The Knockout format can be interesting. But it is definitely not the best way to determine the strongest player. In a two game match, anything can happen and luck plays a big part in determining the outcome.
In the first round of the 2006 Women’s World Knockout Championship, quite a number of upsets occured:
Zapata, Karen (PER) 2218 1.5 – .5 Lahno, Kateryna (UKR) 2500
Hou, Yifan (CHN) 2269 1.5 – .5 Kosintseva, Nadezhda (RUS) 2480
Ju, Wenjun (CHN) 2290 1.5 – .5 Socko, Monika (POL) 2475
Kursova, Maria (RUS) 2319 1.5 – .5 Zhao, Xue (CHN) 2473
Lujan, Carolina (ARG) 2346 1.5 – .5 Dembo, Yelena (GRE) 2461
Houska, Jovanka (ENG) 2355 1.5 – .5 Skripchenko, Almira (FRA) 2461
Ruan, Lufei (CHN) 2361 1.5 – .5 Mkrtchian, Lilit (ARM) 2453
Ushenina, Anna (UKR) 2398 3 – 1 Korbut, Ekaterina (RUS) 2427
Peng, Zhaoqin (NED) 2407 4 – 2 Paehtz, Elisabeth (GER) 2422
Irina Krush barely got through the first round. She defeated Claudia Amura by the score of 2.5 – 1.5. 
Dear Susan,
Chess is “famous” as a game, where luck has no place, only knowledge and experience. Many Internet sites have this quote, in one way or another. Are you suggesting that this may be just another myth about chess and that luck can play a major part in the game?
Well, luck can play a role when two players are of equal strength, but there is no excuse when you loose to player of 300 pts lower rating than you!!!!!Either you were not prepared or sleeping through the game…
if u never lose to someone below you, there wouldnt be any point in playing. And through pure statistics, you are going to lose a game sometimes to much lower ranked players. What GM Susan is saying is that 2 games are sometimes not enough to decide who is better.
– Vinay
This is a perfect example to show how important it is to design a Championship correctly. This same thing was rampant in the US Championships.
When we have people like Anonymous here this kind of thing is allowed to continue.
I am trying to find a way to explain this to people like Anonymous. Let us imagine that playing chess is like 2 people sitting down at a roulette table. the stronger the player the more square he gets to bet. so if there are 32 spots and the two players are equal they each get 16 spots for their bet. the ball is rolled and the winner is the one who be on that number. but lets say some one is 300 or 400 points stronger at chess and he gets 30 of the 32 squares and the other person get 2 squares and the ball is rolled. yep. the ball can fall into one of the 2 that the lower player has and he wins. there is NOTHING the higher player can do on the one roll. but given say 10 games or 10 rolls the higher player will win more often than lose.
The object of a Championship should be to pick the best chess player as Champion. That has been lost in San Diego and in the WWCC with this rediculous knockout. it might be fun to watch if you have a new knockout everyweekend. but for picking the world womens chess champion it is rediculous. they may as well just flip coins instead of working so hard over a chess board.
by the way there were 64 original entrants. 10 from china and after the first round there are 32 participants left and 5 from china. it looks like a numbers game.
Chess players are like this. I had a friend at the local chess club and he went to the world open every year. he was rated a bit over 1600 and played in the under 1800 section every year.
He kept working on his chess. his rating stays about the same. and he kept thinking he was going to win. he seemed to think his performance was up to him. when in reality his performance was up to the Law of Averages determined by Statistics.
He was retired and passed on some time ago. He just loved playing chess and did not mind never winning at the world open. But he never understood what was really going on.
What are your chances of flipping a coin and having it come up heads 9 times in a row and winning a 9 round tournament. not too good. but it can be fun to try. the stronger one is over his opponents the better the chance.
A Championship has to be about finding that person who is the best chess player among a big group of players all of whom can lose a few times. it is not so easy when we seem to think that losing a game means the person is not such a good player.
even the best player in the world at the time. Kasparov lost a match to Kramnik. Kasparov remained the best player even after he lost that match.
Who is the better player? Impossible to tell, even if a long match were played. You’d only have a temporary better player.
Of the recent players, who could claim betterness to Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov? No one. With computers working, instead of brains, with clocks running, with smoking banned from tournament halls, non-smokers and healthy people have the advantage.
Which of the participants can claim she is better than Stefanova? None. How many can claim they can beat her in a match? Many. This is chess, not roulette. There is no luck in chess, even in blitz games. Luck “the chance happening of fortunate or adverse events”. Luck is when you have 2500 and get a 2200 patzer opponent. And if you lose, you’re then “unlucky”??
Please define “better player”.