Altibox Norway 2019 - the future of chess?

[John McKenna]

How ironic would it be if FIDE agreed to rate games played at the above-mentioned time controls for all players and thereby finally allow "slow-play" ECF graded games to be FIDE rated.

Not sure Alanis Morrissette would be too troubled by the irony.

But watch this space - there has been increasing demand from various people to change the 4-hour rule. It won't be done in time for 1st July, 2020; but perhaps 1st July, 2021. There's rather a lot of consultation before then.

Alex, thank you, I've a strong sense of irony and look forward to the.bumps in the ECF grading and FIDE rating systems being ironed out and the two being stitched together in due course.

[Mick Norris]

Caution Tournament-related comment

Mild-mannered, softly-spoken Anand hits out at Armageddon arrangements

I'd have thought that 1 tournament wasn't a statistically significant sample to reach a conclusion, but the idea doesn't seem to be off to a good start

Trying to ignore my personal dislike of it, maybe have the players play the armageddon first, or just have the armageddons as a separate part which scores less than the classical; maybe have classical scoring 3-1-0?

[NickFaulks]

If this may not be the future of chess, competition from the World Chess Armageddon going on in Moscow doesn't look too stiff. They have assembled an excellent, and presumably expensive, bunch of players but nobody seems very interested. The format is complicated and I haven't taken the trouble to work through it.

I did look at the website to check who was in the lead, but they evidently feel that sort of information would spoil the purity of the page.

[Matt Mackenzie]

As it was Carlsen *didn't* win his Armageddon game yesterday, but only because it wasn't needed......

[NickFaulks]

Caruana - Carlsen truly beyond belief.

[Matt Mackenzie]

The classical game, I presume you mean? Yes, it was eventful.

But of course, after that Carlsen suffered his only defeat of the event in the final game.

He won't like that