First of all, I would like to thank Frank K. Berry for sponsoring the 2008 US and US Women’s Championships. Secondly, I would like to thank Tom Braunlich and Jim Berry for their help in organizing this event, and ZM of MonRoi for the splendid LIVE broadcast. Lastly, I would like to thank Goddesschess for the sponsoring the “Fighting Chess” award in the US Women’s Championship.
Some people raised the issue of the US Women’s Championship Playoff last night. IM Irina Krush and IM Anna Zatonskih both played very difficult last round games for the title. In the case of Irina, the game went beyond 100 moves!
At the end, they tied for 1st place and a playoff took place. The format is two 15 minute (plus small increment/delay) games then two 5 minute (plus small increment/delay) if there is a tie. If the tie continues then an Armageddon game would take place to decide the winner.
The whole thing ended more than 9 hours after the last round started and many horrendous blunders were committed. I believe it is partly due to the fatigue factor.
Two most common questions are:
1. Should rapid / blitz chess be used to decide the national title in regular time control chess?
2. Should the 5-game playoff be held right after the last round or should it be held the morning after?
What is your take? What would you do if you are organizer?
I don’t like using blitz to decide national titles or other important championships, especially when held right after a grueling final round. It cheapens the eventual winner’s victory.
Instead, there should be a full day of rest followed by a three-game match. If that’s tied at the end, then declare co-champions.
I like Anthony’s idea. Brilliant!
I vote for Anthony to replace Bill Goichberg as USCF President.
Adding days is impractical, Anthony, for reasons of scheduling and finance.
Skip all the Blitz tie-breaker games, and go directly to one Armageddon game.
Unlike some major FIDE events, this FKBerry event had the intelligence to include an element of bidding & fairness to the Armageddon color assignments to the players.
GeneM
.
Announce a tie-break system preference in advance; eg: if two or more players tied, take scores as if they only played each other. If still tied, take individual head-to-head result(s); if still tied, use point tie-breaking systems in order x,y,z. If still tied, decalre it is tied.
Adding an extra day to a schedule is not practical for scheduling reasons. What has blitz/lightning with or without increment have to do with the games that were just completed? Might as well thumb wrestle or rock-paper-scissors it.
I loved the tie break system. It was really exciting and we got a great Ladies’ Champion. Irena would also have been excellent. Stop complaining.
I think consistency is the key. It should be the same system for all National level championships including scholastics. This will allow players to be experienced and trained as they grow up to be adult players under such circumstances.
Tie-breaks are always hard. In the recently concluded National Elementary Championship K-1 section had two players with 7/7.
Over a period of years people will get used to an established process as fair if it is consistent.
Blitz and armageddon aren’t real chess. Might as well use (soccer) penalty kicks or a 50 yard dash. I would have preferred to declare them co-champions.
I vote for co-champions or use the standard tie-break systems to decide.
The ideal situation would be a match some months after the championship with drawing odds for the player with the higher tiebreak. But I guess that would be difficult to organise because of financial reasons.
Posted mathematical tie-breaks to decide the title. Add up first and second and split the prize fund equally financially.
It’s really that simple. Soemtimes it goes for you, sometimes it goes against you.
Hakuna Mutata!
Playing extra games should never be an option unless it is match play, regardless.
I can appreciate that adding an unexpected day at the end would increase hotel and flight costs but why not build that into the schedule?
To make it worth everyone’s while, hold a special fun event like a Blitz tourney (with a worthwhile prize) on the last day along with the prize giving and thank you dinner reception. If there is a playoff necessary, one could have the playoff participants do that and the others play in the blitz tourney.
So the schedule would be…
Day 1 welcoming reception, review of rules, drawing of lots etc.
Day 2-5 rounds 1,2,3,4
Day 6 rest day
Day 7-11, rounds 5,6,7,8,9
Day 12 – Playoff if necessary, Blitz day, award reception…
This would take 12 days. ? Is that too much? If you get rid of the rest day…you’ll still have 11 days. The current schedule has 10 days…
A tie-break system based on the regular games would be good, but many of the common ones don’t apply to a round-robin tournament such as this.
Simply hold it the next day (or whenever) at a private residence or motel room. Quite possible as only 2 players involved.
If full games are not acceptable [and for really important events such as World Championship or Candidates Matches, they should certainly be used], then at least two 30 minute games. If still tied, then best of six 5 minute games. If still tied, then keep playing mini-matches of two 5 minute games until a decisive result obtained.
Armageddon should NEVER be used. It is an abomination.
No rapid, no blitz. Should recognize co-champion and share the price.
They should be declared co-champions and let it be done. It’s obvious both players were fatigued and it does not seem quite ethical to push players to such a limit. It doesn’t prove who the better player is and it gives the entire championship a bad image.
To lose a title due to having to play (possibly) blitz or “Armageddon” chess just doesn’t seem proper.
The answer here is that they should have been declared co-champions with congats to both fine players.
GeneM suggested that the playoff consist of a single Armageddon game. I support that, with a couple of comments.
First, I hope people are aware of the innovative method used to select the Armageddon time control this time. One player, selected at random (I don’t know who this was?), split the time, in this case choosing that White got 6 minutes and Black got 4:30 (with draw odds), and the other player got choice of colors. As you see, this is a fair method because neither player can complain that he/she should have had more time.
This Armageddon game, like all the others I know about, was played at a blitz time control with no increment, and resulted in a wild time scramble as can be seen in a video. However, there’s no reason why this has to be so. I would propose a single Armageddon-game playoff with an hour total time and an increment of 3 to 5 seconds, with the same ‘I split, you choose’ method. It would be interesting to see what time splits people came up with. Naturally the increment makes draw odds much more powerful, but you can correct for that by skewing the time white’s way. Maybe White would end up playing with the obligation to win at 25 3, while Black would try to hold the draw at 5 3. However it worked out, I would expect fewer blunders than in these blitz games, and it would be guaranteed to terminate.
Obviously I should have previewed my comment; instead of 25 3 and 5 3 in the last paragraph, I should have said 50 3 and 10 3, assuming the total time is an hour. I hope that didn’t confuse people!
It’s silly. Both players ended with 7.5 points. That, in and of itself, is enough. They tied for first and should be co-champions. There is nothing at all wrong with this since both had 7.5 points.
What will be next? Playing a blindfold game to see who the champion is?
Let’s face it. Classical chess,Rapid chess and Blitz chess are all different. It is truly nonsensical to decide a Classical chess match by rapid/blitz games. This is how they intend to decide the winner of the World Championships come October!. Absolute rubbish. In case of a draw after 12 rounds Anand should retain the title.
The current champion should always have draw odds. I agree with the last post.
The US Women’s was a fiasco that proved Armageddon does not work. What if the NBA developed a new system that in the event of a tie, the first OT would be 5 minutes, the 2nd 1 minute, and the 3rd OT was “first to draw iron wins?” What’s worse, what if the Lakers or Celtics put on smiley faces and called that basketball rather than insist the system be corrected. If scheduling and finance cannot provide for an OTB tiebreak based on chess skill rather than manual dexterity, then what on earth was ever wrong with simply recognizing co-champions? What’s necessary is for the actual players involved such as Irina or Anna to stand up against the concept of Armageddon and override the oblivious “majority” of patzers who help promote such a system as “exciting.”
Maybe do it like in European soccer:
If two players share first place, then look at their direct encounter(s). If one player defeated the other, then he/she gets the title.
If their direct encounter ended in a draw, then the player who had black in their game is the winner.
That’s easy and makes sense.
Armaggedon and blitz doesn’t make sense.
If a picture speaks a thousand words, a YouTube is even better. Understand that in American chess, Irina Krush is one of the ultimate champions for the cause of good sportsmanship. She’s no saint but its hard to find a better good sport. What you will see is IK of all people- standing up, making wild gestures, tossing her king across the room like Alekhine or something and storming out without even shaking Anna’s hand! That speaks volumes. Its like the Surgeon General was driven to take up smoking. I would react the same way if I held a US title and basically had it stripped from me without by the objectives of chess ever having really even lost. Just let them both be champions if theres no better way.
There is a problem with the suggestion of the previous champion having draw odds in a tournament like this – the players that are tied for first place might very well not include the previous champion!
I stand in total opposition to the above suggestion of a “head to head” selective result as a tiebreak in chess.
Over the course of the middle portions of the 20th century, American football became the arena in which it became so fashionable to solve ties by means of comparing the result of perhaps a singular, selected game from an entire schedule. In football, that or some similar system is a necessity because obvious factors, namely scheduling, expense and downright fatigue, make it impractical in football to add a supplemental “tiebreaker game” unexpectedly into a schedule. Unfortuneately, other sports have taken the same lead when it is not nearly so necessary…though at least major league baseball, with the exception of one not very common scenario, continues to enjoy the luxury, like top-level chess should, of adding an “OTB” game to decide things.
While football has no choice, to select one particular game from earlier in the schedule to bear added weight in the standings is flawed in two serious ways. First, it would be fair to know at the time such game was played that it would, effectively, count twice. This importance is sometimes forseen at the time such a game was played as a possibility, but often not and almost never as a certainty. Secondly, to double the impact of one game over any others diminishes the proper value of all other games on the schedule. The loser of a “head to head” tiebreaker is the party who thus, in fact, scored one game ahead in measuring the balance of an entire schedule.
Football needs an “ex post facto” tiebreak to continue on with its scheduled playoff tournament or with its bowl games, and most levels of chess can be fine with a Solkoff or similar system to separate common woodpushers who at the end of a Swiss have only so many hours in their weekend. At the top level, where championships and large purses are at stake, it is just too easy to simply play over the board, and hopefully not an Armageddon. Hotels are very accomodating about extending one’s stay for a night.