Tim Harding wrote: ↑Mon Aug 27, 2018 3:40 pm
Please suggest weightings for possible reasons why the 2018 event has seen so many draws
I thought this was an interesting post that got lost in events. As Tim notes, partly just bad luck. But I would give quite a high weighting to the absence of Topalov.
I see it as a bit more systemic than just being about Topalov himself. The GCT system is to invite players primarily based on ratings. They do not have the advantage of say Wijk in selecting a field likely to interact interestingly. So the loss of Topalov and the change in Nakamura's approach hits Sinquefield quite hard.
A secondary problem is that, since ratings change relatively slowly, the GCT now has a group of players who have played a lot of chess with each other. Familiarity in itself likely to flatten results, as is knowing +2 is a great result. But it also has a tendency to narrow the openings being played. As Jacob Aagard observed, if you spend 50 hours failing to find an advantage in a opening with white you start to think about trying it with black, if only not to waste the work. Several very solid Queen's Gambits this year.
Of course it is a private tournament, and I understand their aim is not to produce the kind of tournament that someone like me would prefer. They are trying to interest casual viewers and plausibly believe the strongest possible field is therefore necessary. But still, I think their problem with with classical chess likely to get worse. Maybe they will end up as a rapidplay tour. It would make more sense to me.
