How long before fide realizes we need candidates matches?

All these tournaments before another tournament that is supposed to spit out a challenger?  Who wants to sponsor that?  We already have so many top tournaments why do they think having more of the same with some confusing mechanic will generate more interest? 

 

Then the worst part is the challenger is decided by a silly round robin tournament.  How many times must we try this broken idea?  

 

Take the top 8 rated players (excluding the champ) and have them play matches to decide a challenger.  Then you will have something worthwhile.   Until then the challenger is just as random as the various winners of various high level tournaments.  

It's not really random. The November world chess championship has the number one rated player in the world playing against the world champion for the past six years, so I think the format worked:)

I see, since Carlsen ended up going it must be a fine system?  

I suppose we should nevermind the fact that Carlsen and Kramnik tied and Carlsen actually had a lower performance rating at the tournament.  

Here is a discussion of the statistics that show tournaments are pretty much a lottery.

http://en.chessbase.com/home/TabId/211/PostId/4000260

 

Until the world chess championship has a legitimate candidates cycle it will continue to be devalued.  

How has Carlsen won so many tournaments in the past few years if they are 'pretty much a lottery'?

The round robin was certainly better than the format it replaced, the knockout minimatches of Kazan. The World Championship tournaments and Candidates have been won by players like Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, Anand and Carlsen. If tournaments are a lottery the winners could just as well have been guys like Lilienthal, Ståhlberg, Pilnik, Olafsson, Filip, Morozevich and Radjabov instead, but for some reason it hasn't been that way.

Because there is a qualification system and Andreikin qualified through it.

No it doesn't. If he qualifies then he deserves it, I don't understand the obsession with only the top rated players playing, there's a rankings list if you want to find the highest rated players.

It's like any sport, the highest rated player doesn't win every title.

By definition if two players are tied in a (double) round robin the lower rated player has a better performance rating.

Pretty much how it is...

Yeah right... It is so fair and correct system where Andrekin qualifes for a classic chess match by playing rapid/blitz chess :)

I for one think going back to the Candidates matches is a good thing, i don't know exactly how you would decide the 8 participants in a way that would be fair to all but it will probably never happen

This is only because Carlsen got to play and overall draw against a lowly-rated Kramnik, whereas Kramnik managed the miracle to draw against a high-rated Carlsen. (said otherwise : switch their ratings at the beginning of the tournament, make them have the exact same results in each match, Kramink ends up with a lower tournament performance).

How is that supposed to mean anything ?

 

There were tiebreak rules, that were agreed upon before any beginning of play. You might suggest to change them, but performance rating is certainly not a good criterion because it encourages deflating one's rating before entering the tournament. My personal opinion is that head-to-head confrontation must remain the first tiebreak, and I am pretty much indifferent to what's after it (be it SB, most wins, most wins with Black, etc.) as long as it's clearly stated before play begins.

You'd rather play classical matches forever?

It's easy to criticise any format, but most of the complaints are unrealistic.

A few ideas I have about the Candidates system: -I think Kazan was largely a disaster for top-class chess. I don't blame players for devising strategies that involved lots of draws, but honestly the tournament essentially decided on a challenger based on blitz games. -That's not a knock on Gelfand, who played inspired chess and seems to have proven himself a worthy challenger. -The problem is that a mini-match tournament would either turn into the World Cup on a smaller scale (a crapshoot decided by blitz) or an indefinite struggle if you don't use rapid/blitz tiebreaks. If sponsors don't like indefinite World Championship matches, they won't like indefinite Candidates matches either. -The recent Candidates tournament was by most accounts one of the best tournaments in recent history. High quality chess with few draws and a worthy challenger. Don't tell me Carlsen didn't deserve to go, although Kramnik was equally deserving. -I think they should invite 10 or 12 players- take a few more guys on rating. Imagine Nakamura and Caruana or some other top young player added to the already stellar field from this year... -It would then have to be 18 games, but who cares? I didn't hear anyone wishing the tournament would go away when the world's top 3 were battling down the stretch. Just give the players more rest days and play the second half in a different city to get more sponsors and buzz- real chess fans would love it and adding more world-class players is always a plus. -I also think the World Championship should be at least 18 games, if not 20 or 24, but that's another story for another time...

 

Ok lets just assume you are correct and that Carlsen is indeed the most deserving challenger.

If we look at his tournament play over the last 2 years (and ignore the arbitrary tiebreaks) we see that even he, (who is an unusual standout) had about a 50% chance of winning each tournament.

2012:

Lost wijk

tal won

biel lost

tied grandslam (he and caruana both recieved +3)

won london

So 2012 he had a 50/50 shot of winning any given tournament.

 

Now 2013:

wijk won

Candidates draw (kramink and he both scored 8.5/14)

Stavanger lost

Tal lost

 Sinquefield Cup won

Again we have a coin toss as to whether he will win any given tournament.

Now let me ask you this.  Lets say I claimed I was better at chess than you.  You said no.  Look my rating is so much higher.  Well then lets assume are ratings are within 100 points.  Also I would point out that the point of a world chess championship is to prove you are better in another way beside rating. (and if we assume best play by both sides equals a draw there is good reason to think that players who can take risks with subpar moves will play better than those who play the best moves even if they lead to a draw.  So really I don't think the rating is the begin all and end all.)

But whatever lets say our ratings were within 100 points and I claimed I was better. What is the most sensible way to decide this issue? Should we just play a match against eachother?  Or should we both play against  johny, suzy, jimmy, joe, and karen and see who does better against them?  The second method is very convoluted and really no different than the rating.

Now lets say Carlsen played 3 rounds of  10 game matches with the other top 8 players.  I think he likely would likely win each of the 3 matches.  But if he lost a 10 game match against one of the top 8 players I would be inclined to say its not really clear he was better than that player.  I am a fan of Kramnik but after he lost the match to Anand I conceded Anand was playing better chess than him.    A chess match is a unique and traditional way to determine who is better.  

Tournaments are really no different than ratings.  Because Carlsen lost a tournament that does not prove he is weaker than the winner of the tournament in any remotely reliable way.      

 

Unfortunately Fide does not listen to it's members

Is there anybody else who has close to a 50% chance of winning a Super GM tournament?

But I guess your point is there was a 50% chance that someone else could have qualified?

So the conclusion is that even if Carlsen beats all other players in long matches but fails to beat one of them, this shows that he isn't the best player. And if he wins 50% of the tournaments this shows that someone else that wins 10% of them may be better :-) The 50% outcome in the example above is slightly creative though, since tournaments Carlsen actually won on tiebreak are counted among the "lost" tournaments to make it a nice 50%.

Agree Scott... I know it is very easy to be critical and complain about a problem without giving any solution.

But you will agree that rapid and classical chess require different skill set. 

I doubt if Andrekin, MVL or Tomashevsky can defeat Gelfand, Kamasky or Nakamura in classic chess. 

Solution:  As some people suggested above, lets top 7 players and a wild card entry play in candidates.

I am happy that FIDE is exerimenting and trying to put a less debatable system in place and hopefully soon they will find some.

 

Yes the latter is my point.  I mean Carlsen is a very dominant player right now.  I know there will be complacency with a bad system because he happened to win.   But my point is that even as dominant as Carlsen has been over the last 2 years a tournament qualifier is a farce.  Even with Carlsen it was a flip of a coin.