10 Questions with Seattle's manager/player Clint Ballard --------------------------------------------
by IM Greg Shahade
--------------------------------------------
1.
So how did it feel to get an
expansion team in Seattle ? It was a tremendous honor to be chosen to
manage a USCL team as almost
all the other teams are managed my masters and even IM's. I felt that
the Seattle area could compete for the title in our first year due to
all the local chess activity and I am glad that so far things are going
even better than planned. The Seattle area in general hasn't had many
championship teams and I want to bring a national team title to Seattle
before the Seahawks.
2. What do you expect from the rest of
the season after your team’s tremendous start?
Its usually better to be lucky than good, but when you are both, well
that leads to a tremendous start. If you go strictly by the ratings of
the matchups, we have been favored in 10 of the 12 boards and with one
of those "underdogs" being Michael Lee, our 9.5 pts is actually not
that anomalous. What is anomalous is that 11 of 12 of our games have
been decisive and the first draw was last night's board 1 that went all
the way to K+P stalemate. That draw that Serper gave up is really the
reason why we are "underperforming" the 10 matchup advantages we had.
Only two games were decisive game upsets, not that Michael beating a
master, or John losing to Oleg is really an upset. I do know that John
was pretty upset for missing the clear win in his loss though :)
3. You are outspoken as an anti-draw
enthusiast. Tell us why you hate draws so much!
It's not that I hate draws, they have their place in chess, as long as
it is a true fighting draw. What I hate are the lifeless, dull draws
where neither player did anything to even try to create a win. You know
the ones I am talking about, either they just trade off all the pieces
as fast as they can, or they play a few moves away from the safe harbor
of known opening theory and then agree to a draw. How is that a sport
or interesting in any way? When two masters do their best to avoid
losing, they both achieve their goal, and a draw is inevitable. What a
waste of time, it's certainly not marketable to the fans so why don't
they just agree to a draw before they start? It seems that it is
repeated so often that people believe that a properly played chessgame
inevitably leads to a draw, as if chess is just a glorified form of
tic-tac-toe. I claim that is entirely nonsense! If that is the case,
how can Hydra crush super-GM's? If that is the case, how can super-GM's
be totally unable to navigate endgames properly with less than half a
dozen pieces left? Imagine a 32 piece tablebase. Would it show mate in
145 for white or black, or a draw? How can we have any idea if white's
advantage is something that can really be nurtured all the way to
victory or not, if we stop trying to win every game?
4. You are famous for your BAP scoring
system, implemented to discourage drawn games. Please explain it
briefly for others whom are curious. It's a really simple solution to the GM-draw problem that
makes the
lifeless draw totally illogical and makes every game decisive. At the
GM level, it is considered a minor victory if black holds white to a
draw. If black achieved a minor victory, why should white get the same
amount of points as black? The idea of giving a half point for a draw
started around
1867 and it's time for an improvement. BAP is that improvement with 3
points for a black win, 2 points for a white win and 1 point for a
black draw. 0 points for white drawing or any loss. While it might be
true that within the scope of a single game, BAP is biased toward
black, it is quite possible that at the GM level, BAP could actually be
less biased than the 1867 system. Only time will tell and the GM
Slugfest (www.GMSlugfest.com)
this October will have GM's like Shabalov
and Akobian playing under BAP. I still have a sponsored spot open if
there are some GM's out there would like to personally experience BAP
without risking any money to get a chance at the $5000 prize. However,
I can state with 100% confidence that if every player in a tournament
plays an even number of whites and blacks, there is no overall bias.
This is regardless of the bias that might or might not exist for either
color and compares favorably to all the major swiss events that have an
odd number of rounds.
5. A lot of people think it's strange
that in your scoring system white gets the same number of points for a
draw and a loss? Do you think there is any way to modify that so that
white perhaps gains half a point for a draw, or at least gets more than
zero? The way the scoring system is setup now it's almost as if you
would rather go into a clearly lost position with miniscule winning
chances than to take a draw, which seems sort of like anti-chess to
serious chessplayers. It's almost as if there are situations that
encourage you to make very weak chess moves.
Well, I think it is strange that white and black get the same amount of
points for winning and drawing, when there is quite a bit of
evidence
that black does have a harder time winning than white does. Clearly the
1867 point system has become suboptimal in 2006. Now, I am in the
process of analyzing historical chess games to see who the best player
of all time was and so far what I call the BAP3 point system is the
most promising. BAP3 is BAP, but switching the points assigned for a
win so white gets 3 points for a win and black gets 2 points for a win.
With the 1867 point system, it comes up with nonsensical things like
Kasparov was 2.7 times better than his opponents as white, but "only"
1.6 times as good when playing black. I claim that Kasparov's abilities
did not change by 50% based on the color he played, so this difference
must be the biasing that the 1867 point system gives to white. With
BAP3, it says that Kasparov was 2.87 times as good as white and 3.41
times as good as his opponents when he played black. Doesn't that make
more sense? BAP3 would be a fine basis for a rating system, but not as
good as BAP to encourage decisive chess. It is also not biased for or
against any playing style.
Anyway, I have all of the questions like this
thought through and
answered on my www.Slugfest7.com
website. The bottomline is that if we
don't change anything, odds are pretty good that nothing will change.
All of the so-called problems with BAP that people are afraid of
haven't happened in the actual games, but there sure are a lot of
boring draws played every week using the 1867 point system. Call me
crazy, but winning is much better than drawing and BAP really forces
you to learn how to win as white. Isn't the point of chess, to win? So,
how can a point system that rewards winning and discourages not winning
be "strange". If people would go beyond their first instinctive
reaction and actually analyze the problem a bit deeper, they will come
to the similar conclusions as I have. It is like the Queen sac that at
first doesn't make any sense, until you analyze it deeper.
6. Okay Mr. draw hater, Seattle is in
the Championship Match, they are up 2-1, you have a slightly better,
although risky position against a 2200 player on Board 4 when you
notice you can force perpetual check. Do you ignore the team and go all
out for the win, or do you take the draw, and bring chess glory to the
city of Seattle .
Team play is a totally different animal and I
wouldn't even suggest
using BAP for team play. Unless you play 2 games each round, there will
be biasing so that makes it impractical. In tournaments with an even
number of rounds, all biasing disappears if the colors are balanced.
After analyzing the statistical behavior (I do have a math degree from
Caltech for those who are wondering about my credentials in things
mathematical) of a variety of point systems, using BAP3 just on board 1
would eliminate the vast majority of drawn matches. However, this is
not currently a problem and the simple solution to prevent tied matches
is to use your wonderful tiebreak format for all tied matches. That
would make for a great TV segment. The point is to win and if 2.5
points wins the match and the championship, hey, I would play the
Petroff and trade off all the pieces to secure that draw :). Now the
reason that draws are not really a problem with the USCL is that nobody
knows ahead of time if a draw is good enough and when it comes down to
the final game, in most cases one player has to win while the other
player secures the match with a draw. See, the incentive structure is
almost identical to BAP in this case and none of the players can
predict ahead of time if they will end up in that situation. BAP
brings this level of competition and intensity to every game played.
There isn't a one size fits all solution and as a
community we need to
ask ourselves if the point system that started in 1867 and a tournament
system (swiss) in 1895 are really the best ones to be using in 2006.
Chess organizers get what they pay for and if they are rewarding draws
disproportionately to what the truth of the position indicates, then
that is what they will get. Chess computers vs. Chess computers don't
have a 55% draw rate and if chess computers are the best chessplayers
in the world now, maybe we can learn from them?
7. Tell us your thoughts about your
top
2 players, GM Serper and IM Orlov. Do you ever plan on using them both
in the same match?
Having both Orlov and Serper on the team is like
having two GM's on
the team and allows us to matchup against any other team, even Boston's
Christiansen/Perelshteyn duo. Georgi has been holding summer chess
camps for kids in the northwest area for many years and is a big reason
why the young players here are so good. He is also actively teaching
one on one and has many students, including Michael Lee. As good as he
is as a teacher, it is just amazing to see him play. Before the
Carolina
game, he looked at three or four games by Milman and next thing you
know he just crushes him.
Serper is so solid. He has been playing
professionally all over the
world for over 20 years and since he doesn't usually play in many local
events, it is a testament to the appeal of the USCL that he agreed to
play for the Sluggers. Gregory is such a nice guy, to my knowledge he
doesn't have any students, but he is spending time with the other
Sluggers in the post-mortem analysis.
The problem with playing both of them in the
same match is that it
chews up so much of the rating cap, so we aren't sure whether we will
play
them both until we are up against another possible dual-GM lineup, but
who knows, anything is possible...
8. What are the chances that there
will
be cheerleaders at a Sluggers match this season?
Until the games are televised, I don't really see the need for
cheerleaders, plus it could distract our players. I was thinking of
setting up a webcast from the other room that the other teams could
watch :)
9. Aside from Seattle of course, which
team do you
think is the strongest team in the league?
Certainly Boston, the only other team with only 1 draw so far
and a
non-master manager, is one of the teams I wouldn't be surprised to meet
in the finals. However, if Baltimore beats them in week 6, then
anything can happen. If they don't how can anybody else in the East
catch up to them? In the West, all I see are very strong teams. San
Francisco is very strong, but so is Miami and with the addition of
Stopa ,Dallas becomes a formidable opponent, and even Tennessee held
Dallas
to a draw. We really were lucky to get a win last Wednesday. The season
is still very young and any team can win the next 7 in a row (including
us!), due to the 2400 rating cap. That's almost a statistically
predictable form of league parity that does it much better than the
NFL. In the USCL, any team can truly beat any other team on a given
night. The difference between winning and losing is a single move made
under time pressure! (After being pressured Clint finally settled
on "Boston" being the strongest team in the league aside from Seattle)
10. To sum it all up, tell us what the
whole USCL experience has been like after the first few weeks of the
regular season.
It's been like what it would be for a lifetime
Yankees fan being able
to take George Steinbrenner's place! I can't believe how much fun its
been and I am probably spending way too much time on it :) There are
about 10 million chess players in the US, so once it gets to TV, there
is an audience that can certainly exceed bowling and come close to
golf. It's not about the money, but rather that I truly believe that
chess is the best game in the world and I want to do everything I can
to make it mainstream. Wouldn't it be cool to have a national chess
tour event every week with thousands of players and a million+ dollar
prize fund? If that was real, I doubt that we would continue to lose
99% of active scholastic players sometime between 6th grade and age 30.
This is a battle for respect. Chess deserves a lot more respect in the
"real world" and the big money tournaments represents that respect. I
had a similar battle on a much smaller scale back in high school when
to the shock and horror to all the athletes, I got my school to award
letterman jackets with block letters to the high school chess team.
According to the rules governing such things, chess met all the
qualifications, so they had to agree to do it. It was a matter of
principle as I had no desire to actually wear the jacket, but chess
deserved the same respect that football, baseball, basketball, etc. had.
I would like to personally thank you for the
opportunity you have given
me and the Seattle area and all the work you have put in to create the
USCL. It truly has the potential to bring chess to the mainstream and
even if it doesn't, it's so much fun. I would wear a USCL jacket
anyday! Any plans for league apparel? Fans could show their support for
their teams that way and get their team logos on stuff they wear.
Thanks Clint for taking the time
to answer these questions. Best of luck to you and your Seattle
Sluggers in the rest of the season!
1.
So how did it feel to get an
expansion team in Seattle ?