money was split between Giri and Carlsen. I would ha e preferred a longer tie break. Even something like a G-30+10 would have been better, IMO.
If 13 rounds of classical chess couldn’t separate them, any tiebreak at all is anticlimactic and arbitrary. Blitz is as good as anything else. And, as someone else has pointed out, they only have one day for tiebreaks. What if 4 or 5 players are tied (not that far-fetched) instead of just 2? Then it would be hard to finish the tiebreak in one day with anything longer than blitz.
I have no problem with having them split the prizes five ways. Perhaps if they knew in advance that there would be no rapid or blitz playoff, some of them might play harder for wins.
This is a plausible suggestion. The quality of the playoff games would probably have been better (I was struck by how badly Giri butchered the 2nd blitz playoff game).
On the other hand, there are some drawbacks:
- The likelihood of draws would have been higher. If they play two G-30+10 games and they’re both drawn, which is all too likely between players at that level, we’re back where we started.
- People on site are waiting to have a closing ceremony, pack up, and go home. Each G-30+10 game delays that by an hour or more.
The general problem with chess tiebreak playoffs is that you can’t plan for them. There might not be any ties, or maybe 5 people will be tied. So, it often happens that there is just no room in the schedule for any tiebreaking activity at all; or if there is, it’s just a couple of blitz games, as in this case.
If you’re disappointed at the quality of the blitz playoff games, I have to sympathize. If I had been on site, I would have been enthralled to watch a couple of blitz games between Giri and Carlsen, and I wouldn’t have cared too much about how off-form they look at blitz. But from my computer terminal thousands of miles away, it ain’t the same – might as well go get a cup of coffee.
I don’t think anybody here cares about how the prize money is split. Rather the time needed for tiebreaks and forcing and figuring out who gets to hold the trophy. I agree that for GM’s, unless the tournament win is needed to advance to another tournament, money is the motivating factor and not the trophy. In that respect, professional chess players on the tournament circuit have to plan their tournaments and travels based on how they can maximize an income. They don’t have time to waste on endless days of tiebreaks since the money pool and how the money is split is based on the classical rounds and not the tiebreaks, which is used to figure out who gets the trophy.
The more I think about it, I’d like to see no tie breaks of any kind. Just declare a tie and split the money. As for match play for the WCC, I’d favor the champion keeping the title in the event of a tie. However, I would have them play more games for the match–18 to 24.
And yesterday Gibraltar was decided with blitz tiebreaks…sigh. I did catch the last blitz game. Can’t say that I enjoyed watching the game (the interview with Aronian was interesting), but I did enjoy watching and listening to Jovanka Houska, but then I would enjoy watching Houska watching paint drying.
I was under the impression that the tie breaker was for the trophy and that the prize money would be split according to what the scores were at the end of the classical time controls.