Carlsen-Caruana Chess World Championship

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Random chess has been played casually among players, but you would never get them to agree to play a World Championship match that way. Could you imagine if at the beginning of the World Series the umps said the field will have five bases and players were free to run them in either direction? Not gonna happen.

The Mahjong “umpires” (if you will) change the winning combinations annually. The “players” get their little cards showing the current year’s winning combinations. The best of the best keep on playing and going to their tournaments as if nothing happened, but if you don’t use this year’s card, forget about winning.

Baseball is even worse. The American and National Leagues play with different rules and then compete in a World Series.

If the 2017 Mahjong champ squared off against the 2018 Mahjong champ, each using their own cards, utter chaos would ensue.

In the worst case scenario, in chess, every match ends in a draw and all the competitors get a participation trophy at the end of the day, and everyone goes home happy ........ or not.

[barrysloate]

My mom used to play mahjong and I remember she would get the new rules each year.

There is something in chess called the Armageddon game, and it's pretty interesting, though I don't believe one has ever been played. It's a single game where white gets 5 minutes for all his moves and black gets only 4 minutes. Now that sounds like white has two advantages- the first move, plus an extra minute. But here's the rub: if the game ends a draw, black is declared the winner. I've never played one but I think it would be an advantage to be black. Caruana and Carlsen could have one of these if all the rounds of tiebreakers fail to crown a champion.