Russian Superfinals
Back in November I wrote about the World Chess Championships and mused that people were overreacting to there being so many draws, and that clamouring for format and rule changes was largely unwarranted. After the recent conclusion of the male and female editions of the Russian Superfinals, as well as with the ongoing Sinquefield Cup, now I am much less convinced.
The latter competition boasts some of the top players in the world, players who you would label as dynamic, aggressive, exciting players. The tournament has already taken a step towards avoiding draws, one which the majority of top tier classical events have not, which is to not allow draws by agreement between the players, forcing them to play on until a result is achieved by some other mechanism. Regardless, in the first five rounds, there have been 4 decisive games and 26 split points - two rounds were completely peaceful affairs, at least from the point of view of the scoreboard. As an onlooker, what is the narrative here? Most players played about as expected. Very occasionally one player makes a natural, human mistake and loses. Yawn.
The open edition of the Russian Superfinal was much the same. The calibre of the field is only slightly weaker than that of the Sinquefield Cup, which is hardly surprising given Russia’s historical chess pedigree. Across 11 rounds, there were 23 games with a clear winner and 43 without, and it remained unclear until right at the end who the winner would be. For most of the tournament, all of the players were within a point of each other, which in some ways is exciting, but again, what is the narrative here? I’m not persuaded that it’s one of a nailbitingly close finish, especially when contrasted with the women’s event.
On average, the players in said event were 200 points lower rated than their male counterparts, so one could argue the standard of chess is objectively lower. However, looking at the results table, it was a perfect reverse of the men’s event - with 43 decisive games and only 23 draws. This one did have a narrative: Girya flew out the gates, Kosteniuk and Gunina struggled, Goryachkina desperately trying to stay in the hunt for the first half of the tournament. While Kosteniuk couldn’t catch a break, Gunina was resurgent, Pogonina suddenly emerged as frontrunner too, and when Goryachkina beat Girya in round 9, suddenly a miracle victory for her was possible. Girya was no longer guaranteed to take the top prize, with Pogonina and Gunina also not yet out of contention. It all came down to the final round, Girya took an early draw leaving a tiebreak a possibility, and Pogonina duly capitalised on it, before succumbing to Girya in a final round Armageddon match anyway. Simply put: the storyline was much better. As a fan, you could pick someone to root for (if you hadn’t guessed, I wanted Aleksandra Goryachkina to take the crown), and that added to the enjoyment of watching the event.
Draws in chess can still be wonderful, instructive, entertaining games, but perhaps the crux of it is how spectators engage with tournament matches. If you are following the game live, absolutely a draw can be thrilling, and a very enjoyable experience - if the game is interesting, the result is broadly irrelevant. However, when I go to check the results of tournament games I’ve not been able to watch, I am much more inclined to go over the moves from a win than a draw - I know there’s guaranteed to be blood that way.
Personally, until the best-in-the-world tournaments come up with a way to create a narrative, I’m going to skip watching the Sinquefield Cup in favour of watching the top women’s events. The computer might not approve of the moves as much, but at least they’ll put on a show.