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From: "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc
Subject: Elo on Fischer's conditions vs. Karpov
Date: 4 Nov 2006 19:14:40 -0800
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Jud McCranie wrote:

Right - there is a fatal flaw - a false assumption. The part about if
it is tied 9-9, each player has an equal chance of being the first to
win 10 games. False - the better player has the best chance to be the
first to win a 10th game. To illustrate this even better, carry it to
the extreme. Suppose it gets to 1-1.

No, the extreme would be: suppose it gets to 0:0.

Then the players are equal, and each has
an equal chance to win the next game??

This argument is funny, it's a good joke,
but it's not a good argument.

If it gets to 1-1,
should the champion retain his title?

Then Topalov should get five points
for free, and the right to soil Kramnik's
bathroom.

Seriously, when players are equally
matched then there is no way to
select one as the clearly better player.
Every solution will favorite a non-chessical
consideration or it's just like a toss
of a coin; say the match went like this:

1:0, 1:3, 3:4, 4:5,
7:5, 7:8, 8:9, ...

Can you really claim that one of the players
is clearly better. The result depends on the
lucky/unlucky cut-off interruption of the match.

On the other hand, if it went like:

0:1, 0:2, ..., 0:8,
1:8, 2:8, ..., 8:8

then, under the (very) regular circumstances,
it means that the first player, who was losing
for a long time to the second player, has learned
how to handle his/her opponent, and now that
player prevails over the opponent. That's why
long matches start to be something else, they
would not be about the present strongest
player, but about the present and future best
player (if a match were a year long or longer).

Regards,

Wlod
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