Friday, August 01, 2008

Finding A Better Finish

US-based chess tournament organiser Tom Braunlich who recently presided over the 2008 US Chess Championships has written a fascinating article on the Theory of Playoffs. He concludes:

There is also value in having some consistency and standardization among the systems that we have in use for chess events. An outside observer looking at international chess and the myriad tournament forms, time controls, and championship systems we currently use might easily conclude it is all chaos. The variety of tiebreak systems one sees in these events, and total lack of guidelines in FIDE or USCF rules, serves only to increase this feeling of anarchy. Having guidelines to provide more consistency would help reduce that appearance to the public and would be to the advantage of the sport of chess.

Read more in Playoff Theory.

1 comment:

Peter Long said...

Taking the big picture, I have two observations:

1. FIDE and USCF have different tournament rules and intereprestation of laws of chess yet USCF events are still FIDE rated! Go figure.

2. If chess is a sport - and some like to pretend it is and dream of being in the Olympics - then for a start individual games must end in a decisive result (Here I am not saying that draws are not recognised).