The World Championship Draws - The Cure is Money

[Geoff Chandler]

This daft idea could work.

Say we have a total prize fund of £300,000 for a 12 game match.
Of course it can and most likely will be higher but £300,000 is good for the maths.

Every time a game is played £25,000 goes into the pot. (300,000 /12)
The winner of that game will get £18,000 the loser £7,000.
In the event of a draw neither player gets anything.

The £25.000 from that pot is gone. The organisers can do with it what they want.
The players get absolutely nothing financial wise from a drawn game.
The bigger the prize fund the more money they are losing everytime they draw.

I'm thinking I'd rather be 4-0 down with £28,000 in my pocket.
Than 1-0 down and £7,000. I have nothing at all to gain by playing safe. Nothing.

So in every game I may as well stir things up I could land a knockout
if not at least I've scored £7,000 and my opponent will be thinking the same.

Sorted.

[Chris Rice]

But what will you do to mitigate the moral hazard?

I assume you mean Anand shouldn't have got any money for yesterday's draw but if yesterday's game had gone 1 e4 f6 2 d4 g5 3 Qh5 mate would Anand have deserved to be paid because of his creativeness?

There is value in a well played draw but I know what you are saying in that I guess the problem is there is no win. However, if yesterday's draw had been followed by an Armageddon game wouldn't that have been exciting? The purists wouldn't have liked it but I suspect the millions watching around the world would have lapped it up.

[Ian Kingston]

The monetary value of being World Champion (in terms of sponsorship and appearance fees) dwarfs the prize money available in the match. Playing around with the prize fund makes no difference to that.

Even if money is not a concern, the players are still competing for the World Championship. You can't really put a price on that.

[Richard Bates]

There is value in a well played draw but I know what you are saying in that I guess the problem is there is no win. However, if yesterday's draw had been followed by an Armageddon game wouldn't that have been exciting? The purists wouldn't have liked it but I suspect the millions watching around the world would have lapped it up.

The world's most popular and marketable sport seems to get along just fine without the gimmick of a penalty shootout at the end of every game. Hell it even has it's fair share of dud games at major tournaments, even it's fair share of dud major tournaments populated by the occasional exciting game. And little in the way of rule tinkering down the years has changed that.

Sometimes i think that chess players go overboard in misinterpreting what might or might not keep the casual onlooker away from the game (and exaggerating the value of the casual onlooker).

[Chris Rice]

Watching on You Tube and even on the forum one couldn't help but be influenced the flood of negative comments on that short draw. I agree years ago during world championship matches, no one ever complained about a few short draws. Indeed it seemed to be understood that a player need a bit of a break to get himself back together especially after a bad loss. However, there is this theory that Anand is just engaged in damage limitation and is not really that engaged in creating an exciting spectacle. Is that true? I don't know but Geoff was suggesting a way that perhaps you could force Anand out of his shell and make him play a decisive game by fiddling with the prize money, I varied that with the Armageddon game. So far half of that match has been a waste of time to watch. OK that could change if games 9 & 10 are exciting but what if they are not? What happens if Anand decides just to halve out quickly? Wouldn't you find that a bit of a let down?

Of course if you believe that a tie break somehow cheapens the game I would respect that in which case I wouldn't push forward with my other idea of a Anand-Susan Polgar v Carlsen-Tania Sachdev dance off in the event of another short draw in Game 9.

[Barry Sandercock]

I don't see why the drawn games are being criticised so much. The Capablanca-Aleckhine match had 15 draws. Maybe the problem is that this match is such a short one.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Of course if you believe that a tie break somehow cheapens the game I would respect that in which case I wouldn't push forward with my other idea of a Anand-Susan Polgar v Carlsen-Tania Sachdev dance off in the event of another short draw in Game 9."

That is an idea... not sure Vishy would appreciate it.

I did suggest something similar for a long-running Surrey dispute, and both parties agreed, but sadly we never managed to arrange it.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Not quite the same thing, but there used to be "Skins" tournaments in golf. May still be for all I know.

Certain amount of money won per hole.
If the hole is tied, the money gets added to the pot for the next hole.

So the longer the sequence of draws goes on, the more the incentive to win the next game grows.


I wouldn't be in favour of this for a World Championship match, but it seems like an interesting format for a non-title bout. Has it ever been tried for chess does anybody know? In one of those online blitz matches, for example?



J

[Robert Stokes]

Football tries to encourage wins by having 3 points for a win but only 1 each for a draw. How about changing the scoring in chess to this format?

If not then you could do something similar with the money, say £5000 each for a draw but £20000 for a win and nothing for losing.

Robert

[Roger de Coverly]

Football tries to encourage wins by having 3 points for a win but only 1 each for a draw. How about changing the scoring in chess to this format?

I leave the reader to consider the effect of this change on a match of twelve games.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Football tries to encourage wins by having 3 points for a win but only 1 each for a draw. How about changing the scoring in chess to this format?

Robert

Some chess tournaments have tried this, of course. The evidence suggests that it makes a small difference, at best.

[PeterFarr]

Mathematically, awarding 3 points for a win makes no difference at all to a 2-player match; you could award 1,000 points for a win and it still wouldn't matter.

All in all, I think the problem is rather over-rated; world championships have a tendency to be tense struggles, and trying to jazz it all up risks reducing the seriousness of the contest.

[Geoff Chandler]

It was just an idea to chew over. Basically a fine for both players.
And who knows someone with at the top level may be considering
something similar, they keep tinkering with the thing so someone up there is not happy.

Draws at that level are part the game, they will happen. I accept that.
I know a flaw is as suggested one player could walk into Scholars Mate.
But that would not happen, you give up a chance of scoring a bigger pot
so you would play for a win, even go sac-happy knowing you have a chance
of taking a bigger chunk of the lolly.

I keep seeing a reference to the Alekhine - Capablanca match.
That was entirley different, there was no game limit, it was first to 6 wns.

I'm seeing a closer link with the Anand - Kasparov 1995 match.
That kicked off with 8 draws.
Anand made a big late middle/endgame blunder in that match (he also came out fighting
with the Centre Counter in one game and actually stood better at one stage forcing Kasparov
to play one of his heroic games. Wonder if we will see a Centre Counter v Magnus.)

There was also a game where Anand had a chance to play a very good looking
speculative sacrifice that later analysis proved to be very good. He never played it.
Perhaps with the thought that a loss may not be to bad financially, he would have gone for it.

That match ended with Anand just letting it die of draws and showed no inclination to fight back.
Raymond Keene wrote that Anand was happy with the damage limitation and coasted to these draws
knowing he would be walking away with his cut of the prize money, some $500,000.
My idea (traditionally ill thought out) was to address this matter and make them work for the pot.

So is it over. Anand was not the Anand he became in 1995 and now he is not the Anand he was.
But four games left, you never know, Chess is Chess.

[Clive Blackburn]

Football tries to encourage wins by having 3 points for a win but only 1 each for a draw. How about changing the scoring in chess to this format?

Robert

Some chess tournaments have tried this, of course. The evidence suggests that it makes a small difference, at best.

If it only makes a small difference in tournaments then it would have even less effect in a match.

In a tournament, a player who took a couple of draws would put themselves completely out of the running, overtaken by other players scoring the full 3 points.

In a match though you score 1 point each and nothing changes (much as with the existing system).

[Tim Spanton]

Football tries to encourage wins by having 3 points for a win but only 1 each for a draw. How about changing the scoring in chess to this format?

I leave the reader to consider the effect of this change on a match of twelve games.

Fair enough, so how about four points for a win and one for a draw?