The rapid tie-breaks will be great. We can watch a decisive game live within an hour.>

We'll have the champion tomorrow. Then we have the next cycle next year with Carlsen playing.

For the same reason I wouldn't feel satisfied if every performance of "Macbeth" ended with the actors' deciding there wasn't any point in going past the second act. No matter how accomplished the artistry of the fragment that was actually performed I'd still be let down when it ended prematurely. And I think I'd be within my rights to complain about it, if it happened.

Aren't endurance and persistence supposed to be qualities that a great chess master is expected to possess? The German term "sitzfleisch" comes to mind, literally the ability to sit on one's ass and stick the job out until the job's done. It's a virtue that seems to be disappearing from professional chess. (It is, by the way, not a virtue I exhibit in the slightest.)

It isn't just the encroachment of shorter time controls, the use of blitz games to decide matches, and the shortness of the matches themselves that are eroding this quality of endurance. It's the attitudes of the players themselves. I don't think it's right that two grandmasters should decide that, once Black has equalized, the game's basically over and they should just call it a day and go home. They have the privilege of doing so, of course, and I'm sceptical of artificial methods for prolonging games like the Sofia rule if only because they're not going to prevent players determined to quit early from quitting early. But there's something about these premature draw offers that, to me anyway, violates the spirit of chess.

Don't we admire lengthy contests in which the victor grinds his opponent down with superior persistence, keeping the pressure on until something breaks? Or those games in which a player fights on even at a disadvantage? We are deprived of such contests these days. To me it is insufficient to argue that resigning early is logical because the position is equal. It's not just about positions but about men and their ability to endure the contest. You say it's obviously a draw and there's no point in fighting on? Prove to me you can hold the draw.

You don't have to respond to me, I'm fine with that. I see no correlation between assuming that your comments were directed at least partially in my direction (seeing as you have a disparaging opinion of anyone who has any beef with this cycle in general), and the question of whether or not I was whining.

It's interesting that you consistently say "Complaining will do no good, yet all these people do is complain complain complain". Do you realize you're complaining? You add nothing to the general conversation except a general disdain and disrespect for anyone who has the opinion that this match wasn't satisfactory.

The interesting thing is I can see your point of view, or opinion. In other words I can see how someone could be satisfied with this match, despite the fact that I am most certainly not satisfied. What I find in you is a certain inflexibility in that you somehow think your opinion is important enough that anyone who doesn't share it is somehow beneath you.

Let me ask you, were you to be dissapointed in this cycle would you say so? Were you to think something needed to be changed would you express your opinion? If so, you are a hypocrite in attacking others who just happen to have that opinion when you do not.

If this system had been in place and the players hadn't played any differently, this is how long several recent title matches would have lasted:

Anand-Topalov 2012: 12 games
Anand-Kramnik 2008: 6 games
Kramnik-Topalov 2006: 10 games
Kramnik-Leko 2004: 20 games (projected)
Kasparov-Kramnik: 20 games (projected)
Kasparov-Anand 1995: 13 games
Kasparov-Short 1993: 4 games

I'm delighted that the combatants chose multiple openings and played early novelties. I am saddened that as soon as those novelties produced anything looking remotely like a drawn position they suddenly became non-combatants. Especially the last game. Yes, it is a draw, theoretically at least. But there was no harm in playing on in the better position, and mistakes have been made in far more drawish positions. How do you bring out those mistakes in your opponents? You shake hands. Oh wait, no, you play on. My dissapointment extends not only to the overall attitude of the players when faced with any type of drawish position (and btw that isn't just my opinion but is shared by the majority of the GM commentators in a number of the games), but to the match rules that encourage this type of insipid play.

You know, I would tend to agree with that, except I might make one small change:

Cap the games at 24 and take the score at that time, that way you can assure the organizers that the match will not exceed the "accepted standard" of match play in the past. Also, I for one don't mind champion's draw odds, it's like King of the Hill, as long as the King hasn't been knocked down he's still the King, regardless of if someone managed to climb up and force him to a stalemate.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD):

<I was just stating my opinion,>

Well, um, no, Sitzfleisch is not *literally* sticking a job out of one's ass, though I can see where confusion might have arisen. Too much going through other people's motions, perhaps?

However, as nicknames go, Petrosianic's <Two Sheds> (a reference to a Mr Python, m'lud) and <Mr Mitzvah> are both rather good. My only quibble with the latter is that the vast majority of comicbook superheroes are Jewish - starting with Superman, muscles rippling as he recaptures the Ubermensch concept from the bad guys.

Read 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay', if you don't believe me. Or almost anything else by Michael Chabon, but this works best in context.

A very strange word, 'boring' -- it rarely has much to do with tedium or ennui. It's more like a non-ideological way of condemning somebody or something -- without having to take the traditional route of saying that their deities are demons, their grandmothers were temple prostitutes, and their uncles did unhealthy things with sheep. And none of them flossed afterwards.