Dear chess friends,
I am writing this open letter, addressed both to FIDE and the entire chess playing world, due to a certain crisis, in which our noble game finds itself lately. This crisis is not only defined by a general dissatisfaction, coming from sponsors, organizers and amateurs; also among the professionals there has been some growing distress. Quite a number of traditional tournaments are no longer organized; in those still out there an ever growing number of extremely strong players is competing for the same money. At the same time voices from all around are expressing serious concern about lackluster play in some top tournaments, and notorious short draws.
To understand the reasons why our sport has never made it to the heights it deserves I find it useful to take a look at a sport very similar to ours – tennis. Both games feature the battle of two personalities, showing a whole array of technical weapons in their fight, competing in speed and precision, in patience and wisdom. Why, despite this apparent similarities, despite the fact that many more people worldwide are capable of playing chess properly, do we stand light-years behind tennis in everything that defines success in professional sport?
The reasons are numerous, no doubt, but the main problem, as I see it, is an existence of a draw as a result in chess. Short draws (and I also have made a number of those) make our game look more like an insider academic activity, rather than sport; but they can’t be avoided – the preparation of today and the inherent qualities of chess are such, that a draw, and in fact a short draw, is a most likely result in a game between strong well-prepared players. Still, in a well-organized tournament, top players, getting up to go to their hotel rooms after a ten minute draw, do not add attractiveness to chess.
Returning to tennis, the main attraction is, as I see it, the fact that every single fight produces a result; a winner and a loser at the end of the day. And there is a thrill for every spectator to see, say, Nadal and Federer, come to court, and know with certainty that one of them will triumph and the other one will lose. In short, to put it figuratively, there will be blood. And there will be great champions.
In our game, however, things are different. We also have great champions, but their greatness is sometimes limited to insiders of the game. In order to be successful outside of our little world, in order to make front pages and TV, and thereby also the finance that comes in a parcel, we need champions that appeal to a general public, even to a public far from intricacies of chess. Such was a winning streak of Novak Djokovic this year, for instance. Something that a win in a chess super tournament with 8 out of 13 simply cannot match.
And now comes my proposal. If we want success, sponsors, public and the rest of the parcel, we need to abolish those draws in classical tournaments. And not by Sofia rules – tournaments with Sofia rules produced as many draws as any other; and not by 30 move rule, where players are often just waiting for move 30. We need something entirely different. Like a tie-break in tennis. We need a result. Every single day.
And here is how it works. We play classical chess, say with a time control of four to five hours. Draw? No problem – change the colours, give us 20 minutes each and replay. Draw again? Ten minutes each, change the colours and replay. Until there is a winner of that day. And the winner wins the game and gets one point and the loser gets zero; and the game is rated accordingly, irrelevant of whether it came in a classical game, rapid or blitz.
This way the expectations of the crowd will never be deceived. There will always be a winner, there will always be blood. There will come an age of great champions, since with this system there will be times when Vishy or Magnus will win Wijk-aan-Zee with 13 out 13; and there will be winning streaks, when some of the great champions will win 50 games in a row. We’ll make front pages.
And much more than that. It will be good for our sport. Not just sponsors and attention and prizes. It will be essentially good for our game. People will try extremely hard with white, in order to decide the issue now, and not in a black rapid game. Instead offering a draw in a slightly better ending in order to save energy and catch a movie, chess players will show their whole ability and will win these endings. As a matter of fact this will develop classical chess.
And there is so much more. Often players, playing white, feeling rough in the morning, get to the game with an attitude “I’ll just make a draw today” Imagine, what will happen to this attitude? Chess will become a true sport. We’ll wake up to win or to lose that day. We’ll come tho the board, ready to play chess. And just like when we come to see Federer play – we see his whipping forehand, his effortless slice, his hammer serve and immaculate return – same will happen in chess. Every single day we’ll see players like Aronian or Grischuk pressing with white, wriggling out of trouble with black and showing some blitz skills to an ever larger public. That is something I would like to watch and play.
Grandmaster Rustam Kasimdzhanov
Source: ChessBase.com
Kasimdzhanov is sticking his middle finger to FIDE. Excellent!
I think his idea is very smart, but FIDE needs to be sorted out first before the chess world can get sponsorship. Sponsors are not interested in being associated with a badly run organization and FIDE is barely capable of being call an organization.
Seems like a good idea to me, that`s why FIDE will never agree to it!?!?
this is amazing.. what he says does make a lot of sense.. I am tired of seeing those dull draws.. and also an excellent game followed by cautious draws in double edged positions.
Looking at the pic Kasimdzhanov threatens to shoot himself,if FIDE does not implement his suggestion!.
Nice to see top player expression their opinion. One thing for sure is Chess needs winner for every single game. But whether this proposal is effective is still up for discussion. Let not forget that the main triger for the discussion came from recent candidate match with so many draws, which is already using the system suggested in this proposal. Yes there is winner after each round, but did sponsers and funs satisfied with the outcome? Obviously not so great. I remember that there was a message on chessbase suggesting systems used in GO (Wei Qi in Chinese) to avoid draws. (GO has very rare case of draw.) I thing we should revisit that article for more detail.
Makes perfect sense.
Although I’m sure a lot of players might resist the notioin of working so hard..especially in a long tournament. But bleh…you wanna play?…play!
I’m curious about how this would be rated though…Say Player a 2800 and player B2550 play Game 1: Draw Game 2:draw Game, Plalyer A wins the 3rd game…does player B get any rating points from those two draws?? And if one player gets two kicks at the can with white and the other only one…is that on the level? Just curious thats all.
Chess has become boring not because of draws per se. Football has draws, even 0-0 draws, yet remains hugely popular. What makes chess increasingly uninteresting is, with over-analysis, top-level games have almost become predictable from opening to middle game. And because moves are over-analyzed, players who wish to play for draw can actually do so.
The key therefore is not to eliminate the draws but the predictability. How can any game be exciting if it is predictable to some degree? There should be action and uncertainty from the start. There should be “blood” off the bat. Games have to be decided by skills and courage and not by how much engine analysis you had the night before. This will not be achieved by playing as many games as possible until a winner emerges. The only way is to vary the rules of the game somehow. Here are 2 possibilities:
1. At the start, the ref draws a pawn or piece (except the king of course) that will be taken out from both sides, say the e-pawn or the b-knight. The game is played without that piece. The draw can include “no castling”.
2. Limit of 3 minutes for the first 10 moves and 10 minutes for moves 11-20. This way, both players will think of playing surprise moves to catch his opponent off guard. After move 20, the game becomes a regular one but by then, the position has probably become complicated.
His ideas for tie breaks would certainly be exciting for us observers, but they won’t be applied until FIDE is upended and reformed or replaced.
I think this is all foolishness. If people would remember correctly, they used to replay games between two players when they drew their respective game to get an absolute win, however, i do not remember reading when it attracted more attention to chess. I also seem to recall this sort of system Kasimdzhanov is referring to…being implemented for the World Cup since 1998, has that drawn more attention or sponsorship to chess? And then we have the example of Kazan, where it just seemed nobody was really satisfied.
I think we have to learn that not every one is Garry Kasparov drawn to be number one and win everything. Nakamura, Carlsen, Morozevich, Shirov, Polgar, Topalov, Anand, Aronian, Ivanchuk, are all great players, that will draw and win games alike at their own discretion. All these rules seems to cramp imagination and the freedom to just play. If someone wants to draw their way to the middle of the cross table so be it, let that be their decision and it’ll cost them invitations to major tournaments.
There needs to be some reason and rationality besides the common argument of players protecting their rating (which by possibility is legitimate), however there could be other reasons. so be it. Everybody thought draws in the past would be the death of the game, but you have imaginative players around that are playing exciting chess…Kramnik played some exciting chess beating Ponomariov.
We need to see stability in the chess world and these areas should be the first to be focused on rather than draws: concerning the world championship cycle, tournament organizations, federation reliabity, players being professionals. Then and only after these issues have been addressed and dealt with maybe we can begin to address what draws do to attracting sponorship
this sounds to me like food 4 today hunger 4 tomorrow
no blood shall be spilled
+3 points to the winner
1+ per tie
like the spanish system thingy
I see the draw phenomenon as similar to the feeling in ice hockey and even American football that the stronger, healthier players we have today are outgrowing the dimensions of the game. My work with Guy Haworth (find my publications page) shows that the top 40 today are simply better than the heroes of yesteryear—there has been no “inflation” in ratings, for instance. There is less “elbow room” to outplay them, an effect compounded by deeper opening theory.
In science this is related to the notion of the “mixing time” of a stochastic process. Being able to trade down to a draw from a standard opening is a hallmark of too-short mixing time in chess. Hence before we try any of the more-radical suggestions in these comments, I propose something like Bronstein’s “baseline” game, which is like Chess960 but importantly non-symmetrical and non-random, as outlined by me on Hans Bodlaender’s “Chess Variants” site here. Oh if I only had the money to sponsor a top-level tryout…
My take is that Kasimdzhanov is a joke who isn’t fit to run an after-schoool chess club nevermind the world chess federation.
His analogy to tennis is ridiculous, dumb and irrelevant. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and there are draws in it all the time, week in, week out. Living in europe, Kasimdzhanov surely knows and is very familiar with it. This whole interview leads me to believe that Kasimdzhanov is a dummy.
As for the idea itself, would it be good if a knock-out was required? Absolutely not. If the players are really as lazy as Kasimdzhanov suggests, they will just agree to quick draws, play rapid and then have a few beers. In particular with Black they would be desperate for a fast draw so they can have White in the next game. It’s a joke.
In tennis you get to serve, then your opponent gets to serve. This is how it should be in chess, you get White then your opponent gets White in the same conditions. All this other nonsense does nothing but throw a spanner in the works.
You know Ireland drew every single one of their games in the qualifying for the last world cup, and not once out of all of the analysis I read/watched did anyone ever mention that it was somehow bad for it to be a draw. Boring games? Yes, nobody likes that. Draws? Never, sometimes a draw is the fairest result.
Didn’t Kasimdzhanov become “World Champion” through a ridiculous faster-and-faster-until-a-result scheme? The World Championship should be decided by a long series of long games, as it has been traditionally. The push to faster chess and the avoidance of draws is not the solution, it’s part of the problem. As someone else has said, European football, aka soccer, is the world’s most popular sport and regularly results in draws. The misrule of FIDE and its president have long been the real thing holding our sport back!
It is an interesting proposal with as much merit as any other. In my opinion the main challenge and first thing to deal with is the fact #chess is not regarded as a sport everywhere. You cannot have a sport compete with tennis as long as a considerable part of the World considers it a fun activity and not a sport…
Brilliant!!!
It would be nice having this change. It may lead to very interesting struggle among all players.
Bobby Fischer said: “I think it’s almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically”. Most people don’t compare chess with football because chess is it’s a sport mind, here should be only “blood”. Thank you.
Yes, 100 % agree!!!
If it ends down to bullet chess then, so be it!
DEAD WRONG..all the way down the line… for multi million dollar pro broadcast live play…an absolute must (with 600,000,000 estimated phone chess app users!!) .ONE GAME WITH WHITE/ONE GAME WITH BLACK EACH ROUND versus every opponent…. WITH ONE HOUR FLAT TOPS THINKING TIME FOR EACH PLAYER …. absolutely no time added ever….NO DRAWS BY AGREEMENT ALLOWED EVER ..IF REFEREE DECLARES A DRAW WITH NO LOSING CHANCES AT GAME END THE SUCCESSFUL DEFENDER BLACK WINS AUTOMATICLY. STALEMATE IS AUTOMATIC WIN FOR THE PLAYER MAKING THE LAST MOVE…perpetual check draw is a victory for black..period…IF BOTH WHITE PIECES WIN THEIR GAME THEN THE FIRST PLAYER TO PLAY THE BLACK PIECES IN GAME ONE WINS THE MATCH AND ALL COLORS ARE NOW UNBELIEVABLY VERY DRAMATIC PICKED PAWNS AT START OF THE ROUND. Any player leaving the board for any reason during the WORLD RATED /BIG MONEY BROADCAST game for one second during play LOSES INSTANTLY. (GET REAL FOLKS ..PLEASE DO NOT BE MAD DOG INSANELY STUPID…THIS IS THE COMPUTER AGE) Referee has absolute right to double forfeit both players at any time FOR NO CONTEST ..AND FINALLY MR. NICK BONIFACIO HAS WARNED ABOVE IN MINIATURE APPARENT JEST WHAT IS ACTUALLY VERY REAL FOLKS…. THERE IS NO TRUE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP UNLESS THE WHOLE WORLD IS ALLOWED TO PLAY…IF IT COMES DOWN TO QUALIFICATION BY 100,000 PEOPLE/FAST TIME CONTROLS MAY BE THE ONLY WAY IN NO CASH PELIMINAIRES ON THE massively supervised INTERNET IN 5 DAYS THRILLER SUPERVISED INTERNET (WITH SOME CHEATING STILL A GRAVE RISK OF COURSE even in no cash INTERNET QUALIFICATION phase)… WITH FINAL IN PERSON BIG MONEY WORLD TITLE MATCH QUALIFICATION PAYOUT LIVE AND IN PERSON FOR 50 PEOPLE( I.E think WORLD SERIES OF POKER ..27 WORLD RATED GAMES IN 5 DAYS AS ALREADY KASPAROV ARONIAN ETC…IN ST.LOUIS $400,000 ALREADY TWICE PAID IN ONE WEEK SHOWDOWN AND RAPID/BLITZ $100,000 PRIZES…you MAY be forced to do this at Bonifacio fast time controls….The entire world largely ignores the fantastic thrilling world of chess because the entire world is not permitted to play TOMORROW NIGHT FOR THE WORLD TITLE. The world chess championship like the Super Bowl must be held every single year. 8 murderous GAMES(if a draw Black wins) IN FOUR DAYS FLAT /NO DAYS OFF EVER/ SHOULD DECIDE THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE PERIOD.If a tie last person to score with the Black pieces is world champion… Period. Anything not allowing ALL island nations/Africa/ALL ASIAN NATIONS TO PLAY RIGHT NOW on supervised internet world title qualification inevitably will cost mega million dollar sponsorship… IS A GONE PECAN, AN ABSOLUTE SPONSOR BERIFT LAUGHING STOCK/DEAD ON ARRIVAL. Chess is a world sport that is going to explode with closely supervised preliminary WORLD TITLE QUALIFICATION ON THE INTERNET . Laugh at Mr. Bonifacio ABOVE if you like…but make no mistake..he is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT in idea … REALLY saying the whole world gets to play world title chess at any cost…and not 50 often ridiculous vacationers there for a pathetic paycheck or hoping desperately to win by forfeit because their opponent FALLS ASLEEP (AS ACTUALLY HAS HAPPENED IN WORLD PLAY) OR… HEAVEN FORBID . ..BECAUSE SOME DESPERATELY POOR IMMIGRANT STUDENT CANADIAN GRANDMASTER wears short pants for days with out ABSOLUTELY anyone noticing AT ALL until round 4!! WHEN HE IS FORFEITED!!!.. . ..OR DRAWING BY AGREEMENT WITH RIDICULOUS PUBLIC FRAUD BY DRAW IN MINUTES (‘CHICKEN CHESS’-THANK YOU FIDE GRANDMASTER SUSAN POLGAR!) (RATHER THAN BEING DOUBLE FORFEITED FOR NO CONTEST IN THE WORLD CUP )…WHILE GRANDMASTER SO IS NEXT DOOR KILLING HIMSELF WITH FATIGUE TRYING TO WIN AT ALL TIMES … AS MUST NOW BE EXPECTED AT ALL TIMES. I leave all the ABOVE TRULY nifty wild eyed , WILD WEST commentators with a direct quote from one of the greatest chess grandmasters/theorists/personalities/ MASSIVELY loved gentlemen in world chess history…./ MR. LEVON ARONIAN who just shocked millions on Armenian television last year with ” I do not believe any player should ever be allowed in any circumstance to offer his opponent a draw.” PERIOD. Right you are …. Kasim the great! Jude Acers/New Orleans
NOTE TO MR. ZED…..amazed that amidst your red hot condemnation of SIr Kasim you uncorked your own simple , maybe terrific unyielding innovation that left you both standing on the same corner with suitcase in hand..One game with each color under exact same conditions ,,,,sorry Mr. Zed.. it STILL has to be reasonably fast so everyone in 160 registered chess nations can watch both games.,(AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE WILL ANY PLAYER BE ALLOWED TO EVER LEAVE THE CHESS BOARD DURING PLAY…IN THIS DEADLY CHESS AGE OF COMPUTER PRO CHESS CRIMINALS……WHERE MORE THAN 100 ALREADY ADMITTED CASES OF DOCUMENTED OFTEN FREELY ADMITTED GRANDMASTER CHESS FRAUD HAVE BEEN COVERED VIA CHESSBASE NEWS AND FIDE) The public must have a winner after the Mr. Zed second game today…Go for it Mr. Zed..pick your forced tie break after 1-1 tie. Complete the day .WE MUST HAVE A WINNER OF THE ROUND. This could indeed be it. Jude Acers/ New Orleans