First of all, I am glad that such a big event takes place (again). In my opinion, it is a real world championship, though an imperfect one. (There were many imperfect world championships in the past.)
I agree that the announcements appeared late and that the qualification cycles could be improved. On chess.com there were too few participants and the Swiss tournaments were a bit too short, therefore even players like Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana failed to qualify for the knockout matches. (They both only took one attempt out of two, as they were playing a top event during the latter qualifier.) There were knockout matches for the top 8 players then, to make sure that the qualifiers for Reykjavík are very strong.
On the other hand, on Lichess there are too many participants and the cycle is too long to my taste. I do not want to be misunderstood there. I am generally glad that so many people participated, it shows big interest in Chess960 and it might help the case of Chess960 in the future. It is great that basically everyone got a chance to participate in a big event and that Lichess managed to stage such a large-scale competition. What I wanted to say is that the number of players who are able to qualify for the Reykjavik Championship and have realistic chances to score at last 50 per cent there is quite limited. Organizing a smaller qualification could help to pay more attention to some details.
I agree with visualdennis that while there were a plenty of qualifiers at the primary stage, the road to the knockout matches became very narrow later on. If someone was unable to play the stage 2 Swiss tournament for some reason, there was no road to the knockout matches and to prizes.
In general, it is good that we have qualification cycles on two different platforms, which sort of complement each other. Next time both of them can be improved somewhat due to this year's experience.
I agree with Former_Player that it would be great to organize the qualification over the board. (He did not express that view in this discussion, but elsewhere.) Unfortunately, it is very difficult to stage a large world event over the board nowadays. There is a war in Ukraine with all its unpleasant consequences around the world, covid-19 appears here and there, Chinese players cannot travel abroad much and it could be difficult for many other players as well. Several years ago it would be much easier to organize such an event over the board.
As for the time control, I am afraid that a classical time control is unrealistic at the moment. It would be nice to play Chess960 with a classical time control, but when there are few sponsors and organizers, I think that rapid chess is much easier to stage. I agree that Swiss events are generally better than arenas and that berserking should not be allowed. On the other hand, perhaps all the GMs, WGMs and IMs who wanted to qualify to further stages on Lichess easily did so, so it did not influence the cycle too much. I am afraid that there would be too many problems with fair play issues in a big online rapid qualification. (In fact, I played even the primary stage of this event, with a 3+2 control. Out of my 21 opponents, one got disqualified during the tournament and three others were banned afterwards. While there is no safe time control anymore, rapid is somewhat more dangerous in this respect.)
As for the cameras, personally I am more comfortable with 2 cameras showing me and my room than with playing in tournaments where some players cheat and others mistakenly get accused after demonstrating a good performance. True, installing two cameras can be difficult at times, particularly if you have a poor connection, I know this very well. I can also understand that other people might value their privacy more, or have other relevant reasons not to participate in events with two cameras.
Tournament with cameras also generally have higher prize money, as the sponsors are more willing to support events where the result can hardly be put in doubt. Alas, in this year's Chess960 World Championship there is big money only for the players who get to Reykjavik, and up to several hundred dollars for those who narrowly miss the qualification. I won a nice prize of 500 dollars for a second place in a three-day qualifier on c***s.com. It is a nice amount, but in some elite online events one can win significantly more money with a worse performance and less effort.
I hope that this event helps to further popularize chess960 and that we will see more of such events in the future, planned and announced in advance. And I hope for more Chess960 tournaments over the board. Then I will not have enough time to write such incredibly long comments, which will be great for all of us! :-)
I agree that the announcements appeared late and that the qualification cycles could be improved. On chess.com there were too few participants and the Swiss tournaments were a bit too short, therefore even players like Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana failed to qualify for the knockout matches. (They both only took one attempt out of two, as they were playing a top event during the latter qualifier.) There were knockout matches for the top 8 players then, to make sure that the qualifiers for Reykjavík are very strong.
On the other hand, on Lichess there are too many participants and the cycle is too long to my taste. I do not want to be misunderstood there. I am generally glad that so many people participated, it shows big interest in Chess960 and it might help the case of Chess960 in the future. It is great that basically everyone got a chance to participate in a big event and that Lichess managed to stage such a large-scale competition. What I wanted to say is that the number of players who are able to qualify for the Reykjavik Championship and have realistic chances to score at last 50 per cent there is quite limited. Organizing a smaller qualification could help to pay more attention to some details.
I agree with visualdennis that while there were a plenty of qualifiers at the primary stage, the road to the knockout matches became very narrow later on. If someone was unable to play the stage 2 Swiss tournament for some reason, there was no road to the knockout matches and to prizes.
In general, it is good that we have qualification cycles on two different platforms, which sort of complement each other. Next time both of them can be improved somewhat due to this year's experience.
I agree with Former_Player that it would be great to organize the qualification over the board. (He did not express that view in this discussion, but elsewhere.) Unfortunately, it is very difficult to stage a large world event over the board nowadays. There is a war in Ukraine with all its unpleasant consequences around the world, covid-19 appears here and there, Chinese players cannot travel abroad much and it could be difficult for many other players as well. Several years ago it would be much easier to organize such an event over the board.
As for the time control, I am afraid that a classical time control is unrealistic at the moment. It would be nice to play Chess960 with a classical time control, but when there are few sponsors and organizers, I think that rapid chess is much easier to stage. I agree that Swiss events are generally better than arenas and that berserking should not be allowed. On the other hand, perhaps all the GMs, WGMs and IMs who wanted to qualify to further stages on Lichess easily did so, so it did not influence the cycle too much. I am afraid that there would be too many problems with fair play issues in a big online rapid qualification. (In fact, I played even the primary stage of this event, with a 3+2 control. Out of my 21 opponents, one got disqualified during the tournament and three others were banned afterwards. While there is no safe time control anymore, rapid is somewhat more dangerous in this respect.)
As for the cameras, personally I am more comfortable with 2 cameras showing me and my room than with playing in tournaments where some players cheat and others mistakenly get accused after demonstrating a good performance. True, installing two cameras can be difficult at times, particularly if you have a poor connection, I know this very well. I can also understand that other people might value their privacy more, or have other relevant reasons not to participate in events with two cameras.
Tournament with cameras also generally have higher prize money, as the sponsors are more willing to support events where the result can hardly be put in doubt. Alas, in this year's Chess960 World Championship there is big money only for the players who get to Reykjavik, and up to several hundred dollars for those who narrowly miss the qualification. I won a nice prize of 500 dollars for a second place in a three-day qualifier on c***s.com. It is a nice amount, but in some elite online events one can win significantly more money with a worse performance and less effort.
I hope that this event helps to further popularize chess960 and that we will see more of such events in the future, planned and announced in advance. And I hope for more Chess960 tournaments over the board. Then I will not have enough time to write such incredibly long comments, which will be great for all of us! :-)
