The Great Eight are now known. This also means we know eight more of the participants in the candidates matches, the next stage of the 2007 FIDE world championship cycle. Bareev-Ponomariov, Rublevsky-Bacrot, Aronian-Gurevich, Gelfand-Grischuk. The other eight players will continue to play for the other two spots (likely three since Bacrot won and will probably be in on rating). What we do know is that, barring extraordinary circumstances, losing another match leaves you out of the cycle. So these guys playing for 9-16 have more to lose in the next round: Carlsen-Lautier, Kamsky-Sakaev, Malakhov-Dreev, Vallejo Pons-van Wely.
Carlsen was preparing another shocker with a queen and passed pawns versus Bareev's motley assortment of pieces. But the teen missed several winning moves and eventually even let the draw get away to lose the first game with white. Painful. Bacrot played a fine game to take out Lautier in the French duel.
Finally this world cup results are quite positive : out of the six 2700+ players who came, five are still present and will play the world championship qualifiers.
So everything is soooo fine. The best rated (active) player is world champion, the best players (apart from a lonely renegade) are all qualified for the next cycle, and the brand new 1 million dollar rule will allow no more than one candidate to run for FIDE president, by far the best available candidate.
And, last but not least, the kalmukia citizens will pay 5 million dollars per year (as they did during the last 10 years) to finance all this masquerade.
How many people starve for this? How many people starve to pay Drogba's or Lampard's salaries in Chelsea? This is Russia today. But why do I complain? This is Russia forever.
"And, last but not least, the kalmukia citizens will pay 5 million dollars per year (as they did during the last 10 years) to finance all this masquerade.
How many people starve for this? How many people starve to pay Drogba's or Lampard's salaries in Chelsea? This is Russia today. But why do I complain? This is Russia forever."
Good questions. I've noticed that there's been no thread here on Ilyumzhinov's demand that any challenger for the FIDE presidency must post a million dollars to qualify as a candidate.
What a strange thing - the Chess World is being run by a tinpot dictator, who is stamping out any attempt to take him out by changing the rules of challenge. I have to tell you, growing up in a Democracy (qualifier: U.S. democracy), it's a strange feeling being ruled over by a fascist (oh, wait ....).
But it has it's pros and cons - on the one hand, Ilyumzhinov has brought a great deal of money into the federation, and San Luis and this World Cup have been great events. On the other hand, you do have the whole "where did he get the money from?" question - I got a feeling there were some shady doings on that end.
Of course, putting up a million dollars is hardly a problem for Bessel Kok, if he is so inclined.
Strange as it may seem, the 1M$ rule could actually backfire against Kirsan. It will force the French candidate to lay down his arms and to support Kok and Yacizi (I presume this pair will get the 1M).
This loser's bracket that has popped up now for the last 16 competitors makes me wonder why they didn't have a loser's bracket straight from the start. This way, poor folks like Nakamura and the other 63 who traveled all the way to Siberia don't have to go home after just two games. I mean, it's not like their tournament hall could not support it - if they have one round with 64 matches, why not have all rounds with 64 matches? Seems like everyone would be more happy this way. Any idea why this didn't happen?
One possible argument I can think of is that they "wouldn't be playing for anything", if they were in the bottom 64 loser's bracket, for example, if the prize money is either nothing or some small consistent amount for all of these 64 players. Well, they may be true, but it's not like players will often just leave in the middle of a swiss style tournament when they've done poorly enough to be guaranteed no prize. They play on just for the sake of competition, and possibly for rating points. In this tournament, with so many big names, they could play on just for the experience of getting to play some of the world's greatest. After all, a guy like Ali Frhat from Egypt knew he wasn't going to have a chance against Levon Aronian and that he'd be sent home in the first round, but the thrill of getting the chance to play against such a world class player was enough to convince him to come.
This loser's bracket that has popped up now for the last 16 competitors makes me wonder why they didn't have a loser's bracket straight from the start. This way, poor folks like Nakamura and the other 63 who traveled all the way to Siberia don't have to go home after just two games. I mean, it's not like their tournament hall could not support it - if they have one round with 64 matches, why not have all rounds with 64 matches? Seems like everyone would be more happy this way. Any idea why this didn't happen?
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Well, there is not too much sense in having ALL of the players play all 7 rounds of matches. Of course, doing so would ensure that there would be no ties for any of the Places 1-128. However, the exactitude of the final placings would only emphasize how arbitrary the Knock-out structure can be. For instance, if player A loses the first round match, and then wins all the rest of the matches, that would entail that he would finish would be in 65th Place. Likewise, the player finishing in 64th Place would have started off with a match victory in Round 1, and then lost every other match. Who had the beter tournament??
However, a Double Elimination format is often used in the Knock Out formats. Even in the Olympic Games, sports such as Rowing or Fencing have a "Repechage" format, that allows for competitors who have suffered a loss to still have another chance to make it to the Finals.
This would necessitate having an extra round, to accomodate the surviving winner from the "Loser's Bracket". This also takes away from the "purity" of the single elimination format, whereby the winner of the event has won all of his/her matches. However, when you need to resort to Blitz Tie-breaks, and even "Armageddon" games with Draw Odds, it is clear that the event is not so pure after all.
Overall, a Double Elimination is a superior format, since a player can recover from a match losing blunder. Even those 32 players who lose their first 2 matches and are duly eliminated will not have gone through the trouble of making it to Siberia in the Middle of Winter, only to play a couple of games and be out.
The favorites, such as Ivanchuk or Shirov, can still recover, by putting together a string of victories in the loser's bracket.
If FIDE adopted such a refinement to their KO tournament structure, it would make it significantly less likely that a Kasimdzhanov or Ponomariov dark horse would win the Title.
Not so good if you are a player in the Dark Horse category, but probably better both for the Chess World, and for FIDE itself.
Note they had a "last chance" qualification tournament in the original rules to give high-rated players another shot after being eliminated.
One of the problems with a straight KO is that you can end up with two players in great form paired against each other. Not by rating (and we've seen almost all the 2700's survive here) but for form an interest.
Doug, I agree with your comments; double elimination sounds like it would be a substantial quality increase over the current format. Perhaps the concept of it is just too complicated for Kirsan to handle, who knows. It certainly doesn't seem like having one extra round would be so big of a deal. Also, I'd like to add that the effect you mention about "who had the better tournament" is still going to apply with this final 16. For example, if van Wely wins all three of his lower bracket games and Ponomariov does likewise in the upper bracket, there would really be no reason to think that, say, Bareev or whoever loses all upper bracket matches, did better than van Wely, who simply ran unluckily into the eventual winner too early. The money awards will certainly not reflect this argument.
I wrote extensively on my proposed double-elimination format at http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/sonas010704.html last year. I agree that it would be better than the way the World Cup is structured.