Well of course it's good to have differing opinions.
But the thing is, it's much easier to maintain equality than to make a win... The results of this match indicate that certainly; Black won (Hikaru) and drew (final game) both Armageddon games here, although of course that's only two games.
Yeah but looks at the most recent titled Arena. 9% draws. If you assume that White scores 55%, with 9% draws you're winning more than 50% of games already.
Now they are stronger so their draw rate will be higher, but as said having an extra minute is a massive deal.
I could see it being more of a psychological thing though. If you only need to draw the pressure is not on you, it's on your opponent to create something. So maybe that makes it easier to play well.
It was simply fantastic! Astonishing. Great events for chess in the last couple of months.
Thanks a lot to Carlsen and all the others super GM's.
I know it's been proposed before, but for Armageddon games I wish there was a bidding process for how much of a time advantage is given to White. I don't think 1 minute is enough, and the players could do an auction to work out what a fair time bonus for White would be.
@drbeco yes
@UncleVinny interesting.. I have wondered about a way to make chess "even" (i.e. from the initial position it's perhaps +.5 or so.)
In the end I wouldn't change it though for the reasons I usually have. . . If you change it, eventually it'll be changed again, and someday unrecognizable.
@MoistvonLipwig One should consider that this 9% draw is from all games, with all mindsets.
We don't really know what the draw rate would look like if we consider only the games when the player with black has a mindset towards forcing a draw at all costs.
Unless we have already enough armageddon games in the database to check the percentage filtering only such games.
If we can find it is near 50%, than one minute is ok. If not, it can be adjusted easily giving white 50s or 1min10s instead of 1min.
That's fair. We do have a White player trying to win at all costs as opponent. But yes, this is only very limited data so mostly I am just making guesses. Would be interesting to have some best of a lot armageddon match, like have GMs play best of 20s armageddon matches with alternating colours and see which colour scored more.
I do stand by my point though that lower ratings give White the advantage due to lower draw rates. But that probably means there is some kind of rating where it's even and higher than that Black has the advantage. Where is that rating? I have no idea but would be interested to find out.
I would agree with you there, absolutely. Lower ratings means many less draws. But then I would also say 4-to-5 is not as significant as it seems. But Nakamura said it well when he won the first Armageddon game as Black - a lot depends on which player gets out of the opening with ease. If you can get out of it quickly then it's a good advantage either way.
As you say, a whole lot of games would be necessary, but I think there should be some stats available somewhere.
May be 2000 is the line where it changes.
