In your opinion, which is the best way to decide the title in case of a tie?
Click here to vote!
– Declare co-champions
– Rapid, Blitz, Armageddon playoff
– Coin toss
– Tie-breaks
– Another method
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1) Keep the message positive until Hillary concedes.
2) Does an Armageddon game really demonstrate anything? It only satisfies our predilection for saying “yes” to one and “no” to another.
I think Anna and Irina tied – a remarkable and satisfying result.
Blitz/Armaggedon is plain stupid;
Simply imagine a 20-30 year old and a 70 year old player tie for first place.
A Blitz/Armaggedon tie-break would clearly be in favour of the younger player, as you cannot expect a 70 year old player to move the pieces as fast as the young one.
This example IMO rules out a blitz tie-break.
BTW, this above-mentioned scenario came to reality when Huebner and Smyslov tied in their Candidates Match in 1983. Huebner gentlemanly agreed to skip the blitz games in view of Smyslovs age and they went directly for a Roulette decision. Smuslov won with “3-RED” (after an initial “0” !)
“Simply imagine a 20-30 year old and a 70 year old player tie for first place.”
Simply imagine a 70-year old and you tie for first place. I’d bet my money on the grandma.
Are bloggers really that ignorant of chess? To answer my own question, yes.
A playoff match consisting of Classical games, otherwise co-champions.
Otherwise, I’d rather they played Trivial Pursuit to decide the title.
>>
I think Anna and Irina tied – a remarkable and satisfying result.
>>
Well, they didn’t. You can’t change the rules after the game. And even if they had, what would be so remarkable about a tie? Happens all the time.
Blitz also requires chess skills. A somewhat different kind of chess skills than ‘slow’ chess, but it’s still the chess skill that decides.
1) Co-champion formula is no good. OK, we can live with two co-champions, 3 co-champions is somewhat strange and 4 or more co-champions is just plain silly.
2) Rapid, blitz and armageddon is just fine. Most of the time it doesn’t come to armageddon, but if the players are as equal as Irina and Anna were, then only the armageddon can decide.
3) Coin-toss??? I can’t believe someone actually recommends this.
4) Tie-break. Under this it’s probably meant the Bucholz, Median Bucholz, SB, progressive score and other methods. All those methods have flaws and are more unfair than blitz play-off.
So you see there just isn’t anything better than what we have. The only other possibility would be playing blitz games until the decission is made (instead of going to armageddon). Since it’s blitz a decission would be made in reasonable time.
The problem with sharing the first place at a championship is that it does not enforce competition.
Can you imagine a world championship tournament (like San Luis or Ellista) in which the winner has 80-90% of draws?
A coin toss is better than armaggeddon with no delay. But with delay of a couple of seconds per move, and (this is a must in future) disallowing moves in opponent’s time, they are roughly equal methods, both with their pluses and minuses.
Whatever happened to the old roulette wheel? I think one of Susan’s matches was decided this way. Huebner too.
Declaring Co-champions seems to be fine, but what about more important matches like the World Chess Championship?
Coin-toss is pointless. What pride would a player have after winning a title based on a coin toss?
Armageddon is alright as long as the match is played on a computer, so that neither player has the chance to make illegal moves (dropping pieces or making illegal moves to confuse the opponent) or hit the clocks before making their move or making a move before their opponent has hit the clock. If the Armageddon match is played on the computer, after both players have had sufficient rest, then the outcome would be a more fair one (even if it’s based on a difference of few seconds), if not the fairest one.
In a game like chess, where draws are a natural outcome when both players play the best moves under reasonable time controls, hoping for a single winner and the fairest outcome at the same time, every time is hoping for a bit too much in my opinion. Something’s gotta give some where.
Has a coin toss (or something like it) ever actually been used to decide a title?? I’ve never heard of that happening before. Sounds like an even worse way to decide than an Armageddon game.
Why not armageddon playoff, if
it has the same time controls as
what was played in the tournament,
that is, blitz=blitz playoff,
slow time=slow time playoff. This
would secure the outcome with one
game, and not changing the rules of the armageddon game from the tournament games, as the rules are different for slow and rapid/blitz.
What is a slow time armageddon then?
The time is fixed for white,
for example 90 minutes, and one player decide the time for black, the other player choose side. Rules the same as in slow time
chess, a draw is a win for black.
/I Lind
That is not the same as the tournament- as in the tournament both sides had the same time- so it would not be rate-able. It is still a variant with white having time odd against black draw odds.
Atleast you would have a better game and more skill would be involved than blitz armageddon- but it still does not match tournament games.
Best idea would be to do as Norway did when their men tied- have a match sometime later in classical games between the two.
To anon 4:42, glad you support the idea (eg long armageddon better than blitz), the focus here would be to end with a game that differed as little as possible to the tournament games and rules and still pick out a winner.
I think that playing another classical match later to find a winner is affected by the same problem you tried to solve earlier-what happens in the case of a draw?
/I Lind
paper, scissors, rock
Has this not been flogged to death enough already?! Move on – get a life – etc.
Tie-breaks.
what if Armageddon ended in a draw? E.g. King vs. King+Knight or K vs K+RP.
Coin-toss is the last effort.
There is no draw in coin-toss!
Here’s the new offical order according to the USCF:
1. Rock, Paper, Scissors.
2. 50 meter dash
3. Monopoly
4. Arm wrestling
5. Russian Roulette !
😀
“what if Armageddon ended in a draw?”
As I said in one other post: It’s perfectly OK to not participate in discussion if you don’t know about the matter that is being discussed.
Traditionalyy the exiating champion remains champion after a draw.
This is all part of the “Russian conspuracy” to have changed the rules to get away from this tradition.
Anon Thur. 10:07 wrote:
“Simply imagine a 70-year old and you tie for first place. I’d bet my money on the grandma.
Are bloggers really that ignorant of chess? To answer my own question, yes.”
I don’t get this: A Blitz-game would obviously favor a younger player compared to an old player. That is a fact.
The ANON at 10:07 himself is obviously the “ignorant blogger” he is referring to…
Here is the regulation of the FOROS tournament in UKR that is starting tomorrow:
“In the case of equality of scores of two or more participants, the places are determined (in order of priorities) on:
-result of the direct encounter;
-Sonneborn-Berger system;
-number of won games.”
So?
The regulations for the US championship said that in case of a tie for the first place, 1 hour after the last round is finished tie-breaks will be played. First two rapid games, if the players are still tied than two blitz games, and if still tied the armageddon game will decide. One player will decide about the times and other will chose the colour of the pieces. Black has draw odds
Everybody knew this in advance and thats exactly what happened. So where is the problem?
-result of the direct encounter;
-Sonneborn-Berger system;
-number of won games
This would be a better way to decide it then blitz play-off- as it is to do with how they did in the real games. Many supertournaments even decide it like this. For tournaments this is fine, if you can not organise a proper match between the winners.
I agree 100% with anon 10:16. A playoff using normal time limit. Deciding a national championship with Blitz/Armaggedon is about the same as using rock/paper/scissors.
This was a championship contested at a normal time limit and the final determination of a champion should be under the same conditions.
If time constraints don’t allow for such a game then I’d rather see co-champions.
They should play Fischer Random. Winner gets a $1,000 bonus from the Bobby Fischer Foundation and is awarded a Fischer Champion Award. The loser of the match is still co-champion. This would give chess a double positive instead of double negative.
Negativity is killing chess.