Open Letter from GM Macieja
On the 28th of September 2008 GM Bartlomiej Macieja sent a letter to the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee, which was pubished in Chess Today.
The text is below:
“Dear Members of the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee, I am sure all of you have seen videos of two recently played important sudden death games. The videos can be found for instance on http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4893
Some time ago I proposed to change rules in such a way that playing endings only on time, for example K+N – K+N would not be possible.
Unfortunately, the situation has not moved too much. The main problem has always been how to define “deadly drawn positions”. An additional problem has been that some positions are “deadly drawn” for some (strong) players, but not for other (weaker) players.
I suggest that the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee makes an official recommendation to play blitz games, including sudden death games, with an increment. I believe 3’+2″ is a much better time control for a blitz game, as we avoid “flying pieces” and other irregularities which so often happen in (and after!) blitz games played without any increment. The duration of a round doesn’t significantly change.
Adding only 1 second per move to a sudden death game completely eliminates the problem of deadly drawn positions. If a position is really deadly drawn, both players will understand there is no reason to play it on. Please note, that no artificial definitions are needed any longer. The players will decide themselves what a deadly drawn position is for them.
Best regards,
Bartlomiej Macieja”
Comment from GM Alex Baburin:
I would certainly second this proposal – in my opinion a time increment should be used whenever possible, as it limits the role of an arbiter. I trust that the only argument chess organisers have against using the increment is that the duration of the round becomes unpredictable. But this isn’t a problem for blitz games – even if players make 150 moves, with 2- second increment the game would last about 16 minutes. I would argue that using 3’+2″ is much better than 3’+1″ – you might get some “flying pieces” in the latter case.
Obviously, one will need to figure out a “fair” time distribution for “sudden death” games – maybe something like 4’+2″ for White vs. 3’+2″ for Black?
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The increment idea makes the most sense to me. It’s a simple application of the current rules. In the U.S., a two-second delay is standard for blitz. There’s nothing to prevent organizers from trying it out.
Speaking of organizing, I looked for the SPICE Cup regulations on the Monroi site, but it was blank. What’s the procedure for tiebreaks?
There is no need to use sudden-death games to decide world championships. Playing extra games cannot be too expensive for the organizers.
I suggest a boxing match instead of sudden deaths. Why die over the chess board of stress, when you can die of a hit in the head.
Armageddon is perfect. Never has there been such interest in chess since Irina Krush and Mikko Markulla.
Comment from GM Alex Baburin:
Obviously, one will need to figure out a “fair” time distribution for “sudden death” games – maybe something like 4’+2″ for White vs. 3’+2″ for Black?
“Obviously”? No, obviously not.
Bidding must be required, else the system is almost certainly unfair to one player.
Never let the Tournament Organizer “figure out” on his own what time-control for Black would be fair.
Any Armageddon chess game (where draw-odds is balanced against time-odds) should never have a preset duration for Black.
Instead, each player should give one sealed bid for the amount of time they would want to play with as Black; lowest bid wins.
Only the 2 second increment would be held constant for both players.
Flying pieces need to be avoided, but I don’t think a 2-second increment might not be enough. What if a player accidentally knocks over a piece? Two seconds isn’t enough to put it back. And what if it does get to K+N vs. K+N with a 2-second increment, and one player has nothing to loose and keeps playing. When does the game end? (Especially if they are not allowed to agree to a draw?) So I think there needs to be some mechanism to call such a position to draw, rather than play on hundreds of moves to see if one eventually can’t make the time limit.
Chess MUST change to a computer interface for these blitz playoffs, then there is NO dispute about pieces or time.
I think, to try to avoid “non chess” problems (such also as the 50 moves rules ever applied even if a forced mate in 51 can be proved), the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee should be composed ONLY by GM or IM.