2012-05-31 : Questions Around World Championship Format
Debate is
stirring around the qualifying format for the World Championship and in
typical blunt style Kasparov has thrown his weight behind the criticism.
What everyone is asking, is if this is to determine who the best player in the world is, where are the names of Calsen and Aronian? A seemingly valid question considering that Boris is currentkly ranked 20. Kasparov's opinion is that for the first time in history, the WCC match doesn't seem to decide who is the strongest player in the world.
He is not criticising Anand or Gelfand for sure, but the qualifying system that as Carlsen forecasted, showed a completely failure in Kazan and ratified in Moscow. Even a speculative player like Grischuk, who almost did it for the match, advocates to introduce such a controversial issue, as using chess960 to decide the WCC.
So if Kasparov, Carlsen, Grischuk and many others criticize the running format, something is going wrong. Why is that? Because of chess engines opening preparation. In old times, when a novellty was introduced, many scalps were taken before the line was confirmed or refuted. Today, the engine gives inmediate reply to these questions. Players are so afraid of opponents preparation that play as safely as they can.
Thus, quick draws agreed in early middlegame positions where for these kind of eliteGMs, draw is just a matter of technique. Chess was always about mastering three phases: opening-middlegame-endgame. Now is all about the opening. Middlegame play is frequently aborted by quick draws and endgame is almost non-existent.
It is quite obvious that something needs to be done both in the format for reaching the final, as well as the allowing of draws before a certain amount of moves.
What everyone is asking, is if this is to determine who the best player in the world is, where are the names of Calsen and Aronian? A seemingly valid question considering that Boris is currentkly ranked 20. Kasparov's opinion is that for the first time in history, the WCC match doesn't seem to decide who is the strongest player in the world.
He is not criticising Anand or Gelfand for sure, but the qualifying system that as Carlsen forecasted, showed a completely failure in Kazan and ratified in Moscow. Even a speculative player like Grischuk, who almost did it for the match, advocates to introduce such a controversial issue, as using chess960 to decide the WCC.
So if Kasparov, Carlsen, Grischuk and many others criticize the running format, something is going wrong. Why is that? Because of chess engines opening preparation. In old times, when a novellty was introduced, many scalps were taken before the line was confirmed or refuted. Today, the engine gives inmediate reply to these questions. Players are so afraid of opponents preparation that play as safely as they can.
Thus, quick draws agreed in early middlegame positions where for these kind of eliteGMs, draw is just a matter of technique. Chess was always about mastering three phases: opening-middlegame-endgame. Now is all about the opening. Middlegame play is frequently aborted by quick draws and endgame is almost non-existent.
It is quite obvious that something needs to be done both in the format for reaching the final, as well as the allowing of draws before a certain amount of moves.
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