FINAL SHOWDOWN A MAJOR LETDOWN
By ANDY SOLTIS
July 8, 2007 — Chess THE final round of a big-bucks, Swiss-system tournament is supposed to be one of the most dramatic events in chess, for players and spectators alike.
But the finale of the 35th World Open on Wednesday was a letdown, not a showdown – a quick anti-climax of grandmaster draws.
Eight players were tied at 6-2 in the top section going into the last game in King of Prussia, Pa. A win for any of them guaranteed a share of the top prize, which was upward of $25,000.
But within minutes after the round began, draws suddenly appeared on the top boards – and only on the top boards.
Varuzhan Akobian and Evgeny Najer drew in eight moves after just a few minutes. Then Leonid Yudasin and Julio Beccera shook hands after 11 moves. Sandipan Chanda made it to move 17 before drawing with Alexander Stripunsky.
That meant the winner of the Hikaru Nakamura-Viktor Mikhalevski pairing on Board 1 would have taken all the marbles – and the other GMs would have lost thousands of dollars each by their timidity. But that game, too, was drawn, at move 19.
In the end the top prize was shared by the eight drawing masters, plus Alexander Shabalov, who won his final game. He, at least, came to play chess.
Here is the full article.
What do you expect? No one cares except how much money can the organizer made. It’s all about money.
I regard the organisers more at fault here than the players.
The players can only play under the rules set out in the competition.
Of course they could keep playing on, but if it is in their collective best interest in the tournament to agree a draw, then that is what they will do.
GM’s drawing in the final round after a few moves has been known to happen since time in memorium. It is not a new feature.
If the organisers really think they, the tournament or the viewing chess public are being hard done by, they can enforce either:
1) Sofia rules
2) Players agreeing draws under (insert move number) will result in them getting only half their total prizemoney
This article, is the post, for the question, “When is Chess going to become a spectator sport in US”? The answer never…..
That is indeed what the money and the ‘industry’ causes….
It’s sad for the fans and for the game….
“Varuzhan Akobian and Evgeny Najer drew in eight moves after just a few minutes. Then Leonid Yudasin and Julio Beccera shook hands after 11 moves. Sandipan Chanda made it to move 17 before drawing with Alexander Stripunsky.”
:(((((((
how dare these guys try to make a living. their responsibility should not be to themselves, it should be to the whining nonpaying spectators.
They don’t have any duty to the spectators, since they aren’t really professionals, and, even if they were, the spectators weren’t paying to watch.
However, they do have a duty not to cheat. Chess seems to have worked itself into a place where players agreeing to draws with no serious attempt to play the game is not regarded as cheating. How did that happen? It is cheating.
I agree that non-played games harm the image of professional chess. But the World Open is not a professional event! It is an Amateur event, self-funded by the players. Therefore there should be no shame in the fact that players use the rules as written (draws can be agreed to at any point in the game) to maximize their monetary results.
It’s a different story when trying to build the attractiveness of chess to sponsors. “Ok, so Mr. corporate marketing exec, you invest $50,000 to sponsor our chess event, you get a nice banner in the tournament hall, and GM’s have to option to discontinue their games at any point in time – and still get paid! Please sign here.”.
Well, if the organizers want chess, they’ll institute the Sofia Rule, at least for the final round. If they don’t, then they’re satisfied.
These anti-climactic last rounds in big tournaments are a common occurrence, especially at the top boards. I believe the reasoning goes like this: If I win, I get clear first and say, $5000. If I draw I will finish in a tie with several other guys and get $800, enough to cover my expenses. But if I push for a win, especially against a strong player looking only for the half point, I could easily lose and end up with maybe $50. Better to shake hands and not take chances.
In economic/game-theoretic terms the last short draw was “irrational”, but collectively having 4 short draws was rational. Beyond that, the dominant elements IMHO are:
(a) the psychology of loss-aversion,
(b) peer-pressure aspects of the collective rationality,
(c) the nature of “play-it-safe” opening lines, and (averting)
(d) the counter-specter of collusion by throwing games…
First the game theory. The World Open top prizes were $30,000-15,000-7,000-3,000-2,500-2,000-1,500-1,000-800-700, then $600 for places 11–15. The 9-way tie after the 4 draws was worth $62,800/9$ ~= $7,000 each. A 2-way tie for 1st would have been $22,500 each, a 3-way tie $17,333 each, and a 4-way tie, $13,750 each. Assume losing would be worth $0—it would certainly feel like that.
Now after the first 3 games were drawn, if you played riskily to win but incurred an equal chance of losing, your expectation would be (1/2)*$30,000 + (1/2)*$0 = $15,000. Compared to $7,000 for playing it safe, this should definitely be an incentive! If you would expect one other of the 8 players tied for the lead to win, your expectation from trying to win would be (1/2)*$22,500 = $11,250, still worthily more than $7,000. But if you expected 2 others to win, you’d be looking at an expectation of (1/2)*$17,333 = $8,667, and that doesn’t seem different enough from $7,000 to be worth the psychological effort and risk of losing. And in the event of a 4-way tie, the expectation of (1/2)*$13,750 = $6,875 is actually LESS THAN $7,000!
This is not really the fault of the sharp dropoff in prizes. If you try smoother sequences such as $30,000-20,000-13,000-9,000-6,000-4,000-2,700-1,800-1,200-800, which is rounding a 2/3-power-law, you get similar analysis: the 9-way tie would be just short of $10,000, while the 4-way tie expectation is (1/2)$18,000 = $9,000.
One thing to note is that ordinarily you would expect more than 1 victor from the half-point-behind score group. Having 4 victors would have meant $64,700 split 12 ways = only about $5,400 each, still making risk profitable in the 4-way-tie-for-first case.
But now we come to points (a)–(d). In landmark studies over the past 30 years, socio- economists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have demonstrated quantitatively that people typically feel twice as bad over a financial loss as they feel good over a gain of equal value. Thus a loss of $7,000 would feel like a loss of $14,000, which even balances the ice-blooded expectation of $15,000 shooting for a clear 1st. I still remember the pain of my last-round loss to Joel Benjamin in the 1980 World Open, my one crack at the big kitty (though only with a win, you see…). As chronicled at length in Naasim Taleb’s books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, there is not much to do about this—it’s human nature!
Point (b) is a strong factor, IMHO. It is hard to compare the social pressure of top players trying to make a living to situations in other sports, because few other competitions have draws as a possible outcome. At Ramsgate in 1981 with an early-morning last-day round, let’s-call-him-N.N. needed a draw for a GM norm and, believing he was paired with Q.Q., agreed one and partied all night. Came the morning, he had Black against me, and the reason I felt compelled to give to people asking me (I think even during the game!) why I played on […with him in that state…] was that I had an outside chance of tying for 1st with a win. (I did win, but the two leaders did not lose.) I got some flak for that even years later! It can, however, be combatted by () having chess existence be less hand-to-mouth, and () social promotion of risk-taking, maybe with some support for future travel expenses by hard-luck losers.
“Sofia rules” (the reference is to Bulgaria’s capital—it does not mean that Susan’s sister is the arbiter:-) may help with (c), but only so far.
Item (d) is the “Charybdis” to the short-agreed-draw “Scylla”. Another personal example—also with Joel Benjamin!—to show that it cannot be discounted even by those who “wouldn’t think of doing it”: In the late 1970s, Joel and I fought to a 60-move draw (he had the chances throughout) and $100 each late into a Sunday evening , with both my mom and his father Alan needing to drive over 100 miles home… A win for either would have been worth $1,000—think of that as $2,500 in today’s money. People were remarking on that to my mom and Alan all during the game! Even in a far-better-supported sport such as tennis, this is said to happen at lesser events as players “tank” during a game. At least in chess the fact that games are recorded inhibits “tanking” (IMHO), and it is considered not a trivial matter for two players to remember and play out a pre-fab decisive game. Here, I’m speculating that an agreed draw may be felt as an “honorable” way to avoid this other temptation… As with (b), it might be combatted by better general support for chess and separate recognition/safety-netting for fighting spirit.
An off-the-wall proposal: After a last-round draw involving anyone within a half-point of a top or class prize, the players switch colors into a Chess960-type game, e.g. this one, with time controls proportional to how much time was left in the regular session. The point of Chess960 is that “safe” opening lines are mooted. As for its novelty versus the feeling that prizes should be determined by “real chess”, I’ll take it either way. (The closest analogue is a “shootout” finale in ice hockey, but one important aspect there is that both teams already are guaranteed at least one point from the game. Having the second game count for only, say, half of the money at stake would make prize formulas even more complicated—though this is the computer age.:-)
This is my own personal view of the main issues, not from any experience as a TD or organizer, but it should be enough to indicate that the issues are much deeper-seated than commenters here seem to expect.
Upon occasion, but not as a rule, amidst the tooth-and-claw scrapping of day-to-day existence, the top placers in an event enjoy sharing a warm victory, a warm solstice; as when two or more runners join hands while crossing the finish line and enjoy the spirit of the race, the sharing of the struggle, the mutual victory.
And for a moment, if only the twinkling of an eye…it is truly special being a human being.
anon @ 10:30 wrote:
{
World Open is not a professional event! It is an Amateur event, self-funded by the players.
}
Self-funded yes, but that is not the central point.
Any USCF ExBoard member or Delegate can see that a major media outlet felt complelled to publicize an ugly truth about chess (under the current rules of chess).
The damage to the image of chess occurred regardless of the funding details.
The USCF chess rules could improve the public image of chess by saying:
“Unless explicitly announced otherwise by the Tournament Director, no draw offers can be made or accepted before the first 30 move-pairs have been completed.”
GeneM
“That meant the winner of the Hikaru Nakamura-Viktor Mikhalevski pairing on Board 1 would have taken all the marbles – and the other GMs would have lost thousands of dollars each by their timidity. But that game, too, was drawn, at move 19.”
If this was poker, Hikaru Nakamura would have paid Viktor Mikhalevski $14,000 to resign.