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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: <Or, that your analogy is bad. It's ridiculous to comapare what Gelfand accomplished to a "2 round boxing match."> I'm not. Carlsen never got that far. It was the Candidates that he walked away from. |
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Jun-13-12
 | | SetNoEscapeOn: Or a series of two round bouts, it's still an exaggeration. A 2 round fight is bizarre and unprecedented, and they don't even have anything resembling qualifying cycle or playoffs in professional boxing. Meanwhile Carlsen played in the 2006 Candidates. Going down to 4 games for the first two rounds was an unfortunate decision , but it wasn't like arriving on another planet. And Carlsen is a far cry from an "undefeated" player who is used to playing 24 game matches all the time. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | shach matov: <SetNoEscapeOn: <drik> <Tal outrated Korchnoi for at least the first decade of their encounters & again around 1979/80 - but he CONSISTENTLY lost to the OLDER & WEAKER player. Surely that is more surprising?> What do you base this assessment on? Of course FIDE didn't even have ratings during the first decade of their encounters, but clearly Korchnoi was, by and large, the more successful, stronger player from the mid 1960's onward. Indeed he was higher rated than Tal for most of the at time period. Korchnoi's brilliant candidate match wins and the narrow losses to Karpov round out the story.> It seems some people still miss this simple point. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | voyager39: The decision not to participate is over. Its merits and demerits have also been discussed often enough. What I was rather pointing out was the future WCC scenario. There are three as I outlined earlier and only one of them (Magnus qualifies-Magnus wins) is good. The pressure on Magnus is likely to be higher then the other candidates. Even under normal circumstances - its tough winning a tournament having Gelfand, Aronian, Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Grishchuk, Svidler and Radjabov. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: <Or a series of two round bouts, it's still an exaggeration. A 2 round fight is bizarre and unprecedented, and they don't even have anything resembling qualifying cycle or playoffs in professional boxing.> Remember, the point I was responding to is that no boxer would turn down a chance to fight for the title. I suggested a scenario where someone might. And it's vaguely similar to the chess situation. You may recall people eschewing the FIDE Lottery tournaments because they consisted of Best of 2 mini-matches. At the time, a Best of 2 qualifier was unprecedented. Fischer thought anything less than 10 wins required was too chancy, which is insane, but Best of 2 is insane in the other direction. And you're right, that Carlsen isn't "undefeated" in the sense of being a veteran of Best of 24 matches. But he is "undefeated" in the sense of being a rising young star who's never suffered a big match setback. People said the same thing about Fischer in the 60's. That he was avoiding the Candidates Matches, because his mystique as "Bobby the Genius" would be damaged by losing a head-to-head encounter with another top player. True, he'd never won a major match before 1971, but he'd never lost one either (except the Reshevsky match, which was a technical loss, and the Euwe match which happened when he was 13). Carlsen is in the same boat. A young star with a bright future. The fact that he hasn't won a big match is less important than the fact that he hasn't lost one. |
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Jun-13-12
 | | keypusher: <Or, that your analogy is bad. It's ridiculous to comapare what Gelfand accomplished to a "2 round boxing match."> Yes, it was more like a series of drawn 2-round boxing matches, followed by tiddlywinks tiebreakers. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: Maybe I'm completely off base, misremembering, or just plain wrong. So you tell me. Did Carlsen drop out of the last cycle over dissatisfaction with the Championship match itself, or dissatisfaction with the Candidates Process? (Or maybe both). I've been laboring under the conception that he had a problem with the piddly Best of 4 Candidates Matches, as well as the fact that the format was constantly changing in mid-cycle. Is that not true? |
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Jun-13-12
 | | boz: Carlsen did lose a big match to Aronian but he was still quite young then and the loss was in tie breaks. |
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Jun-13-12
 | | alexmagnus: Carlsen was not even a top 10 player when he lost to Aronian. |
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Jun-13-12
| | boz: <alexmagnus: Carlsen was not even a top 10 player when he lost to Aronian.> Hard to believe that was ever the case, but yes, that was 2007, early in his career. Probably vastly underrated. I'd love to see a rematch. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: I didn't even remember that match, and maybe it makes a difference, but it still seems like there's some value in being able to say "Nobody's beat me since I hit the big time." On the other hand, if he had gone down in the quarterfinals to, say, Kamsky by +0-1=3, he'd be slightly damaged by it even though something so short would be that fair a test. I'm not sure where I stand on it. I do regard matches as being a better test than tournaments, but that's assuming events of about equal length. Is a 4 game match a better test than a 14 round tournament? Who knows? |
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Jun-13-12
 | | Bobby Fiske: Hi,when does this match begin? |
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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: In Game 1 of the tiebreaks. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | voyager39: <Petrosianic> Interesting point there <Carlsen is in the same boat. A young star with a bright future. The fact that he hasn't won a big match is less important than the fact that he hasn't lost one> I think one has to quantify it under "short term" and "long term". Tournament wins build your short term perception...in that sense today's Carlsen is very similar, in fact possibly(?) better, then what the raw, computerless young Anand was. However, matches, particularly the WCC builds your long term legacy. If the aim is only to be considered as the leading peer by your own generation, then what Carlsen is doing is adequate. Tournament wins are however remembered only till you continue winning them - your grandchildren won't remember him anymore. That's where the challenge lies for Magnus. He's climbed everything but Mt Everest. Even one WCC win is enough for Carlsen to be "remembered". That's all that Fischer and Capablanca got. If the outlook is restricted to short term gains - he need change nothing. |
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| Jun-13-12 | | Petrosianic: <I think one has to quantify it under "short term" and "long term". > Yes, it's all subjective and comes down to what you think will make your star shine the brightest. But someone like Petrosian, who won the title on his 4th trip through the Candidates usually isn't as glamorous as someone like Tal or Kasparov, who won it on the first try. |
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Jun-13-12
| | alexmagnus: How do you know one will be not remember for just #1 position, <voyager>? Since ratings were introduced, there were only two #1s who didn't become WC - Topalov and Carlsen. About both it's yet too early to judge whether will be remembered, even if both retired today. |
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Jun-13-12
 | | HeMateMe: Magnus is too young to use a sort of average of career wins, or his past matches, to evaluate his skill. Seems like he's been around for a looooong time, been a pro-level player since the age of 13. |
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| Jun-14-12 | | MORPHYEUS: Well for one thing, most of the academic articles point to the world championship. There's no wiki page for No.1 chess player championship or is there. And remember the media attention and money on the last WCC. Fame and Fortune goes to the world championship. Plus legacy and history. |
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Jun-14-12
| | HeMateMe: I agree 100%. Those who win the title, and especially, are able to defend it, have a special resiliency and belong in an elite class of their own. I don't think Carlsen is going to do some sort of weird fischer thing, though, and simply refuse to compete in qualifying cycles. If he can win a Candidates tournament and knock off a defending champion, it will happen fairly soon. I still can't understand why he would want a different format than match play, however. Match play elimanates a lot of uncontrollable factors and helps ensure that the best player is the challenger. Right now, after five rounds, he is doing well, but is no lock to win the Tal Memorial. He won't be a lock to win a Candidates tournament, either. |
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| Jun-14-12 | | blueofnoon: Like him or not, Carlsen is a principled person. If he does not want to play, he says so beforehand, and he does not complain about something afterwards. On the other hand, there are a few GMs who took part in FIDE championship, then later made a remark to diminish the value of that championship. Example 1. One GM said "it's a farce" after losing final match to his younger opponent. Example 2. Another GM said "I am lending my title to (the winner)" after failing to win a championship. |
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Jun-14-12
| | HeMateMe: Just sour grapes from people who were not as consistent as Gelfand was, this past time around. |
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Jun-14-12
| | alexmagnus: <There's no wiki page for No.1 chess player championship or is there.> There is one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o... But look at it that way: of world champions since Elo introduction, one didn't make it to unshared #1 rating (Kramnik). Of #1s, two didn't make it to world champion (Topalov and Carlsen). Both are of equal worth. As for Gelfand "randomly" winning the world cup: some probably forget, but he actually was the <top seed> in that world cup. And that WC is not random, show examples of Khalifman (1997 lost to the winner, 1999 won, 2000 lost to the winner), Ponomariov (2002 won, 2005 lost to the winner, 2007 lost to the winner, 2009 lost to the winner, 2011 lost to the winner) and Anand (1997 won, 2000 won). |
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| Jun-14-12 | | jussu: <Another GM said "I am lending my title to (the winner)" after failing to win a championship.> But how does a statement such as this (simply meaning "I am hoping to win my title back") diminish the value of a competition? |
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| Jun-14-12 | | Lambda: <But look at it that way: of world champions since Elo introduction, one didn't make it to unshared #1 rating (Kramnik). Of #1s, two didn't make it to world champion (Topalov and Carlsen). Both are of equal worth.> If you use Chessmetrics to get a larger sample size (1886-2004), there is... still only one world champion who didn't make it to #1, who is Vladimir Kramnik. Of world #1s who didn't become champion, you have 11; Géza Maróczy, Akiba Rubinstein, David Bronstein, Harry Pillsbury, Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, Dawid Janowsky, Viktor Korchnoi, Viswanathan Anand (same position as Carlsen is in now, if we assume Carlsen will win the championship at some point), Efim Bogoljubow, and Isidor Gunsberg. |
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Jun-14-12
| | alexmagnus: I never recognized Chessmetrics. Because it's made for prediction and not description. |
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