How Not To Break A Tie
Jun 15th 2008 11:09PM
by David Koller
AOL
The US Open Golf Championship wasn’t the only recent major competition to finish in a tie after the regulation rounds. But it certainly has a more sensible format for breaking the tie.
Today at the 2008 US Open Golf Championship, Tiger Woods birdied the final hole in dramatic fashion to finish in a two-man tie after completion of the regulation four rounds. The tie breaker is another complete round of 18 holes on Monday. Makes sense.
The recent 2008 United States Women’s Chess Championship also finished with a tie between one woman with a Russian-sounding name and another woman with a Russian-sounding name. You would think that chess players and people who organize chess tournaments have a sensible way to break a tie. You would be wrong.
The tie breaker in this championship was a game of speed chess, in which each player has to move as fast as possible and then smack the chess clock to stop their own time countdown and put their opponent on the clock. Watch this video to see the most ridiculous tie breaker in sports history. (Disregard the first 20 seconds and you can stop watching after 1 minute 15 seconds.)
Source: America Online
Great! The world now ridicules the USCF and chess. Thanks Mr. Goichberg and Berry. Brilliant!
It’s amazing how much criticism goes flying around the net from people who have no idea what they are talking about.
The uscf got the publicity they wanted. Well done Mr. Berry. This show the brilliance of President Goichberg. I bet this was a well planned scheme to boost uscf membership.
It’s amazing how much criticism goes flying around the net from people who have little idea what they are talking about.
Koller’s description of speed chess applies to one minute games; Krush had six minutes. What an idiot.
No such thing as bad publicity, so this is good publicity for the USCF. Chess is this exciting? Tell me more!
The US open is pretty close to the way the US chess championship is decided. If today’s event is still tied, the two golfers will play one hole to decide a winner. The chess championship could have been decided during the rapid play,but after failing to break the tie a short version of the game was used to settle things. Football does the same thing. No full game, instead sudden death for the NFL and college football has, what ever you call their tie breaker. NBA plays a shorter version of basketball and the same thing for college. Baseball doesn’t play a whole game. They play extra innings until someone wins.
I’m a chess player and i didn’t like also what i saw.
What Capablanca, and Alekhine and Tal would say if they saw that images?
We say that chess is the Royal Game.
What was royal in the US championship final? Where are the diferent acts we defende our game is based?
I don’t want to see that again.
I agree with the above commentaries that the people who know very little about chess are the ones who are most critical.
It was a NORMAL BLITZ GAME. Everybody who actually plays chess (I mean on the real board, not internet) knows that. Every grandmaster that was present or commented the video said that they saw nothing unusual, just a normal blitz game.
The tie had to be broken somehow. Since tournaments games, rapid play-off and blitz play-off wasn’t enough the armageddon game was logical consequence. It’s not like they imediatelly played the armageddon.
And since when people don’t like blitz??? 95% of the games played on the internet are blitz or even bullet!!! In fact it is quite a challenge to find a person to play a longer game.
Think about that and how hypocritical you people are.