For those of you who care, the world chess championships are in progress, and if things hold as they have been, the current champion Vladimir Kramnik will lose his crown to Vishawanthan Anand. Anand is comfortably ahead of the field, having a lead of 1.5 games with 3 rounds left to play.
While Anand won his 11th round game, Kramnik accepted a draw after only move 13 (and if this is Grandmaster chess, I don’t want any part of it). One of reasons: “I felt it would be somewhat insulting to reject a draw because my opponent is very strong.”
Dude, you’re playing to win the world friggin’ championship of chess, and now you’re desperately far behind. Don’t you have to at least try to score the full point instead of agreeing to a 13-move draw? And you’re sitting there worried about your opponent’s feelings!
Out of the Ether put it very well: “I think what I’m coming away with here is that one has to fight to win.”
As long as there are world championship matches, Kramnik is the favorite.
But when there are world championship tournaments, Anand is the favorite.
Mexico reconfirms this. I suspect the Anand-Kramnik match will yield a ton of draws and a narrow victory for Kramnik.
Unfortunately for Kramnik, the winner of this tournament decides the championship.
I can’t decide which format I prefer, this way or one-on-one matches. Tournaments may be a better way to determine who’s best, since there aren’t issues like “Player A’s playing style being a great match-up against Player B, but Players A, B, C, and D are all right around the same strength.”
On the other hand, the one-on-one matchup has a certain charm and romantism that a large tournament doesn’t have: for example, the phrases Kasparov-Karpov or Fischer-Spassky just invoke feelings and memories and makes things seem a lot more…human.
Then again, as you noted, certain formats may be better suited to different players, and that throws in a little bias right there.