Don wrote:Uri Blass wrote:Don wrote:
After my speed chess experience I talked to the local master about this and it was his opinion and his experience that if you are good at one you are good at the other and vice versa and that these imagined disparities do not exist or at least they are really rare.
I agree that disparities are not common but
I believe that there are going to be big disparity for some players.
Even if this is true, so what? All we would be doing is bringing a bit more depth to the game instead of being so anal-retentive and conservative.
I see no problem with considering a players skill set to include enough versatility to play at all time controls.
I expect bigger disparity in the lower level.
There will be disparity but as I said, so what?
However I do think that among some players the disparity is psychological, not real. If you are convinced that you suck (relative to others) at 5 minute chess then you probably will. And every time you lose a game at 5 minute chess you will believe that 1 games is convincing proof of it.
I believe that people who do not know much about chess but think better may perform 400 elo better at 90+30 time control relative to blitz(meaning something like rating 1800 at long time control and rating 1400 at blitz).
I also believe that 100 or 200 elo difference may be possible also at the high level.
I don't think that is a likely difference but it's certainly possible. However I say, "so what?"
Every game that has ever had rule changes to improve the game or sport is like this, the change will benefit some players more than others. That is NOT a bad thing. Since when are you or I the one who thinks that what we do now is THE ONLY TRUE WAY? I think it's arrogant. (I'm not saying you are, just the general attitude of resistance in general.)
If this happened it would quickly become accepted after a brief period of fierce resistance and then everyone would start to believe that this new way was the ONLY TRUE WAY.
I have more respect for people who can do well at longer time control.
I dislike the fact that fide decided to change the time control to faster time control(I know that in the past people used slower time control than 90+30 and I remember tournaments with 120/40+60/20 when I was a child) and I feel that the idea to use faster games to prevent draws is another step to the wrong direction.
The time control is a purely a matter of personal preference, it's not a universal principle of right and wrong.
What is pretty clear is that we could use some serious modernizing of the tournament format and that probably involves speeding things up even more.
Here is my basic rant on time control in general, ignoring the draw issue and this is learned from computer chess testing:
To decide a world championship we general play a small handful of games. In fact a ridiculously small number of games. And we play them at a rate of speed where you cannot always even finish a game in one sitting. We PRETEND that we are after the quality of the result to see "who is really better."
But a FAR MORE effective way to do this is to increase the number of games played. We don't test Komodo at 2 hours + 5 minutes per move even though we could generate super high quality games that way. If that was the right way to do this and if that had far greater meaning we would. But it is far better to play thousands of much faster games. OF COURSE we would love to play much longer games but we know for a fact the results are far less valid.
So if you REALLY desire the highest quality (most relevant) results at high levels you should consider increasing the number of games played. It wont' be taxing or logistically difficult as long as you speed up the time control accordingly.
I'm not advocating speed-chess for world championship matches, but I am advocating faster time controls which will provide more relevant statistical evidence on who is best and also provide more GAMES for us to relish and more drama.