The Chess World Rebuilds!

The current morass in the chess world has evolved over the past two decades and has spiraled out of control. One may wonder the direction that international chess is headed. However, a couple of events have shown promise and proves that the chaos plaguing the community is  coming to an end.

In a very interesting and noble study,  chess statistician Jeff Sonas built an intricate model to determine the best format to determine the World Champion. Anyone who has paid attention to chess lately will understand the fragmentation that has occurred with two current world champions and the world's strongest player in different camps. This prompted a very detailed and incisive proposal by GM Yasser Seirawan titled, "Fresh Start."

Interestingly enough Mr. Sonas has analyzed a multitude of formats for the World Championship and calls it "Chessmetrics." In his exhaustive analysis, he mentions that a World Championship should possess the four ideal characteristics: practicality,  effectiveness, inclusivity and unbiasedness. Since the Fischer-Spassky World Championship match in 1972, there appears to have been a failure in satisfying these criteria in each of the subsequent championship cycles.

The article is lengthy, but quite interesting. At certain points you will have to pay close attention to the flow of this thoughts because they are rather complicated. Mr. Sonas describes himself as a "relatively weak chess player, but a very strong computer programmer and statistician."  Jonas touted Seirawan's proposal as one offering great promise. Mr. Sonas apparently spent some late nights putting this proposal together and his courage should be commended.

Championship Chessmetric Analysis

Posted by The Chess Drum: 16 April  2002