Chess is Dead

Ok  first of all I’d like to congratulate Vishwanatan Anand for winning the world title!  I know that now that his life long ambitions are fufilled.  He won the championship and I congrtulated him on my blog.   Serously I think he showed the most guts and fighting spirit.  Plus he plays a Semi-Slav against the Queen’s Gambit so he is already so much cooler than all of the others competitors that it is sick…

Now to more pressing matters.  I haven’t gone over all of the games, but what I have seen of the world championship seems to be lack of a fighting spirit by most of the competitors.  I mean Kramnik accpeted a draw at move 14!?  I understand that these guys are the best of the best but they seemed to be playing more not to lose than to win.  It ridiculous that they can call it a draw whenever they want. 

World championship boxers don’t want to lose to each other, but they don’t fight for a draw.  They fight to win!  I understand that this was a tournament and it is different than just a match between two players so strategies will be different, but come on, there were only 19 wins in 98 games!   79 games ended in a draw or 80.6% of the games. 

But what is to be done?  After all Rybka won a game earlier in the year where it was booked up to move 40!  It’s computer opponent (Shredder) wasn’t booked up as far and had to start “thinking” for itself much earlier.  Hisbestfriend posted about it here.  With opening theory this out of control it’s no wonder alot of these guys don’t seem to take too many chances.  All of the competitors are the best at figuring out tactics and so that would discourage wild play, but it just seemed a bit too passive to me. 

That plus the fact that checkers has been solved (again thanks to hisbestfriend) leads me to believe that ches will be solved in the next 1-2 years.  The public interest in chess has already waned once Deeper Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, and Kramnik lost to Deep Junior Fritz.  Kramnik missing the mate in one highlighted the problem with such matches, computers don’t get tired and don’t have human failings.  I fear that once chess is “solved” that will spell the end of world championship chess.

Why does this matter to me?  Well apart from being a hack of a player who enjoys chess immensely I am also a fan.  Since my early involvement in chess there has been no real undisputed champion.  When Kasparov left FIDE to form the PCA it kind of screwed things up.  Karpov was the champ again but by 1997 it was pretty clear that FIDE had lost its way and Karpov was well past his prime.  FIDE was running some kind of super tournament to determine the champion every year, the idea was ridiculous.

So what to do?

I believe Kramnik gets to play Vishy for the title next year (I’ll check on this later)  If and when this happens I think FIDE should go back to zonals and candidate matches.  It should be a three year cycle.   That would ensure that the candiates have had sustained superior performance over a period of time.  Candiate matches should be a bit more lively and decisive, and a lot less likely to result in numerous draws. 

A lot of the things I’ve read and heard about the championship matches in the old days was the excitement that candidate matches would generate.  I mean these guys would prepare for an opponent ahead of time, this round robin thing doesn’t do much for the excitement of the games.  I am also concerned because if World class championship chess dies then what will become of the USCF?  and local tourneys?  Would they be far behind if chess interest were to plumment around the world?

I don’t mean to sound so desperate, and I know that FIDE is recovering from their poor relationship with Kasparov, but they have an opportunity to get the world excited about chess agin, and I hope they take advantage of it before these damned machines become our overseers for good!

I’m just kidding about the machines becoming our overseers.  Now I have to go there is much programming on the idiot box that I feel complelled to watch…MUST….. WATCH…… TV!