jhellis3 wrote:The problem is with the tournament format. It either needed another RR before the superfinal, or to be a knockout match style tournament. As it is now, there are 8 engines 4 of which have a 0% chance of advancing. So 25% of the games are effectively meaningless and can only serve to add noise do to the random nature of the openings selected.
A knockout style tournament would have none of these problems. The engines are seeded and play 4 matches 1&8, 2&7, 3&6, 4&5 say of 10 openings. That gives 20 games per match x 4 matches = 80 games. The 4 winners do so again in 2 matches of 20 openings for the same number of 80 games. And the final is 40 openings for the same 80 games. 240 games total for the entire event.
This completely avoids random chance benefiting one engine over another in the openings given to it. Of course, without any controversy, what would people complain about?
The other games except for the top 3 are still meaningful.
The weaker engines play the role of spoiler.
No matter what format you choose or how many games you play two of the top three engines among Houdini, Stockfish, Komodo are going to advance and the format chosen will not change that.
As for a knockout tournament, you won't be able to reverse the books. The books are deliberately slanted as far as having intentionally unbalanced openings so that we will not have 110 draws and two decisive games for the contest.
In the end, there are 3 real engines with a chance for the finals. One will be left in the cold, perhaps a little unfairly. But a contest like this does not tell us which engine is strongest. It only names a champion.
And as far as knockout format for a world chess championship...
Alexander Khalifman.
Need I say more?
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