2018 World Championship in London

[JustinHorton]

Kick-off time?

According to TWIC 3 pm

Carlsen has white in game 1

BBC

Armageddon looms in World Chess Championship final

Thanks. So same time as before. (Wikipedia didn't seem to say, and as for the official site...)

[Nick Grey]

6-6 all draws. I thought Carlsen would have pushed this so he could watch Barcelona away on Wednesday. Let's put it this way many great chess champions would have pushed it.
The organisers may have got what they wanted.
How much are tickets for Wednesday?
What will you get to see?
Are the ticket touts offering cheap prices?
I'm miffed with those cancelling a meeting last week because of a tube strike & rescheduled to 28 November.
So where is the nearest watering hole to Trafalgar Square that has got World Chess Championship coverage?

[David Sedgwick]

According to TWIC 3 pm

Thanks. So same time as before. (Wikipedia didn't seem to say, and as for the official site...)

I can confirm that Mick and TWIC are correct, but I only found out by contacting the Chief Arbiter this morning.

[Martin Benjamin]

Interesting discussion between Peter Svidler, Anish Giri and Alexander Grischuk during Chess 24 coverage of game 12 after the draw was agreed. Svidler stated that a match of 12 draws has not been good in terms of promoting the game, and the discussion was what (if anything) needs changing for a World Championship match. Grischuk argued strongly for the whole match to be FischerRandom; Svidler was in favour of retaining the classical starting position, but with a quicker time limit; and Giri was firmly in favour of no change, because he saw no problem with enjoying high quality chess. Pros and cons to all three. Grischuk made an interesting point that if people want to watch accurate play at classical time limits, then there are websites where they can watch top computers playing each other. I think something has to change, because the quality of computers + top GMs assisting with preparation, allied with the ability of the likes of Carlsen and Caruana to play with barely any mistakes in familiar types of position, make winning exceedingly difficult in a match, when both players have lots of time and resources for very deep preparation. For now, I think Svidler's suggestion is the best, because I don't think we are quite at the death of chess at the very highest level by forced draw, but a FischerRandom World Championship cycle (rather than just the final) is an attractive option.

[JustinHorton]

FischerRandom seems to me a baby-with-the-bathwater solution, and faster time limits aren't really chess as we want to see it either. Of course if either player had taken their chances early on, Carlsen especially, we might not be having this discussion: but if you want a result in normsl time, a less drastic solution might be the option of the odd-numbered number of match games with the player getting an extra Black having tie odds. (Who gets the extra Black? Maybe let the champion choose which option he or she prefers.)

[Chris Rice]

You can only imagine what Bologan is saying to Sutovsky here. I like to think its something along the lines of "They agreed a draw? But you can see Black's clearly better!"

[John McKenna]

"Sveshnikov wouldn't be able to afford to stop here."

[Christopher Kreuzer]

It is disappointing that game 12 didn't reach a more natural conclusion.

Quick questions about the tie-breaks and opening preparations. Is it harder to use opening preparation in rapid games, or is it possible to spring a surprise and might the surprised player find themselves in time trouble or blundering if they face something unexpected? What sort of approach might the players take?

[Matthew Turner]

The betting odds suggested that Carlsen had a 2 in 3 chance of winning at the start. Having reached this stage that now appears to have improved to a 3 in 4 chance. That seems wrong to me. I think it was 50/50 at the start and still is.
Would Carlsen have been able to neutralise b4 in the Rossolimo with less time - maybe. There have been a few games where Caruana has been significantly ahead on the clock during the opening so surely that has to a worry as the time gets shorter. If you put a random position on the board after 15 moves then maybe Carlsen is a big favourite, but as it stands I cannot see it.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

One of the advantages of a longer match is more time to try out different opening ideas. There was barely time in this match to explore some of the ideas put forward. There was also no 1...e5 from Magnus Carlsen in reply to 1.e4. We are left wondering what might have happened there.

Might we see different openings in the tie-breaks, or more of the same?

[Mick Norris]

Matthew has much more idea than me, but I'd have thought that Magnus has done more exploring with opening twice with each of e4, d4 and c4, and presumably his team has been working hard to find the right approach for the tiebreaks; it is possible he'll move away from c5 as a response to e4, and both players may have one-off opening ideas to use

The rapids have always (I think) been enough to get a winner previously, and I would agree is 50/50, but I'd say Magnus is favourite if it goes to blitz

[David Shepherd]

One of the things that could be tried is to reduce the number of "rest" days. So for example a format could be six rounds then a rest day, four rounds then a rest day, then two rounds.

[Matthew Turner]

In terms of opening, I think your guess is as good as mine. For what it is worth I'd guess that when Caruana has White we'll see more of the same. With Carlsen as White he'll want to get a level position and just play a game so maybe some pretty insipid stuff starting with d4.

[Brian Towers]

How much are tickets for Wednesday?

According to a tweet from ChesscomNews -

General Admission Ticket: £120.00

VIP Ticket: £600.00

and if you want to a buy tickets the Ticketmaster link is here.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Shocking prices, but no surprise really.

Springing a surprise openings-wise in the tie-breaks would be a gamble. Might work, might not.

My guess is that we will either see it in the first two games (time to recover from a loss), or in the last two games (of the four-game rapid match) but only if one of the players is behind and needs to do something different to try and win to get back in the match.

Here is a radical idea to ensure fighting chess in a match (similar to the 'first to x number of wins' ideas): don't start counting results in the match until a decisive game has occurred. And then play 11 more games after that. Maybe give the loser of the first decisive game the right to decide the colour sequence for the next 11 games?