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The defensiveness has absolutely nothing to do with better computers and the improvements in play that came with it, but with tournaments where risk taking is a

The defensiveness has absolutely nothing to do with better computers and the improvements in play that came with it, but with tournaments where risk taking is an economic disaster. As others have said, there aren't massive numbers of ties in the candidates tournament, because the difference in value between being first and second is so massive that if you aren't first, you are last. Compare this to regular high level chess in the Grand Chess Tour: It's where most of your money is going to come from if you are a top player. Invitation to the tour as a regular is by rating, and there's enough money at the bottom of the tour than the difference between qualifying or not is massive. Therefore, the most important thing is to stay in the tour train. Lose 20 points of rating, and barring Rex Sinquefield deciding to sponsor your life out of the goodness of his heart, you might as well spend time coaching, because there are so few tournaments where there's a lot of money. This also shows in the big difficulties for youngsters that reach 2650 or so: They are only going to find good enough opponents to move up quickly in a handful of events a year where people with higher rating end up risking their rating against them. See how something like the US championship is a big risk for the top US professionals, because all the young players that show are at least 50 points underrated, if not more. This is what causes draws, not computer prep. Anand was better at just drawing every game in every tournament back when he was still on the tour, and yet computers were far worse than today, especially with opening theory.

ummonk 3y ago
And it simply doesn’t have to be this way. The top tournaments could just use a prior qualification tournament with an open Swiss. Then invite the top finishers from the open Swiss to participate in the round robin. Can reserve an invitational wildcard or two but the rest should have to earn their place.
santoshalper 3y ago
Very insightful!
jimbokun 3y ago
So they need to mandate a promotion and relegation system for the top levels. Force players in the top flight to beat at least some of their opponents, or get replaced by top players in the next lower tiers. I think that would increase spectator interest even more. In football, relegation battles can be almost as compelling as the title race..
- doetoe 3y ago
  Another thing that was done in football, and could be done in chess as well to reduce the number of draws, was to grant 1 point for a draw, but 3 points for a win, up from 2 points in the 90s (earlier in England)
pmontra 3y ago
I think that tennis solved the problem by not using an ELO based score but giving points by the number of turns a player wins in a tournament. The most important tournaments give more points. All points are lost after one year. Of course tennis and chess differ in a fundamental way: there is no draw in tennis and tournaments are basically never round robins. The ATP finals have a couple of round robins before the semi finals. They give points for the wins. So maybe in chess they could give points for each win, less than half of those points for a draw, zero for a loss. Tradition is very important so they should keep the ELO and keep updating it according to who wins against whom, but qualifications to tournaments and seeding (if that's a thing in chess) would be based on the other score. There could be wild cards to let some strong or popular players play even if they don't have a good score. Tennis pro associations have provisions in place for players that are forced to miss tournaments because of injuries, etc.

ummonk 3y ago

And it simply doesn’t have to be this way. The top tournaments could just use a prior qualification tournament with an open Swiss. Then invite the top finishers from the open Swiss to participate in the round robin. Can reserve an invitational wildcard or two but the rest should have to earn their place.

santoshalper 3y ago

Very insightful!

jimbokun 3y ago

So they need to mandate a promotion and relegation system for the top levels. Force players in the top flight to beat at least some of their opponents, or get replaced by top players in the next lower tiers. I think that would increase spectator interest even more. In football, relegation battles can be almost as compelling as the title race..

doetoe 3y ago
Another thing that was done in football, and could be done in chess as well to reduce the number of draws, was to grant 1 point for a draw, but 3 points for a win, up from 2 points in the 90s (earlier in England)

pmontra 3y ago

I think that tennis solved the problem by not using an ELO based score but giving points by the number of turns a player wins in a tournament. The most important tournaments give more points. All points are lost after one year. Of course tennis and chess differ in a fundamental way: there is no draw in tennis and tournaments are basically never round robins. The ATP finals have a couple of round robins before the semi finals. They give points for the wins. So maybe in chess they could give points for each win, less than half of those points for a draw, zero for a loss. Tradition is very important so they should keep the ELO and keep updating it according to who wins against whom, but qualifications to tournaments and seeding (if that's a thing in chess) would be based on the other score. There could be wild cards to let some strong or popular players play even if they don't have a good score. Tennis pro associations have provisions in place for players that are forced to miss tournaments because of injuries, etc.