How do we fix competitive chess?

Following the WCC which just ended, I think we can all agree that there are many issues with the current state of WCCs. Here are a few of them:

• The games were incredibly drawish. Even GMs commentating seemed to be tired of all of the draws after game 7. Granted games 3 and 4 were exciting to watch, the others weren't particularly exciting. Game 12 was simply a joke; both players had essentially agreed to a draw before the game even started.
• The Championship, which is supposed to be based on Classical Chess, was settled by Rapid games.
• The opening stage had very little variety; Carlsen had a little bit of variety with the white pieces, but otherwise it was quite repetitive.
• Agon's coverage was nothing short of a complete joke, not to mention the ridiculous greediness and short-term thinking of having people pay to watch the stream.
• Agon's work with publicising the game and attracting sponsors was a complete failure. This shouldn't come as a surprise of course; nobody in their right mind would want to sponsor such an event when FIDE is so corrupt and problematic.

Some of these problems are more or less impossible to fix (for example, openings), some are arguably "for the best" (such as the Rapid/Blitz tiebreakers, a bit like penalty kicks in association football). And some things will never be changeable, for example the basic rules of chess, or the skill gap between pros and amateurs which is much greater than any traditional sport.

Some people suggest changing the scoring system, but in a match this has very little effect (or if it does, it does so in an unfair manner or in a way which only encourages more draws). Other solutions all have their problems:

• First to x classical wins - See the 1984-1985 match for details on problematic this can be.
• Defending champion keeps his title in the event of a tie - It means that one of the players will always be "parking the bus", and will have an unfair advantage.
• Rapid tiebreakers BEFORE the classical match - this still involves rapid chess, and involves potentially pointless games being played at the start of the match, not at all ideal.
• Abolish single matches and have WCC multi-player tournaments instead - Tiebreakers become potentially nightmarish in this format. Furthermore, it completely kills the romanticism which can be so strong in some WCC matches.
• Abolish classical chess - This gets rid of the highest quality chess games. It's quite rare to find an immortal game which was played in blitz, at least in recent times.

So, all of this being said, there doesn't seem to be any easy solution, except maybe for the FIDE/Agon issues (although even there, it's not easy to figure out how to make chess sustainable on a commercial level).

So, my question is: are there any ideas? How do we fix competitive chess? It seems as though there will always be some issues, and some aspects to be sacrificed.

In the event all classical games a tied, the winner is the one who had better tournament results over the last year. That keeps it all about classical chess and who really is better than anyone else in the world.

Also make it longer than 12 games.

Those are my suggestions.

What about the solution adopted some time ago in football (real football - what some of you call 'soccer' but not to my face!)? 3 points for a win, 0 points for a loss, 1 point for a draw. In football it made games much more competitive and exciting in a number of major leagues. (That and the rule about passing back to the goalie introduced around the same time!)

24 game match.

3pts for a win, 1 for a draw.  

Drawn match allows champion to retain title.  In a 24 game match with the above stipulation on scoring, the champion deserves to stay champion if the challenger can't overtake him.

In my opinion this solves every problem.  The only other thing is FIDE/Agon.  FIDE is beyond corrupt and hopeless (we needed Kasparov to take down the thug Kirsan), and Agon made an embarrassment of the WC match.  They are both travesties.  

The only thing wrong with chess is the short attention spanned players that think the game needs to be changed so its more "exciting"

Leave the game alone, its a great game and fine as it is.  If the game is to "boring" and "drawish" for you, then go watch the rapid, and bullet championship.

If anything needs to be changed, its the tie break.

1. 24 game match

a. Champion keeps the title in case of a tie.  That solves the problem of playing for draws.

b. If the champion loses, they get a rematch within a year.

correct,

the first problem to "fix" is whether there is really even a problem?

its interesting that you start the thread with "I think we can agree that there are many problems with the WCC...."

obviously not.

if EVERYONE in the chess world thought THAT, it would be easy to make changes. 

who makes those decisions and how FIDE sorts between every different proposals (and the economic consequences of all the options) are at the heart of the disagreement.

so , even  at its best. it could be nothing better than a compromise between very different visions of the WCC.

and the reality is that a company having a lot of money and influence in Russia has just as much legitimate right to swing the WCC their way, as a other people/powers/wealthy people.

some people act like the WCC should divorced from FIDE politics.  how is that a reasonable expectation? and what of the big monies it takes to set this kind of match up.

Guys, this changes nothing in a match format. It's the same as 1 - 0.5 - 0 scoring.

 This may motivate them in a tournament, but I don't think they will care about the prize money more than the world champion title.

 This will motivate white to play conservatively.

The only GM draw was game 12. The best solution I've heard is to play the tiebreaks prior to the classical games, so you go into the classical games with someone having draw odds.

I mean that scoring in all of FIDE classical games, in which case it matters significantly in multi-player tournaments (the draw problem isn't limited to the WC match), but you're right that it doesn't change things directly in the WC match.  The 24 game match, however, definitely does.  As Diakonia stated, if the champion gets to keep title in case of a draw, drawish games will not dominate as they did during this match.  I think both those changes would fix classical chess as a whole.  

As far as marketability, who cares?  Chess will never be popular, and there's nothing wrong with that.  People with delusions of grandeur need to put down the pipe, chess will never be on ESPN, mainstream news, or successful on a PPV format. 

Then you could have situations where someone scores 3 losses and 9 draws in classical games, but goes on to win the title by having 4 wins and 5 draws in the rapid tiebreaks. Rapid would be playing a much bigger role in the championship, which would be controversial to say the least, considering how many people object to the role it plays now.

The solution is simple, it's not complicated at all. The only real problem is the die hard classical purists who cling to a time control that no longer makes any sense in this new age of computer assisted training. The top players possess virtual photographic memory, that's how Carlsen is able to keep thousands of master level games memorized. He stated a while back that he has approx 10,000, that's - ten thousand - master level games memorized. That means, all the positions, pawn structures, maneuvers, that he is able to call upon during a current game he might be playing. All the other top players posses similar abilities. Couple the memory skill with genius level tactics and strategic ability, and give these guys 4 - 6 hours to think, and guess what's going to happen? Heck, you're not as dumb as I thought; that's right, A DRAW! Speed up the time control, it's that simple. The game itself is complicated. The solution to competetive Chess is simple. We're talking a competetive, spectator sport here. Carlsen stated during the recent press conference that competetive Chess is a sport. There's nothing wrong with opening up the world of Chess to the mainstream. It can only be a great benefit in assisting a collective rise in clarity of thought among humans. Look at the world in 2016. Endless capitalistic greed, resulting wars, and the average person beleiving in all sorts of pathetically false emotional - based religious and political dogma, perpetuated by the slave masters. Well, I got a little off topic, ha, ha, but it's all part of the big picture. To summarize the solution to competetive Chess; speed up the time control.

You underestimate chess (even the best players have to start guessing when it gets complicated, no matter how long they have to think), and perhaps you weren't following the match (the positions were very dry. Karjakin in particular took every opportunity to make the positions boring).

Chess isn't the problem, a format that harshly punishes risks is the problem.

Oh, and Capablanca was the most / one of the most accurate players according to computers. Thinking modern players can play so well due to memorizing computer lines is a patzer's attempt to understand what makes pros so good.

Memorizing 10,000 games when chess can produce more positions than is humanly possible to even know is a drop in the bucket of chess knowledge.  Chess engines has supplied 1 thing: better opening preperation.  It is still up to the player to win the game.  

Speeding up the game simply increases the number of errors.  That is not improving the game, and its not making the game more "exciting"

I do not understand how speeding up the game, so players make more mistakes is making the game better?

ESPN had to shorten there sport clips because studies had shown that the viewers lost the ability to concentrate/lost interest after 15 seconds.  

A study has shown that goldfish have a longer attention (8 seconds) span than people.

Just a couple examples why speed chess is so popular.  People cant concentrate long enough, so they want the game sped up.  

The usual crop of naysayers.

You didn't read my second post, did you?  

We argued your misunderstood the problem and offered a non-solution. This response is pretty lacking...