8...Ne6! occupies a blockade square and perhaps in this case the blockading knight works in the way in which Nimzovich would have wanted it to work.

If 10 Ng5?! makes the move f4 more difficult an alternative is 10 c3 and Nfd2

11 Nxe6?! moves the knight a third time to exchange itself for a knight moved four times so it gains a tempo, but it also strengthens Black's centre by drawing the f7 pawn on to e6 and it is a sign that the opening has gone wrong for White.

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Analysis by Houdini 4: d30 dpa done

1. <= (0.00): 14.c3> Bg7 15.f4 0-0 16.Bb5 a6 17.Be2 a5 18.Bb5 Rf7 19.Qg4 Raf8 20.Rae1 d4 21.Bc1 Bh6 22.Bc4 Nd8 23.cxd4 Rf5 24.Bd3 R5f7 25.Bc4 Rf5

2. = (-0.14): 14.f4 Bh6 15.Bb5 a6 16.Be2 a5 17.c3 0-0 18.Bb5 Qc8 19.Bc1 Ne7 20.Qg4 Bc6 21.Bxc6 Qxc6 22.Qh3 Bg7 23.Nd2 Nf5 24.g4 Ne7 25.Nf3 Rad8 26.Qh4 Qd7 27.Rd1 Nc6 28.Be3 h6 29.Qg3 Rf7 30.Kg2

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12. h3 (to prevent the active 12...Qg4) 12...0-0 13. Qe2

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13...Qf5 14. Nb3

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But the technical or "archaic" methods are based on the results achieved in the tournament in question, so they should be more appropriate to determine the winner of that tournament in case of a tie for first place. We could argue indefinitely the "best" order of preference in which of these methods should be applied and, since the players would know at all times whether they have an advantage or disadvantage at all times, whether this would influence their approach in the final rounds of the tournament. Although I don't see anything wrong with that.

Playoffs in general can be a crap shoot, not just because there are greater chances of making mistakes as the time allowed per move are reduced, but because the smaller number of games played in the playoffs decreases the predictability of statistics derived from having played a much larger number of games. Still, knowing the statistics, players who think that have a statistical advantage in playoffs with shorter time controls might choose to go for them, particularly in a match situation.

But playoffs are clearly more attractive to spectators, so I think that they are here to stay.

And regardless of the method(s) used to break ties, I think that they should be clearly stated in the tournaments rules and regulations. They could get complicated if more than two players tie for first place, as witnessed by the tiebreak specifications in the 2018 Candidates Tournament. What would they have done at the 2018 Grenke Classic if 3 or more players had tied for first place and after the Rapid and Blitz tiebreakers had been applied more than 2 players still remained in contention for first place going into the sudden death or Armageddon tiebreaker? God only knows.

It's not a question about German wine being that good, but whether you like them or not. I happen to like them, others don't. But I think that everyone should try them at least once, and there are many different styles.

At the risk of being persecuted by the off-topic police, let me say that German wines, at least in this country (USA), are perceived to be sweet. But there are several degrees of sweetness and, as <morfishine> said above, Germany also makes some (dry) red wine, mostly from the Pinot Noir grape.

A useful thing to know. I think that from now on whenever I play Black I'll give high priority to the sequence ...Nf6, ...0-0, ...d6/d5, ...Re1, ...Nfd7, and ...Nf8. I may not win many games with what is basically a time-consuming and passive setup, but presumably I won't lose any. :-)

As far as technical or "archaic" methods of breaking ties in a tournament, yes I agree that they are all arbitrary. But no more arbitrary than awarding 1 point for a win, ½ for a draw, and 0 for a loss. What I think is important is to determine who played the "best" in the tournament (whatever that means) among all the players that tied for a given position. I am not too impressed with players' feeling that they would like to have their fate in their own hands rather then be dependent on the results of other players. After all, they had the opportunity to "have their fate in their own hands" during the tournament; all they had to do was win all their games! In a round robin doing that will ensure sole first place. And I don't see why a Rapid/Blitz playoff between a player with a high Rapid/Blitz rating and a player with a much lower Rapid/Blitz rating should be considered "fair", except of course in Rapid/Blitz tournaments.

I would think that a technical system like SB could be improved. But it does reward a player for doing well against players that also did well in the tournament in question, and I think that is what's important, not how well they did against players that did well in other tournaments (i.e. based on pre-tournament ratings). I also don't think that it makes sense to reward a greater number of wins or a greater number of wins with the Black pieces, if these came against the players that did poorly in the tournament, regardless of their pre-tournament rating.

While I think that encouraging participants to play for a win in every game is important from the perspective of encouraging more exciting chess and increasing the attractiveness of the game, I think that the primary (only?) purpose of the tie-break rules is exactly that, to break ties. Anything else, while possibly desirable, needs to remain secondary. A system that breaks ties in a "fair" way <and> also encourages exciting chess would of course be ideal.

Perhaps the 3-1-0 scoring system (also known as the Bilbao System) as has been used in some tournaments instead of the usual 1-½-0 scoring system, might be useful in encouraging going for wins in every game. Is this "the" solution? I don't know, but for some opinions see https://www.chess.com/blog/SpaceOdd... and https://en.chessbase.com/post/some-....

Yes, I have. And I hope that at least some of it was good. :-) I agree with you that a win against a "better" player deserves more recognition than a win against a "worse" player, where "better" or "worse" are of course relative. All these players that we discuss are top-notch players!

As far as definitions of "better", two come to mind:

(1) "Better" in the overall sense. Here ratings provide a means to differentiate the "better" from the "not so good". The ratings take into account the results of many games so that, on the average, the player with the higher rating is the "better" player.

(2) "Better" in the sense that they played better than other players in <this> tournament. After all, players' performances vary over time; sometimes a player is in good form and does better than expected in a given tournament and sometimes a player is in bad form and does worse than expected in another tournament. That's why Dr. Elo modeled players' performance using a normal probability density curve.

To me what's important for breaking ties in any given tournament is how well the players involved in the tie played in <that> tournament, given their results in that tournament (and at that time control) and nothing else. That's why I favor Sonnenborn-Berger as a tie breaking measure since a player gets more SB points if they do well against other players that do well in the same tournament and are penalized if they do poorly against players who did poorly in the same tournaments.

I also favor most wins as Black (or probably best <score> as Black, taking draws into account) since it's harder to win or draw with Black than with White. Of course, being in a first place tie and having the edge in the best score as Black tiebreaker of necessity means that the player didn't do as well as they should have as White, so that cancels out.

For the same reason I don't attach too much importance as a tiebreak measure the most wins tiebreaker (encouraging going for wins is a different and desirable issue). If two or more players involved in a tie have the same number of wins and one of them had all his wins with the White pieces, one of them had all his wins with the Black pieces, and the others had a balance between the two colors, then the player that had all his wins with the Black pieces had the more impressive accomplishment.

I also don't attach much importance in the head-to-head competition results because that's often just one game unless it's a double round robin, and in either case that's a small number of games and a poor statistical sample.

Only if all tiebreak measures are inconclusive do I favor tie breaks at Rapid and Blitz time controls. In my opinion they have nothing to do with the results of the tournament played at Classic time controls.

So, going out on a limb, my preference for ranking the tie-breakers would be as follows:

1. Sonnenborn-Berger.

2. Best score with the Black pieces.

3. TPRs

4. Playoffs.

And, of course, that's just my opinion and a minority opinion in all likelihood.

Finally, if all else fails, I don't have a problem in declaring all the players that tied for first place as co-champions. Other than for the Candidates Tournament it is not strictly necessary to have only one player be declared the winner so, since all the with the same score are already splitting the prize money for those places, I see nothing wrong with sharing the title as well.

Yes, I agree, and I should add it to my list above. After all, following my "logic", they are the players that looked the best in <that> tournament.