World Championship 2021 match will start Nov. 24!!

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

This match was going to be great and suddenly back to back he makes 2 1500 blunders. I don't understand how such a strong player made blunders that he doesn't make in blitz. This match was very interesting with great games, but then it turned bad. His nerves totally left him. I won't be watching the end of the match. Very disappointing.

[Neil Frarey]

So .... stop playing and go home?

Hehe, but down a couple of points to Spassky, Fischer came back and won the world title.

Now Nepo is going to have to channel his inner ... ???

[Sam Sharpe]

The bishop sac/blunder!..... See, he is channeling Fischer! LOL

[Neil Frarey]

LOOL!!! OMG!!! That's true ... rd1!!!

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044722

Caïssa moves in mysterious ways, ha!!!

[Jeffrey Xu]

I predict 9-10 draws and 3 Magnus wins.

Depending on when the 3rd Magnus win happens, the remaining games won't need to be played.

My prediction has been good so far. But at this rate Magnus might even win another game.

[Hans Jung]

Game 10 A 41 move draw with the Russian defence (Petroff's). Likely just two more games in the match.

Nepo needs 3 wins in four games but one slip will end the match.

[Hans Jung]

https://en.chessbase.com/post/world-...d-by-wesley-so Thanks to chessbase news and Wesley So.

[Frank Dixon]

One factor which could be influencing GM Nepo's recent below-standard play is the developing confrontation between Russia and NATO. It can't be a happy time to be a Russian. That nation has never been governed by consent; its people are essentially helpless in the face of dictatorship.

[Marc Andre Beaudry]

Magnus will keep his world championship, Nepo's nerves failed him badly at a crucial time, but this is chess. The speed of play of Nepo's play which is one of his strength was his undoing in the match.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

One factor which could be influencing GM Nepo's recent below-standard play is the developing confrontation between Russia and NATO. It can't be a happy time to be a Russian. That nation has never been governed by consent; its people are essentially helpless in the face of dictatorship.

He probably does not read any news these days. No need to dig that deep -- Nepo is not strong enough to beat Magnus, who took the course of stable sailing towards the win of the match.

[Fred Harvey]

One factor which could be influencing GM Nepo's recent below-standard play is the developing confrontation between Russia and NATO. It can't be a happy time to be a Russian. That nation has never been governed by consent; its people are essentially helpless in the face of dictatorship.

Jeez! Moving right along......

[Pargat Perrer]

This match was going to be great and suddenly back to back he makes 2 1500 blunders. I don't understand how such a strong player made blunders that he doesn't make in blitz. This match was very interesting with great games, but then it turned bad. His nerves totally left him. I won't be watching the end of the match. Very disappointing.

Now that this match is almost decided, let's digress to something more interesting.

There seems to be a set of paradoxes among those who enthusiastically follow top-level chess here on ChessTalk and maybe elsewhere as well.

For starters, when Rapid tournaments are held among the top players, these aficionados seem to love to see time-pressure mistakes leading to decisive wins. Even if the mistake is a total blunder, it seems ok. Hans Jung will call such games very exciting chess because one player or another cracked in time pressure, or it could even be a series of mistakes made in time pressure. It's all great, no one complains. Hans made some remark recently about it being such entertaining chess. So entertainment is the name of the game and it consists of players cracking under pressure and making critical mistakes.

Now we have the WCM at slower time controls, and someone cracking under any kind of pressure and making mistakes is a huge disappointment. Yet at the same time, no one wants to see perfect chess, with all games drawn as happened with Caruana and Carlsen in the last WCM.

As a further paradox, we have computer engines playing tournaments against each other, all rated many hundreds of ELO points above even Carlsen, and there are still decisive games, yet no one ever posts about them or seems to even notice them. These are games that last well beyond 100 moves typically, and some tiny little imperfection will decide the game (if it isn't a draw). There are no blunders, there are only miniscule imperfections that might lead to a zugzwang, for example. No one on ChessTalk ever posts about these games.

So it appears that in the slower time controls and at WCM level, these aficionados want to see some tiny little mistakes only, not total cracking under pressure. They want to see tiny mistakes, BUT! NOT so tiny as to be at the level of top computer engine chess.

Game 6 of this WCM seems to have been the Goldilocks game. Notwithstanding that someone mentioned that Carlsen actually blundered early on and should have lost, but then Nepo blundered back and gave back the initiative. It seems that got ignored in the enthusiasm for the long endgame, but that long endgame was very similar to computer chess. Another paradox! Everyone liked it, but they don't like computer chess!

What I am getting from this is that slow time controls need to just go away at the top levels, and everything should just be Rapid chess. That would be the most entertaining for the watchers and followers. They are ok with the human mistakes, BUT only at shorter time controls. If we go to the slower time controls, then there is only a very tiny window of acceptable mistakes, anything worse is disappointing, anything less is computer chess.

So at the very top levels of chess, Rapid seems to be king now. Forget about having separate Rapid ratings and Rapid championships. Just make everything Rapid chess and let the mistakes and even blunders begin! I'm not being critical about this, I'm just pointing out that these slow WCMs are an anachronism now. Chess has changed in this century, for better or for worse depending on what you like.

[Brad Thomson]

Pargat, that is the best post you have ever written in this forum. I do not agree that all chess should revert to rapid, however, and for this reason. Because the classical rating is the important one, when playing rapid the players are willing to take more chances, which leads to more exciting games, only because their classical ratiing is not at risk, and they have the short time controls as an excuse for blunders. If you make rapid the slowest chess, then this will become the most important rating, the players will stop taking chances, though they will blunder more due to the time constraints, and the games will end up in draws almost as often as do classical games. Then only blitz games would tend toward decisive results.

[Neil Frarey]

Interesting ... there's only one player in the overall top 30 who has a winning score against Magnus in Rapid chess ...

Garry Kasparov ... 2 wins 0 losses 3 draws

[Pargat Perrer]

Pargat, that is the best post you have ever written in this forum. I do not agree that all chess should revert to rapid, however, and for this reason. Because the classical rating is the important one, when playing rapid the players are willing to take more chances, which leads to more exciting games, only because their classical ratiing is not at risk, and they have the short time controls as an excuse for blunders. If you make rapid the slowest chess, then this will become the most important rating, the players will stop taking chances, though they will blunder more due to the time constraints, and the games will end up in draws almost as often as do classical games. Then only blitz games would tend toward decisive results.

Thanks, Brad, and I hadn't thought of it from that angle. I guess the question then becomes, if the players were to play Rapid much more carefully and agree to draws more readily, what would the reaction of the fans be? Elite level Rapid chess is followed a lot over the internet and generates a lot of watches, would the watchers lose interest and their numbers diminish? Well, in that case maybe the status quo is the best we can hope for, and we should all just enjoy the more reckless atmosphere in Rapid chess at elite levels while it lasts.