There's nothing unfair or illegetimate about using tiebreak points. We all remember how Kasparov "won" his final tournament despite only tying for first with Topalov and losing to him in the last round. Those were the rules that everyone agreed to. But it's a bit tacky and cheap to try to arbitrarily name one winner when you actually have two. And even tackier when you try to name a world championship challenger that way.

<gargle: I think CG should create about 4-5 semi-permanent pages to debate certain questions:

- How great is Carlsen, where he ranks among the greats, how he'll do in the future, whether he's better than Kramnik or Aronian.

- How great is Anand, where he ranks, whether he can recover form.

- Predictions for Anand vs Carlsen.>

And other tournaments which used tiebreak points to split money, trophies, or whatever.

Of course, the tiebreaking method can only be used when a tie has occurred. You could theoretically compare Sonnenborn points between a finisher with 6 points and one with 5 but it's irrelevant.

It's certainly possible to pick a challenger based on tiebreak points. There's just a lot of dissatisfaction with it because the chess world feels they deserve better. In the past, whenever there's been a candidates, the challenger was the one who beat all the others over the board, and find it very cheap to pass one along who failed to beat all the others.

Man, I wish you would stay off-topic ... we just don't discuss that sort of thing here ... you must not know the rules used here ... See the TITLE at the very top?? You probably thought that was the TOPIC title ... but it's not ... it's the OFF-TOPIC title ... i.e. everything can be discussed EXCEPT the title. So, please, stay off-topic.

Let us accept the determination of the tournament organisers in the following sense:

Assume a tie in regular play in a tournament between player X and player Y:

1) If there are no tie-break rules established (or such rules fail to break the tie) such that the prize money for first place and second place is added together and divided evenly between X and Y, then they both are "winners";

2) If there are tie-break rules established such that one of them, let us say X, has the superior result according to the tie-break rules and thus takes the money for first place and Y takes the money for second place, or X becomes entitled to a non-monetary benefit such as a challenge right, then X "wins", and not Y.

The prizes mentioned above are represented after taxation. Prize money is distributed according to the final standing taking into account the auxiliary scorings. In case all auxiliary scorings coincide the prize money is split equally.>

The games of the last round of the Alekhine Memorial were played on May 1st in St. Petersburg. Levon Aronian and Boris Gelfand shared the first place with 5.5 points out of 9. The Armenian grandmaster had a better tie-break score and was awarded the first prize.>

http://www.alekhine-memorial.com/

If that's the official result, it doesn't seem sensible to to say it isn't.

Gelfand was credited with <shared first> but he lost on tie-break. If a friend asked Gelfand "where did you finish in the Alekhine memorial." I'm sure he would state the same thing - "I finished shared first, but was placed second on tie-break"

Why does there need to be a big discussion about it?

My order of tie-break would slightly differ though -

1 Most blacks - <Definitely the fairest tiebreak of them all>

2 Result between the players - <Seems the next logical tie-break>

But doesn't it give the same results as the 3-1-0 scoring system, and that is used to promote more fighting chess in tournaments (London Chess Classic)

Perhaps we should give the organisors a contributional input, as this tiebreak may have some effect on how players approach a tournament. Tournaments have lot of internet exposure these days, and like it or not, they want to see an exciting tournament.

Ok, there are opinions which say players shouldn't be forced to play a certain way, but a lot of people are trying to market the game and expose it to a wider audience, and right or wrong they are trying to encourage more positive results.

It's kind of like - 'fortune favours the brave' tie-break. You take a few more chances to win a game than you would normally do.

I don't know whether this philosophy in tournament games has any relavence with the 'most wins' tiebreak third on the list, but hey, if it promotes more fighting chess, (arguable) then give it a try.

- To Fressinet for a game in Alekhine's style (in Kramnik vs Fressinet, 2013)

- To Ding Liren for the best combination (in Ding Liren vs Aronian, 2013)

- To Gelfand for best technique (in Gelfand vs Adams, 2013)