From: Oleg Stepanov MAIL RU> Date: 3 jun 2000 Subject: Re: Tournament System - Knockdown or Swiss > There are several reasons why the Swiss System is superior for > chess, the main one being that in chess between 30% and 50% of > the games between evenly matched opponents are draws. First time hear about it. All my life I supposed Swiss use if we hawe a lot of players and rounds limit. And this is all... At my opinion the differens between Knockdown and Swiss in our target. What we want? If we want make games for many players and hawe time limit - we made swiss. If we hawe not limits at all - Round Robin. If money and board limit - Knockout. If I understand well the number of shogy tournaments outside of Japan not many. If we want be so strong like Japaneeses Pros we shoul play, play and one more play. May be (my opinion) when we get strong not Japaneeses players in shogi we can play Knockout, but now Swiss get us praktise. Let I introduse what happen in Othello World. We hawe WC with 24-34 -playaers. 3 person from each country. After 13 rounds we hawe Team Championship results and normal results. The team points - points of all players from this country. After this we hawe Knockout for 4 best players. What we get? World champion and Team champion. For populizing game japaneeses newer send all 3 strongest players. It is enough only one title World Champion. And usially Team World Champion get another country. This is wery good for populizing Othello outside of Japan. Please, do not afraide Japaneeses. This country wery clewer. The interesting of populizing shogi in the Wordl much more than individual ambitions of some Pro players. This is not Russia. :-) > Also, nobody seriously recognizes Alexander Khalifman, the winner in Las > Vegas, as the real world champion in chess, just as nobody is going to > recognize the winner in Armonk as the real World Champion in shogi. Please, be careful. :-) I can told about your opinion to great russian chess star Alexander Khalifman. :-) Oleg Stepanov.