Hmmm indeed. There are fictional possibilities here, almost Bayleyesque. A chess website that kills people by quoting them ...

Smile, folks, you're part of a vast social experiment: 'Temporal transmission of sockpuppet vectors in virtual chess communities: some preliminary observations' ...

Twelve games is simply too short. A match should be at least long enough for a player who grabs an early lead to tire -- like a runner going out too fast in a marathon. Karpov did that against both Korchnoi and Kasparov, but those matches had 24 games or more.

If Kramnik comes out and plays drawish chess, and again starts offering the draws first, it will be even worse for him than losing more games in a good fight.

Maybe they're just big Shakespeare fans. We had a <history play> when Kasparov was beaten, a <comedy> in toiletgate, and now a <tragedy> to complete the set.

Unless somebody can think of a way to relate a chess match to a sonnet.

Although Kramnik is going to need more than a couplet to turn this match around.

A quatrain of wins will only do now, but it seems his train is late, (in Germany of all places),and we all know that isn't the way he rolls anyhow!

He should have listened when people said it can be awfully handy to be able to win with black...

Until now I hadn't succeeded in explaining the Classiscal WCC format - in comparison to other sports and their formats on deciding who is "The Best" - at a certain point in time...

What seems to jerk a reasonable comparison outta whack, is the simple fact of the <length> - i.e. the duration - of the 24 game match/duel. It takes upto several months, which is very uncommon in other sports involving two rivals: the champ and the challenger...

But in terms of the <dynamic ebb and flow> of the competition and encounter, each Game, played, is in fact identical to EG <one service game> in Tennis, with the one serving having White, so to speak.

1) Start each game with a clean slate, that is 0-0, and add won games to the total, as in Tennis six won games grants you the winning of a set.

2) The towel down and the change of ends after each twin set of games, much alike the rest day after the one White, one Black each, we have here in Bonn this time...

3) Same as in Golf, where the World Matchplay Champion is decided over 36 holes, played over one or two days, and each hole both rivals tee off under the same conditions, one with "the honor" to hit the first ball on that hole, and the other with the honor at the next... Analogous to the starting position for each game in chess.

So the only thing that gives the Looong Classical 24 games format the dysproportionate drawn out "boring", long feel, is the absolute time spent in direct confrontation....

Again, it is just relative, and as in the slowed down Chess Universe, each move made is like one ball hit, analog(ous) to tennis or Golf...

This 12 Game format is basically like a French Open final over <just one set> - and very frustrating, in a way, that this change has been pushed through our throats by the unholy powers of media presentation, attention and the " sexiness" of chess, in order to attract a broader audience and more sponsor interest and contracts.

Some "discretion," as discussed earlier here with <mckmac>, seems to have evaporated by this little number of games.

Diminishing space ---> freedom ---> discretion...

Hmm... on the advice of my <special counsel> I have 90000000000 people on Ignore, so it could be anyone.

What's wrong with being a witch?

Heh never worry about that.

<ROC ON!>

Emus come and emus go.

That works out as 14F46B0400 in <Hexadecimal>, the number system used by witches.

So you can't be a witch.

QED always reminds me of that for some reason.

Does that make me a bad person?

I need to know...

Also, you can't buy a <telescope> in Canada.

PM Stephen Harper has banned them.

It's the first law the new government has passed!!

That's the non-secret part...

Ahh, yes, of course -- I will answer that too, Mrs Fischer Love III

Jessica Palin>