Gukesh vs Fabi tiebreaks look likely. From listening to Hikaru throughout the tournmament I don’t think he’ll press and lose which would cost Fabi. He’s brought up multiple times having an American in the world championship is important to him.
Oh man as great as Fabi closed out yesterday’s game he made one inaccuracy and this looks like a draw. Winning these games seems so fucking tough.
Was rooting for Hikaru just due to having someone stream the Championship would have been something else. However Gukesh was flawless all game.
it’s wild watching him play grandmasters and just doing silly moves for the first 3 moves and then just destroys them.
fabi just can't fucking stop throwing. Ding is going to blow gukesh off the board. really wish hikaru hadn't thrown twice against vidit. alizreza being trash also fucked up the whole tournament.
Ding has not played much since winning and when he does he has struggled big time for the world champion. Gukesh gonna have a billion plus people hanging on his every move so the pressure will be immense. I think FIDE needs to revise the format now that the chess boom is here. For one it would get Magnus more engaged. Secondly the actual world championship is kinda boring compared to candidates. Idk if you need this head to head match at the end. Get the 8-12 best in the world together. Have them play a bunch of games, and declare a winner. It would also resolve this scenario when you get like a Ding vs Nepo for three weeks that no one cares about.
A giant round robin followed by a “Final Four” like a month or so later would be pretty cool. Current WC is automatically the #1 seed in the FF. Maybe best of 5 in the round of four and best of 7 in the final (although, due to draws, the number of games doesn’t matter too much, as long as it is enough). Or, they could just go with Magnus’s suggestions. Multiple games per day with shorter time controls (I think 60 minutes) and some kind of increment. Basically, making it more difficult to just prep a bunch of computer lines by having more games and multiple per day. This would be a better test of actual chess skill, but also kind of changes the definition of classical chess, which FIDE is stuffy about (even though it is clearly necessary). Having said that, FIDE wouldn’t even listen to Magnus, fully knowing that interest would crater without him, so the odds of them budging on this are probably very low. I also think viewership and interest from China was really low last WC even with Ding winning, which probably wasn’t great for them. Yet, they still wouldn’t budge. They got really lucky here that Gukesh is playing in the WC, and viewership in India will likely be off the charts.
FIDE is corrupt as shit and in the pocket of Russia. Do it boxing style. Have a title belt. Champ has to play a top 10 contender multiple times per year, must face the number 1 at least once per year.