Norway Chess Armageddon gambit

A result. Every. Single. Day.

In 2011, former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov proposed a novel tournament format aimed at curtailing an excess of draws among elite players. The rationale was simple, he wrote in an open letter to FIDE and the chess community at large:

If we want success, sponsors, public and the rest of the parcel, we need to abolish those draws in classical tournaments. And not by Sofia rules — tournaments with Sofia rules produced as many draws as any other; and not by 30 move rule, where players are often just waiting for move 30. We need something entirely different. Like a tie-break in tennis. We need a result. Every single day.

The system Kasimdzhanov proposed was to follow a drawn classical game by a rapid game with colours reversed. If drawn again, a blitz game, repeated until there is a decisive result.

Now Norway Chess has proposed a new format with some major differences but a similar aim: To ensure that each pairing produces either a decisive classical game, or a decisive tiebreak game in the event of a draw. The twist is, they will have the tiebreak in one go — as a sudden death blitz game where black has a time disadvantage, but draw odds — commonly known as Armageddon.

From the Norway Chess press release:

Each player will have 2 hours on the clock per game, without any increments.

2 points will be given for victory, ½ point for draw and 0 points for loss.

The players that have games that end with a draw will continue in an Armageddon play-off only a few minutes after their game. The player with the white pieces will continue with white in the Armageddon game. With this, there will be a winner in each game due to the fact that black pieces will win if the game ends in a draw. The winner in the Armageddon play-off gets 1 point.

The Armageddon games will not add to the rating of the players, only contributing to the results list in the tournament, which is FIDE rated.

Players will get following points per round:

• Victory main game: 2 points
• Loss main game: 0 points
• Draw main game & loss Armageddon: ½ point
• Draw main game & victory Armageddon: 1½ points

Magnus Carlsen interviewed for TV2 at Norway Chess 2018 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Magnus Carlsen, who has a virtually automatic invitation to Norway Chess each year and was consulted on the idea, told TV2 in an interview in Rome that he was excited to try out the new format and hopes that his fellow Grandmasters won't be scared off by the novel approach.

The reaction on Twitter seems to be generally positive, especially among live commentary veterans:

But not everyone is convinced:

And there could be unintended consequences:

It will be interesting to see more elite players weigh in over the coming days. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave expressed reservations about having two hours for the whole game. "I’m not a fan of the new time control, because it’s so much different from the time controls we have and it requires new adjustments."

The scoring system is also unusual, although perhaps no more so than "football" scoring with 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw. Incidentally, here's what the current FIDE Laws of Chess have to say about scoring:

10.2 The total score of any game can never exceed the maximum score normally given for that game. Scores given to an individual player must be those normally associated with the game, for example a score of ¾ - ¼ is not allowed.

Under the newly proposed system, a classical win nets either player 2 points, and two draws would yield ½ point for the white player and 1½ for the black player (because a draw wins the Armageddon game). If you look at it as two games with the first draw worth a half point and the second a full point, then that would seem to be fine as far as being a score "normally associated with the game".

The question then becomes: How does it incentivise decisive classical games (or not) in practice?

What do you think of the new format?

Vote in our reader poll.

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Poll closes at Midnight UT on October 15th

This story was updated from its original version to correct the intended meaning of Mr. Vachier-Lagrave.

Links

• All Norway Chess 2018 stories