Anand retains title after too many draws

Anand is still world champion after winning game 2 of the 4 rapid tiebreak games and drawing the rest. The World Chess Championship 2012 is being staged in Moscow, between the current World Champion Viswanathan Anand of India and Boris Gelfand of Israel. The match is over twelve games in classical time control and if necessary, tiebreak games will decide the match.. The prize fund is US $2.55 million, the winner getting $1.53 million (60%), the loser $1.02 million (40%). Chess as we know it now is very boring and has been declining in popularity .The modern game is boring because there are too many draws. There are too many draws because all of the top 100 players have memorized the opening systems. As the games were progressing a debate has occurred as to whether too many draws in chess are hurting the game. Former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov suggested that draws are a drag on chess and should be eliminated. "If we want success, sponsors, public (interest) and the rest of the parcel," he wrote, "we need to abolish those draws in classical tournaments -- Like a tie-break in tennis. We need a result. Every single day. And here is how it works. We play classical chess, say with a time control of four to five hours. Draw? No problem - change the colours, give us 20 minutes each and replay. Draw again? Ten minutes each, change the colours and replay. Until there is a winner of that day. And the winner wins the game and gets one point and the loser gets zero." The weakness of Kasimdzhanov's argument is that it will result in haphazard play with no quality at all. Actually the main problem is the advent of computers in chess. Computers have had a profound influence on the game and players now are better prepared . Chess engines have become stronger players than even the best humans, and have made chess training and learning easier than ever. "The monster" has grown more powerful every year. Because chess is played with the same piece arrangement for white and black, these have been studied and analyzed to death. If you are playing black and white makes a certain move, you already have memorized what the best counter move is and then when he makes his second move you will already know which move to counter that. Some of these opening systems go up to 16 moves! The solution of having rapid and blitz playoffs to determine a winner in the event a game is drawn at classical time controls, will not solve what ails chess. A more drastic solution is necessary. My proposal is to incorporate Chess 960 in top level or world championship matches. Half of the games will be standard chess while the other half should be Chess 960. Chess 960 is a variant of chess invented and advocated by the late former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. It was introduced in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June 1996. The game employs the same board and pieces as standard chess, but the starting position of the pieces along the players' home ranks is randomized. The random setup makes the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely instead on their talent and creativity. The arrangement of the pieces on the back row is decided by some random method , with the conditions that the king must be between the rooks, the bishops must be of opposite color, and the Black and White setups are identical. The idea of the game is to throw out opening theory and force the players to think for themselves from the start I will be forwarding this proposal to Fide and who knows, I might make chess history. boypestano@gmail.com.www.chessmoso.blogspot.com