Yale-Bound Robert Hess Loses in U.S. Chess Championship Semifinals Playoff
Robert Hess, a chess grandmaster who interned at a hedge fund in 2008 and will attend Yale University in August, lost in a semifinal playoff at the 2011 U.S. Championship in St. Louis.
Hess, 19, drew the first semifinal playoff game yesterday and lost the second to 2008 champion Yuri Shulman, who will play Gata Kamsky in the final. The best-of-two-games playoff was forced when Hess and Shulman drew a pair of games on April 23 and April 24.
Hess’s loss came in a time-shortened, or rapid, game, and was his first defeat in 11 games during the tournament. A Manhattan native, Hess will play fellow 19-year-old grandmaster Samuel Shankland in the third-place match.
“They say losing in the last round is heartbreaking, but not even losing in a classical game, but losing in a rapid game, it doesn’t feel so good,” Hess said in an interview on the tournament’s website.
Hess, who deferred a year from Yale after winning the $42,000 Samford Chess Scholarship, had a 2008 summer internship at Fortress Investment Group LLC, a New York hedge fund. While at Fortress, Hess developed an interest in finance, which he intends to pursue in college.
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Agree with Hess. Rapid and Armageddon to decide the national championship is not cool. Hope the organizer will change it to just normal rr next year.
But you still have the problem of breaking ties. Co-champions isn’t very palatable, neither is math tie-breaks. And we don’t have the luxury of playing slow games forever to produce a clear champion. Rapids is less palatable to slow, but I prefer it the other ideas.
Besides, these GMs often get into similar time situations to rapid needing to make 20+ moves in under 15 minutes. That’s hardly the most beautiful chess either.
I agree. But this is the US Championships, not the US Rapid Championships or US Crap Shoot Championships. The USCF criticized FIDE for the absurd knockout system which was decided by rapid chess and Armageddon. Now that FIDE abandons it, the USCF adapts this stupidity.
I love their basic concept of tournament play to qualify for match play to produce a champion. That’s a really good overall test of chess ability, and is very satisfying to the viewer.
A final battle with the title decided between two players is good theater and has a much better chance of drawing interest than those same two players pounding on guys totally out of the running.
The problem is that chess is best when played at a slow pace, but at the top level white has a big advantage and draws are common.
To come up with a system of breaking a tie that satisfies color balance, meaning two game blocks and can overcome the high chances of additional tied scores is hard enough, but when it’s asked to be done at classical time controls it is just practically impossible.
Kamsky has a candidates match less than a week after the championship. He couldn’t have played if there was some open-ended schedule of slow games to break ties at the end, and not having either Kamsky or Nakamura would really devalue the title.
I wish there was a system that could allow only slow games and produce a clear winner, and would allow for two finalists to go head to head for the title. I just don’t know how to do that.
The World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world. It uses group round robin play to qualify for elimination brackets to produce a clear champion. And as popular as it is, it can still be decided by the dreaded penalty kicks.