On Apr 21, 12:33 am, Rich Hutnik wrote:

This headline was around 1990 or so in the NY Times. Can someone
please argue that having the world champion retaining their title
because the tournament ended on a draw does anything to increase
interest in chess and improve its viability?

Please let me know if you see this doing ANYTHING at all to help chess
in any way. Ok, maybe draws aren't the problem, but are they part of
the solution?


You seem to have serious terminology problems.

For instance, a match is not a "tournament". And
a tied match is not the same as a drawn game of
chess.

The tradition of retention of title in case of a tied
*match* seems to be a carry-over from the bad old
days, when players acted as though they regarded
the championship title to be a piece of personal
property.


-- help bot

On Apr 21, 1:05 am, " wrote:

When Kasparov finally dethroned Karpov in 1986, he promptly struck
a blow for chess justice by voluntarily renouncing the rematch clause.

This /sounds/ good, but who really decided such
issues, the world champion, or FIDE?


The format for future title matches
returned to the best-of-24 games with draws counting.
In 1987 he barely saved his title against Karpov on a
12-12 tie. Kasparov gave two reasons for sticking
with this system at a symposium we both attended in
Madrid:

1. Since he had to overcome draw odds when he was the underdog, he
saw no reason why the challenger shouldn’t have to vault the same
obstacle.

The infamous "two wrongs make a right" fallacy.


2. Organizers must have a definite budget and solid dates when they
book a playing hall, which isn’t possible in an open-ended match.

Change of subject ploy.


Kasparov’s argument makes sense

Wrong.


yet Fischer’s point is still valid.
Only wins should count.

More of same.


I expect a decent case /could be/ made, if only
these amateurs were to be fired, and replaced
by trained professionals, who would not make
such simple and transparent errors in thinking.


-- help bot

"Rich Hutnik" wrote in message
...
On Apr 21, 1:39 am, "David Kane" wrote:

I don't think the principle that the champion retains the title
on a tied match is wrong. The problem in chess is that in a
relatively short match (24 games then, 12? now),
it is mathematically a big advantage. It is easy to take steps to
that bring the drawn match probability down to the 1% range. Once
that is done, I don't think that giving the champ draw odds is
unreasonable.

What are the benefits of having the reigning champion retain the title
by means of a draw? How does it increase interest in chess, foster
its growth, and encourage a more competitive form of chess? Please
explain that.


When you are designing a competition (or anything), there are a number
of objectives. You'd want it to be credible (i.e. identifies the more
deserving player) and exciting, but there are also logistical considerations
(competition can't last forever because there are costs of holding the
competition etc.) So it is a tradeoff. Accepting that, say 1%, of the
time the competition may not be decisive is very minor and is a defensible
choice.

The problem, as I've said, is that in a short match, the tied match
possibility is not at all small. That's a real problem, and can be reasonably
addressed by various tie-breaks. Unfortunately, the real world is
going the other way - matches are getting shorter thereby increasing the
champion's advantage.

Of course, for various reasons, we've seen the prestige of the
WC devalued greatly over the past decades.

On Apr 21, 10:16 am, Rob wrote:
On Apr 20, 11:33 pm, Rich Hutnik wrote:

This headline was around 1990 or so in the NY Times. Can someone
please argue that having the world champion retaining their title
because the tournament ended on a draw does anything to increase
interest in chess and improve its viability?

Please let me know if you see this doing ANYTHING at all to help chess
in any way. Ok, maybe draws aren't the problem, but are they part of
the solution?

"Retails"? What does that mean? Was the title for sale?

I don't see that spelling error anywhere. It was always "retains".
Retain means keep.

John Savard

On Apr 20, 10:33 pm, Rich Hutnik wrote:

Please let me know if you see this doing ANYTHING at all to help chess
in any way.

My initial reaction is that it may not help chess, but it is
unavoidable.

A match between two players, even if not many of the games are draws,
could produce an even result. And when that happens, one _could_ have
it go on indefinitely until someone won a game, but that makes the
world championship hang on a result that might be due to accident.

Having the World Championship being somewhat stable is not a bad
thing, and having one champion instead of two co-champions is also
not a bad thing.

However, in looking at the Wikipedia article on the World
Championship, I see that the next couple of challengers are picked out
in advance.

An unseated Champion's right to a rematch should be in addition to,
not instead of, meeting normal challengers - and normal challengers
should come up through the Candidates' matches in a fair and open
procedure, so that when a new, strong player emerges, he can contend
for the World Championship if he is the best of the other players.
This doesn't seem to be the case at present, and it is a problem.

On another topic - I've seen a posting of yours on the Chess Variant
pages, where you comment negatively on people proposing new solutions
to problems instead of testing them. So you may not be interested, but
I think I've come up with a scheme - this "Dynamic Scoring" thing -

http://www.quadibloc.com/chess/ch0103.htm

that could address draws *even in* situations like the World
Championship match, not just in tournaments.

Recently, there was another posting here about the death of Steinitz;
the article showed how, in addition to suffering from the
psychological pressures associated with Chess, his fate may also have
been partly due to the burden of anti-Semitism to which he was
subjected as well. If Steinitz was the Shusaku of Chess, I am trying
to set the stage for the Go Seigen of Chess - by copying _komidashi_
from Go as best I can.

It may be unfair to pin all the blame on Steinitz, but by advancing
our understanding of Chess, he did make Chess play less flamboyant
than it once was. One way to get chessplayers to play inferior moves
is tighter time controls, but that isn't really what is wanted. We
want flashy, exciting Chess like they had before Steinitz - piece
sacrifices right and left and so on.

If I hadn't heard of komidashi, and its results in practice in Go, I
would still have despaired of coming up with any notion that would
have any possibility of helping with this part of the problem.

John Savard

On Apr 20, 11:05 pm, " wrote:

2. Organizers must have a definite budget and solid dates when they
book a playing hall, which isn’t possible in an open-ended match.

Kasparov’s argument makes sense, yet Fischer’s point is still valid.
Only wins should count. This way, a champion can’t cling to the title
by
playing for draws.

Part 2 is the part that makes sense - Part 1 is true, too, but that
would just be an argument against changing ever.

Maybe it would be harder to successfully play for draws if even
perpetual check counted as a tiny win; so just possibly my humble
contribution and/or kooky idea could help...

John Savard

On Apr 21, 11:36 am, help bot wrote:
On Apr 21, 1:05 am, " wrote:

In 1987 he barely saved his title against Karpov on a
12-12 tie. Kasparov gave two reasons for sticking
with this system at a symposium we both attended in
Madrid:

1. Since he had to overcome draw odds when he was the underdog, he
saw no reason why the challenger shouldn’t have to vault the same
obstacle.

The infamous "two wrongs make a right" fallacy.

I'm with you here.

2. Organizers must have a definite budget and solid dates when they
book a playing hall, which isn’t possible in an open-ended match.

Change of subject ploy.

Oh, really? You have a scheme whereby the World Champion and a
challenger can play exactly 24 games, and it is guaranteed that each
one won't win the same number of games out of those 24?

Oh, wait. It isn't impossible to have a definite result from a fixed-
length match; even I can think of a scheme. Assuming that all 24 games
are not drawn - in *that* case, they can just book another playing
hall, and it had better be a cheap one, because who will be interested
enough to come and watch - then the person who won the *last* game
loses, on the basis that the other player was ahead over the largest
number of games.

The champion would have the advantage of playing White in the first
game.

John Savard

Quadibloc wrote:
On Apr 21, 11:36 am, help bot wrote:
On Apr 21, 1:05 am, " wrote:

In 1987 he barely saved his title against Karpov on a
12-12 tie. Kasparov gave two reasons for sticking
with this system at a symposium we both attended in
Madrid:
1. Since he had to overcome draw odds when he was the underdog, he
saw no reason why the challenger shouldn’t have to vault the same
obstacle.
The infamous "two wrongs make a right" fallacy.

I'm with you here.

2. Organizers must have a definite budget and solid dates when they
book a playing hall, which isn’t possible in an open-ended match.
Change of subject ploy.

Oh, really? You have a scheme whereby the World Champion and a
challenger can play exactly 24 games, and it is guaranteed that each
one won't win the same number of games out of those 24?

Oh, wait. It isn't impossible to have a definite result from a fixed-
length match; even I can think of a scheme. Assuming that all 24 games
are not drawn - in *that* case, they can just book another playing
hall, and it had better be a cheap one, because who will be interested
enough to come and watch - then the person who won the *last* game
loses, on the basis that the other player was ahead over the largest
number of games.

The champion would have the advantage of playing White in the first
game.

John Savard

One possibility of ensuring more decisive match results would be to
change the way draws are scored. I like the idea of giving White .45 of
the point and Black .55 of the point. Mathematicians might come up with
a better way to split the point. A drawn 24 game match would seem to be
much more unlikely with this idea.

If players can get used to decimal results as opposed to whole number
results it should work fine in tournaments also. We can do it. Look at
how we adapted to the metric system! Oops, I forgot, we didn't.

Another aspect of this: it would shift opening theory in an interesting
way. Lines that were dubious before might become more reasonable. It
would certainly encourage White to avoid drawing lines. Some players of
Black might become specialists in drawing lines with that color.

Finally, it would be delightful to screw up all the computers for
awhile. They would eventually adjust ...
--

"Do that which is right..."

Rev. J.D. Walker

On Apr 21, 6:43 pm, "David Kane" wrote:
When you are designing a competition (or anything), there are a number
of objectives. You'd want it to be credible (i.e. identifies the more
deserving player) and exciting, but there are also logistical considerations
(competition can't last forever because there are costs of holding the
competition etc.) So it is a tradeoff. Accepting that, say 1%, of the
time the competition may not be decisive is very minor and is a defensible
choice.

The problem, as I've said, is that in a short match, the tied match
possibility is not at all small. That's a real problem, and can be reasonably
addressed by various tie-breaks. Unfortunately, the real world is
going the other way - matches are getting shorter thereby increasing the
champion's advantage.

Of course, for various reasons, we've seen the prestige of the
WC devalued greatly over the past decades.

How many other games or sports have 24 or more games in their
championship series to determine who the world champ is?

If 24 games is not enough, how many is enough? Are people supposed to
play 50 games? When you happen to add time control to chess, and have
a world champion, you turn chess as a game, into a sport. Since this
is the case, is it not important to see what other sports do?

And exactly how is more games going to make a difference if the
defending champion just has to draw to retain their title? Are we
supposed to wait for game 37 so that he bungles?

- Rich

On Apr 21, 12:17 pm, Rob wrote:
On Apr 20, 11:34 pm, Rich Hutnik wrote:



On Apr 21, 12:33 am, Rich Hutnik wrote:

This headline was around 1990 or so in the NY Times. Can someone
please argue that having the world champion retaining their title
because the tournament ended on a draw does anything to increase
interest in chess and improve its viability?

Please let me know if you see this doing ANYTHING at all to help chess
in any way. Ok, maybe draws aren't the problem, but are they part of
the solution?

- Rich

That should be Kasparov RETAINS Title on a Draw. Blasted typos.

- Rich

Ah... okay. LOL I should have read more. SOrry!
Rob

Maybe I should keep it RETAILS, because apparently when someone
becomes a world champ, they sell out every principle to defend a
system that encourages them to draw their way to retain a title. If
chess worked like boxing, the only way a challenger could ever become
champ would be to knock out the champ. Not TKO, but flat knockout.
The champ would argue, as Kasparov did, that "well I had to knock out
the prior champ, so why should I make the challenger have it easy"?
And the defending champ will argue, and draw in support of those who
host the championship, that replaying draws just won't work. He could
also argue that there are no other competitions out there that play 24
games to decide who is champion anyhow.

- Rich