Candidates or World Championship matches…

Last week’s poll question was: What is your favourite phase of a chess game? Of The Big Three the narrow winner was ‘middlegame’, ahead of my favourite ‘endgame’, with ‘opening’ well beaten. Not so surprising. I suspect the time spent studying each phase would get a very different answer, but I will save that question for another day.

Poll-phase

Our thoughts now are on the Candidates tournament which starts in Moscow on March 10th. We did a quiz for last year’s World Cup, and we plan something similar for the Candidates. But for now I will just ask: Which event do you generally find more exciting: Candidates tournaments or World Championship matches? Of course the match is when the big prize is decided, but on Magnus Carlsen’s rise to the title, the Candidates in London was surely the most dramatic moment.

3 thoughts on “Candidates or World Championship matches…”

  1. I voted for the Candidates Tournament, maybe biased by the great London Candidates won by Carlsen. I think Championship matches tend to be very boring, with very few wins each. We of course had very last game wins that changed the world champion, but this cannot overshadow the process to get there: a lot of draws.

    The last candidate tournament was very boring too, with only a player playing at a good level, so I think at the end of the day it will depend on which tournament or match are we talking about and it will be very hard to generalize.

  2. Soviet School

    My immediate reaction was the Candidates due to London and in the last one Anand’s Candidates victory was more of a surprise than the WC match itself. The tournament books of candidates tournaments are usually more interesting than the WC Match books. Back in the Kasparov Karpov days the matches were much more exciting than The candidates matches.

    Although Fischer was correct and candidates matches are fairer I think a Candidates tournament makes for a much more exciting event.

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