Boring World Championship

Fischer had a point. A match of a predetermined number of games will produce draws because a single win is sufficient. However, his antidote led to an excruciating long match that was suspended and had no shortage of draws.

FIDE is in a double-bind. If there are too many draws, chess fans lose interest and sponsors pull out. On the other hand, if the match goes too long, as it did in 1984, sponsors cannot afford the costs.

Despite this seemingly impossible situation, the prize fund is generous, the official website cannot handle the audience, there are sixty or so new threads today on chess forums, everyone is talking about how bored they are. Who was the politician who said there is no such thing as bad publicity?

Excellent point.

This is what a draw looks like.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1338514

The crap that Anand-Carlsen are playing are not draws. They are colluding together at the highest levels of chess. It is worse than candidates in the 1960's.

I agree. FIDE should probably re-examine how it executes its future World Chess Championship matches in the future. Maybe the prize fund should be divided based on the number of points each player earns during the match or something? So, for example, a player who beats his opponent by 3 points would earn proportionally more of the prize fund than if he only beat his opponent by 1 point instead.

Would that provide more incentive for each player to play for a win? One could only hope so. In any case, it seems like something needs to be done to give each player greater incentive to play for a win. That would give more fans the kind of "exciting" chess they want.

Unless you personally donated money to the prize fund, it's not your money. Therefore, you have no relevant say over how the match should or should not be conducted, and in particular, how Anand or Carlsen should play their games. Therefore, you're merely whining about how other people are spending their own resources. Which -guess what?- is something socialists (i.e. what we call Democrats in the United States) like to do.
Therefore your argument is bunk.

It's one thing to offer suggestions about how the World Chess Championship can be more exciting in the future. That's a place for constructive discussion. Whining about how other people spend their own resources isn't.

The championship doesn't really begin until one of them wins a game.  The pressure will ramp up very quickly once they are not tied.  They only each get the white pieces 6 times total and only 5 more times going forward.  As long as the score is uneven in the second half, we won't be seeing quick draws.

Let's review some of your own words:

"They're playing for a substantial amount of money - money which is there because fans are willing to watch the match. In other words, they're paid entertainers. Therefore those fans are perfectly entitled to judge their play and if they opt for risk-averse snooze-chess, they should expect to be called out for that. Consequences."

If that doesn't qualify as you whining about how other people are spending their own resources, then I don't know what does.


And let me make sure we understand something else here. I agree with you that the match (thus far) is boring. And I have nothing wrong with someone having an opinion on the match or even stating it. What I do have a problem with are people who are not only complaining about how boring the match is, but also suggesting that the players should play more interesting chess, all the while having no appreciation for the fact that it's not their own skins at stake.

jes waitin see. the firewerks ara comin - bleeve u me.

Geez, you two gonna compete for some wingnut award? In American politics, the Democrats are terrible. Half of everything they say and do is wrong-headed. But, their opponents manage to hit the theoretically impossible 98% wrong level. And that's the mainstream Republicans. Currently their party is held hostage by folks so far out on a limb that 98% wrong looks credible to truth seekers. It is astounding.

Their opponents aren't just Republicans, though. It's a lot easier to vote Democrat when you ignore that face. 

And I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to talk politics in here.

No, there are actually seventeen or eighteen actual socialists in the US and they have a hard time distinguishing Democrats from Republicans, except for the three who are totalitarians. They call the Repugnacans thieves for stealing their ideas.

very very cool strong illustration of your point. I don't agree with your point, but I love the illustration. thank you.  

Your argument (from what I gather) is 'sponsors fund World Chess Championships based on demand from chess fans. Chess fans demand interesting games. Therefore, fans should get interesting games, not boring ones.' All well and good.
Except you, the chess fan, didn't pay for the sponsorship costs (correct me if I'm wrong). Your opinion may ultimately have some (most likely minor) influence on the sponsor's actions at the marginal level, but ultimately you paid nothing of value to sponsor the match. Nor is your personal chess career on the line in this match, unlike Anand's or Carlsen's. In other words, you have essentially nothing of marketable value at stake in this match. Which means your opinion of it, although you're entitled to it, is frankly worth next to nothing. Ditto for mine. Ditto for anyone other than those with something of marketable value at stake in the match.

And my point is that, while I agree the match is boring so far, Anand and Carlsen have every right to play the way they want to. Even if I'm not totally thrilled about the way they're playing, I accept that the way they play is their choice to make and not mine as a chess fan. Because it's also their own resources (i.e. their reputations) that are on the line and not mine. If I don't like it, I can ignore the match and spend my time doing something else instead. So could you.

And the reason why Anand and Carlsen (and Gelfand before him) have played such 'boring' chess is because there's most likely not enough incentive to play 'exciting' chess. So the question becomes "how do we incentivize the players to play more exciting chess?", not "This match is boring. These jerks should play more exciting chess." That's copping-out, ignoring the real problem (which is lack of incentive to play 'interesting' chess), immature, and not doing anything constructive to solve the problem.

The majority of the players here can't understand WC chess unless it's "white to play and queen sac" and they play 342 moves of najdorf theory. I like the slow grind of the championship because it builds up to the tiebreak rounds which will certainly be more understandable for the 99.99999999% of the players not playing in the world championship match. Good chess is boring and instructive. These guys arent gonna be hanging mate in 3 quadruple queen sacs.

Love the hyperbole!

I don't know why the candidates tournament was so exciting (lots of decisive results and lots of different openings being played) and this WC so far has been so boring.

But then again, this WC is still early and the players are probably just cautious, not wanting to lose games early and dig a hole they can't climb out of.

really? It is only 2 games...  You compare a tournament where they had dozens of games to only 2...

That's why I said, it's still early in the match, so of course you can't compare a tournament to a couple of games.

In a bigger sense though, the style of chess seen in the Candidates Tournament is more exciting than the style seen in the WC so far.  I remember that even the draws in the Candidates Tournament were somewhat exciting and there were many interesting endgame battles that could be instructive on various techniques.

Re: Sponsors

I think that the sponsors actually want this tournament to be longer (i.e. more boring for the first few games).  After all, if Carlsen smashed Anand in 7 games (or vice versa), there will be less ad revenue, hotel revenue, television revenue, etc. to be had by the sponsors.