Anand vs World was a joke.

What do you ppl expect when there is thousands of people involved? Everybody isn't going to be on the same page its impossible to organize that many ppl and come up with a concrete plan. It is lame that the game was a draw bc there was nothing instructive about it. The whole concept sounds cool but I don't think it works. I think it would be better if chess.com limited

Accidentally posted before I was finished lol.

I didn't pay particular attention to the time settings for this game. I missed all of it except for the last move while at work. I think Chess.com should have considered it more closely so that it wasn't, only Anand versus half the world for that reason to start with.

The other reason that was noted already, the dominance by the votes of players who are only rated half of Anand's rating. I feel bad for the 2000+ players who thought they might get a shot at testing Anand's wit without him having much time to think.

I don't understand why Chess.com didn't try to get a longer match so that everyone, on both sides of the Earth, regardless of the average rating problem, atleast had a chance to reflect on where there votes would have fallen by percentage.

What is Anand affraid of ? He has won the world championship on more than one occassion. Even if 20 GM's had their votes diluted in a long game, he'd have a great chance to win.

I was also disappointed that it was called vote chess and Chess.com players were a team, but weren't treated with a convenient interface to share their ideas, like in our usual vote chess cetting, so that the lower rated players could learn from the higher rated players, that could have maybe given Anand a game.

...I was picked up for a huge let down...

I could "draw" on more things to expound on this...

@staff... Please read the above post and if possible improve upon any future endeavors like this.

I guess I won't add it to my resume.

I think the following things would have made the game better: Perhaps have several games at once, but each is restricted to certain ratings?

Well there were a lot of us who voted for Nf6 for the first move, it barely lost out. I'm not sure how many other people stopped voting after that but I just watched until around move 10 and then closed it.

Also in the chat before the first moves were played a lot of the chat was filled with people talking about going for a draw right out of the gate. The chat was the saddest part of the whole event. It is amazing how in a community for an intellectual game as chess how immature and ridiculous the chat gets with everyone spamming random crap and trying to do anything they could to ruin the experience for others. Kohai and another mod were doing what they could with the bans every 10 seconds.

Chess.com should just make it so that if an account gets banned from the live chat they can't ever join again with that account, might keep it nicer in there.

There was no way to discuss plans in that chat or to discuss anything at all, it was a mess.

I don't have any problems with how Anand played or with what chess.com setup. They saw a chance to get in a simul with the world champ and let chess.com play against him and they took it. They even went out of their way to make sure not to influence the voting with their opinions.

I have a problem with how the players here approached the game and made their vote choices.

going to be honest, if you were world champion and you had to play 6000 patzers, would you care about the game. Id just get the money and go for a result (not a loss of course).

Reminds me of the arguments over that aronian-kramnik game. because if they finsihed early theyd play rapid to keep spectators entertained, but they just stalled until they went over thresh hold. And i dont see anything wrong with it.

I expected more. These excuses don't excuse chess.com from any of the following:

1. The absolutely horrible time picked for the game. Why 10 am PST on a Monday when most of the adult portion of the Western hemisphere are at work? There is no excuse to justify that.

2. The fast pace of the time control. As you said, there were thousands involved in the game, so what genius decided to force those thousands to decide on their moves so quickly in what was supposed to be a TEAM match? Again there is no excuse. Its just lame. Period.

3. The total lack of effort toward allowing for any kind of team cohesion in the interface offered for chess.com members to communicate during the match. At a bare minimum, as when you hover over a member's name and their top rating comes up, so should any comments have been prefaced by that persons usename and rating. At least the stronger players here have their comments stand out from the pack. In a vote chess game, knowing that advice is coming from 2200 rated johndoe rather than 800 rated joeblow is useful in helping to choose the best move.

I could go on, but those are three major blunders in the way the whole thing was setup, and every one of them could have been addressed in advance by anyone interested in the match itself rather than whatever PR it offered chess.com. The way it turned out, it seems like chess.com only cared about the promo stunt value of the match, rather than the match itself.

Oh and I have a simple solution to the numbers issue if that really is a problem: reduce the numbers by making it available only to the paying members of the site. Problem solved.

Wait, the match is over?  I thought those GM vs. "The World" things go on for like 3 months, to give the opposition time to discuss their moves. 

So what's the deets?  Anyone got the game notations?  Where did this go down?  Was I at work? huh?

And yeah, If i was the WC I'd just take the money, and be kicked back with my 2400 baud modem in my secure undisclosed location with a couple slutty strippers, not really paying attention either...

I was pretty psyched about this, but I had no idea it was 5 minutes a turn.  I missed the ENTIRE thing.  I thought it'd be like the other massive vote chess games with 3 day moves and we could think about strategy and such.  Sad, oh well.

Wait!  So when did this thing end?  When did it start?  Where did it happen?  I was really looking forward to following the game, and are you saying that it came and went already?  Huh?

I thought this was supposed to be like "Kasparov vs. the World," remember that in '99?  Personally I dont, as I wasn't chessing it back then, but you know what I mean.

scandium wrote:

mattyf9 wrote:

What do you ppl expect when there is thousands of people involved? Everybody isn't going to be on the same page its impossible to organize that many ppl and come up with a concrete plan. It is lame that the game was a draw bc there was nothing instructive about it. The whole concept sounds cool but I don't think it works. I think it would be better if chess.com limited

I expected more. These excuses don't excuse chess.com from any of the following:

1. The absolutely horrible time picked for the game. Why 10 am PST on a Monday when most of the adult portion of the Western hemisphere are at work? There is no excuse to justify that.

2. The fast pace of the time control. As you said, there were thousands involved in the game, so what genius decided to force those thousands to decide on their moves so quickly in what was supposed to be a TEAM match? Again there is no excuse. Its just lame. Period.

3. The total lack of effort toward allowing for any kind of team cohesion in the interface offered for chess.com members to communicate during the match. At a bare minimum, as when you hover over a member's name and their top rating comes up, so should any comments have been prefaced by that persons usename and rating. At least the stronger players here have their comments stand out from the pack. In a vote chess game, knowing that advice is coming from 2200 rated johndoe rather than 800 rated joeblow is useful in helping to choose the best move.

I could go on, but those are three major blunders in the way the whole thing was setup, and every one of them could have been addressed in advance by anyone interested in the match itself rather than whatever PR it offered chess.com. The way it turned out, it seems like chess.com only cared about the promo stunt value of the match, rather than the match itself.

Oh and I have a simple solution to the numbers issue if that really is a problem: reduce the numbers by making it available only to the paying members of the site. Problem solved.

I totally agree with you bro. Especially on the time and date chosen. That's why I think the concept is flawed. I watched it for like the first 5 moves and bailed. I'd rather watch a video lecture or continue reading the book I'm working on.

i didnt actually participate although i did join it (not bothering to calculate time difference i jsut hoped i would be online). i cant find it now but im pretty sure it was like 5 minutes to vite for our move

Plus I don't blame anand for taking the draw. He's playing against thousands of players with an average rating of probably 1500, many of which were probably using an engine. Im sure he wanted to spare himself the embarrassment of losing. I blame us for voting for a draw. I would've much rather kept playing and lost. Then go over the game and see how an anand exploited our mistake. It would've been much more instructive.

This is an amazing point of view! ;D Great post! :D

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I didn't care and didn't bother with this game...

However, if i expected "something more" from the game, it would be from the World Champion's part, not from chess.com's part...

Seems to me like a lot of whining for a draw with black against the WC.. Sounds like a good result to me. (Result, not game)

Why at 10 am Pst on a monday?

Anand was hosting a Simul then, so chess.com thought it would be cool to enter the simul, and ask Anand to allow them to use a computer for the "world" to play him, and he agree'd.

He probably didnt know much about the "world," and didnt care, but chess.com advertised it like a big deal, when in reality Anand didnt care about who he was playing.

For some of the comments above, I CERTAINLY agree that there should have been a form of communicating, the chess.com/tv was a joke because the commentators were focused on some other simul games that Anand was playing, which was also a joke because now we cannot even get IM/GM's advice on moves. The main hall sucked as not many people were talking about the game, so 0 communication in this game, just a bunch of patzers playing stupid lines.

Did anyone play in the Carlsen vs the world?

How did that turn out? was there more communication? Did you like the 3 gm's picking a move so essentially cancelling out any patzer moves (like Bb4 today)?

I wasnt in that simul because of school (facepalm), so I would like people's opinions who played in both today and Carlsen vs the world.

So, Mat, did you play?  I'm still shocked the whole shebang came and went and I had no idea till tonight!

I was hoping we would get the Tarrasch when I saw 1.. d5 as I know it very very well and as it happens I know very little about the slav and ceased to vote after it went that way. 

I like the idea of the top three votes being filtered by a higher rated player....

I thought it was really cool that in some infinitesimal way, I contributed to the game against an actual chess celebrity. But I was disappointed that so many people voted to draw the game at the end.

I also had problems with the way the chat was presented during the game. It was presented in a window about one inch wide, so the comments were scrolling up so fast that you couldn't even focus your eyes for the most part, let alone read what people were saying. The best I could manage was to get a flash of "Bb4" and "...another idiot blocked by moderator" if I really tried hard. It felt like a bunch of independent uncohesive players firing moves into the void.