Saturday, November 28, 2009

Ivanchuk Sulks

Meanwhile, GM Ivanchuk cries like a baby. Chessbase quotes him: "To my mind I should leave professional chess now. Chess will become hobby for me from now on. As for the signed contracts, yes, I will play in all tournaments which I have to. Perhaps I will even participate in a tournament before the new year. I should win something! And that will be the end. No serious plans, no professional goals."

He's still one my fave players around, but Jeez, man up man. This is just hopeless. So you lost to some kid who, by the way, is not so unknown.

Now you know! It's Wesley So.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

here's a question for you all:

if a world championship match used to be 24 games and you take into account the ratings of the players involved work out proportionally how many games would be needed to be played between so and ivanchuk for the result to be valid and not just a statistical aberration?

just having a dig at these pointless 2 game mini matches; if us lesser mortals can be made to play 2 games per day in fide norm events why not 2 per day at the world cup?

if you eliminated tie break days that would make 3 days of playing per pairing giving a 6 game match.

If tied 3 all the higher rated player would go through.

I believe that would be much fairer to all players and stop the coffeehouse skittles swindler mentality perverting the integrity of the world championship cycle of which this world cup is supposedly a part.

Anonymous said...

"pointless 2 game mini" ? "perverting the integrity" ?

this anos is both pointless and clueless.

read my lips, vasya had 2, not one, opportunity to beat a 16 year old.

the younger wesley so, beat him, despite playing "badly" according to ivanchuk.

but that is old story.

Anonymous said...

That doesn't sound fair to me. The highest rated player goes through in case of a tie, leaves no room for the upset. Ratings are just an indication of past performance, not current ability. The lower rated player may be stronger today and it's just not yet reflected in his rating.

Kevin Bonham said...

Re first anon: some of the games have been going for 5-6 hours; to play two games that long in one day is not realistic. You could shorten the time control and play two in one day but that would increase the "coffeehouse skittles swindler mentality".

I don't think the World Cup perverts the integrity of the World Championship cycle anymore, unlike the absolute farce that prevailed when FIDE were calling it the World Championship. Now it provides a qualification path that is open to anyone, but if the winner is unworthy they will probably get disposed of in the first round of Candidates Matches.

Of course for very strong players there is a high risk of elimination in some 2 game mini-match or other but very strong players have other courses of qualification available to them including the rating list and the Grand Prix.

My biggest quibble with the current WC cycle is that Kamsky has a qualification place in the Candidates Matches on account of losing the Challenge Match with Topalov (which came about because he won the previous Grand Prix). The previous Grand Prix winner should not be seeded durect into the Candidates Matches in such a manner. Also the idea of the organisers picking a wildcard is silly. It would be better to remove both these positions and seed two more players based either on ratings or results in one or more chosen elite supertournaments.