amber tournament - if you ain't first, you're last!

so carlsen and ivanchuk tied for the win at amber. reading over some of the posts on the main page article, there are a decent amount of people who made comments similar to "ivanchuk is the 'real' winner because he never lost a game and carlsen lost 6 games".

i do understand this point, but i also want to voice my consideration on this:

it's this type of mentality which leads high level chess players to play to not lose instead of playing to win. carlsen played to win. sure that led him to lose more games, but he also won more games than ivanchuk as a result. personally i loved his aggression and style, and that he was not afraid to risk a possible loss for an outright win. it's this kind of mentality that is lacking in chess imho.

if there were more players who simply went out to win every game and didn't really care about ratings and such, i think chess tournaments would be even more interesting. we need some more "ricky bobby" mentality (ala taladega nights) in chess. "if you ain't first, you're last!"

Carlsen is about 18 years old, plenty of time for him turn into a crusty old drawing machine, let's enjoy his time as an ambitious and unrestrained young thug.

heh, so true.

I might agree that Ivanchuk is the " real winner " but not because he was undefeated. He did win both his games against Carlsen ! I would give him the nod due to this.  If they had split their two individual games I would give Carlsen the nod because he won more games than anyone else.

I tend to favour this kind of tie-break too. I would first go for results between players, and then # of wins.

point taken, and i agree with you in this respect.