Should the battle for the world chess championship be decided by a rapid play-off?
That is the question that seems to linger after the clash between world champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Sergey Kajakin. Carlsen of Norway won the title for the third time by defeating the Russian challenger Sergey Kajakin in a gruelling 19-day encounter in New York last month.
This championship match, however, consisted of two different sections, the first being a 12-game encounter which ended in a one-all draw with Karjakin winning the eighth game and Carlsen the tenth. To produce a decision, however, this first clash was followed by a four-game rapid play tie-break. The first two of these "rapids" were drawn while Carlsen won the other two, thus retaining his title.
In the post-match conference Karjakin said he had played well below his capabilities in the tiebreaks and was unable to make use of his preparation. Nevertheless he told Wikipedia he would accept his invitation to the next Candidates Tournament to fight for another title match.
According to the news agency, the manner in which the match ended –the World Classical Chess Champion title being decided in a rapid playoff– earned some criticism from a few players in the higher ranks of the sport. GM Yasser Seirawan, for one, considers it unfair, considering that there is also a World Rapid Chess Champion title. Seirawan proposed instead a 13-game match which, if the score is 6-6 after 12 games, the player with black pieces in the 13th game would have draw odds.
Speaking on the format during the postmatch conference, Carlsen repeated his preference for a different format for the title match, probably a knockout, which he had proposed in 2015, while Karjakin indicated he was happy with the match format.
Because of the even score in the classical portion of the match, Carlsen lost 13 rating points in the December 2016 FIDE rating list, while Karjakin gained 13 points. Carlsen remains the top player in the world, 17 points ahead of Fabiano Caruana, while Karjakin rose to sixth.
The two combatants will share a prize of US $1.1 million, the winner getting 60 per cent.
According to the organisers, about six million people around the world followed the series of quick tie-breaking games - similar to sudden death play in football. DR believes that true lovers of the sport would be alarmed to learn that If none of these tie-breaking "quickies" had ended with a winner, the championship would have gone to the "nerve-wracking Armageddon endgame which lasts less than ten minutes."
The Associated Press reports that Hungarian grandmaster Judit Polgar, commentator for the tournament and the best ever female player, calls it "the killer ten minutes–like Russian roulette."
A saddened DR is forced to ask, is this what world champion chess has come to? Former giants such as Lasker, Alekhine, Capabanca and Bobby Fischer who outplayed their challengers without such time pressure must be turning in their graves.