True, the Russians used to cheat in the candidate tournaments all the time.

That would lead to competition from other tournaments, and thus feed the dreaded score inflation: Raymond Keene will write a book claiming that Carlsen is the greatest ever because he wins tournaments by margins of 47 points, candidates' matches by 82-0.

By the way, cheating by agreement need not be done on a 1-1 basis (3-0 vs. 0-3 for the same two players).  Any cyclic arrangement of n players will do, e.g. if Topalov beats Matulovic 6-0, Matulovic beats Naiditsch 6-0, and Naiditsch beats Topalov 6-0, all three have scored better, under the Bilbao system, than if they had drawn two rounds each. With four or more players the order could be permuted in the second half of the tournament so that it was not the reverse of what had been done in the first half. Such an arrangement would be far less conspicuous than 3-0 vs. 0-3.

Papageno wrote on 10/18/10 at 20:35:08:

Yes, I agree. I'm not sure why there is the desire amongst certain tournament organizers to change the rules to make the game 'more exciting'. I find games of chess amongst very strong players are often very exciting without any fiddling with the rules.

To combine the 3-1-0 scoring system with a double round-robin system is utter nonsence in my eyes. This calls for cheating instead of helping fighting games.

In this scenario it is favorable for players to contact some of their opponents before the tourney and agree upon both winning their respective games with white instead of fighting and ending up in something else which it at worst two draws.

This fact is well known from some eastern European football leagues with a significant higher numbers of decided matches. You simply avoid any danger of being relegated by joining the "society" of cheaters and agreeing upon winning the respective home matches. This guarantees a high number of 3-0 wins (a win and a loss against the "friends") and is clearly better than ending up scoring say two 1-1 match point against each other after some hard and honest fights.

Best for chess is to really be a Zero-sum game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum). Any attempts to construct asymmetrical scoring systems in chess like the 3-1-0 in Bilbao are attempts to ask players to start cheating by exploiting the weaknesses of the scoring system.

Seth_Xoma wrote on 10/18/10 at 06:38:31:

The system is not very fair in chess.

The difference lies in the possibility..... with two consecutive wins in the last rounds it is possible to rapidly move forward, which in the "normal" system would not be possible.

IIrc, Larsen once suggested that if you stalemated your opponent you should get 0.75 points instead of 0.5 - I can imagine that this idea would give rise to longer fighting draws, as even in a drawish game one side is usually preferable. 

Does anyone remember if Larsen's idea was ever tested in practice?

I confess that I don't understand why they use the 3-1-0 scoring system in such a short tournament? There will be very little, if any, difference in the final standings from the old scoring method.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use the Bilbao scoring system in a 10 round, or 12 round tournament?