Is two games a day good or bad?

 The economic realities of the chess world now make two rounds a day tournaments commonplace.

Magnus Carlsen is not happy with the level of preparation needed to take part in a world championship match, if you want to have a chance of winning it. He suggested that one possible solution would be to use a quicker time control and have two games a day. This would at least negate some of the advantages of excessive preparation, thus turning the battle against the workhorses.

In the time I have spent as a chess professional (now over 25 years!) tournaments with multiple rounds in one day have become more and more commonplace. Weekend tournaments that began on friday would obviously have them, and that was accepted. But in FIDE rated international events it was rare, until Sean Hewitt decided to follow the American model of multiple rounds. Partly that was compelled by economic necessity as putting up titled players for nine rounds, as well as the cost of hiring the venue and other issues, meant that it made more sense to abbreviate the tournament as much as possible.

So now we have strong events like Cambridge, the English championships, and the Northumbria masters, as well as many others following this model. And even big tournaments abroad like the Reykjavik Open (which is going on at the moment) will try to cram in more than one game in at least two of the playing days, in order to save costs.

In my opinion this is a depressing development for several reasons:

• Playing more than one game a day isn't conducive to great chess, because you will inevitably become extremely tired; if for example you play nine games in five days. 
• It is not enjoyable. You might play a nice game in the morning, but you have no time to enjoy it before you are thrown into the fray again. And when you finish your second game, it can often be late in the evening, and you may only have a few hours before you are forced to repeat the same grotty process the next day.

It should be pointed out that it is partly FIDE that have driven this whole process. I was there in Istanbul in 2000 when during the Olympiad they decided to speed up the time controls. According to what I read at the time this was at least partly a measure because they wanted players to finish up the games quicker, so they had more time to do other things later in the day like work in a job. 

                     Thanks to FIDE, I now have the opportunity to work part-time in McDonalds in between rounds.

It should also be noted that a lot of these trends and concepts to do with quickening up time controls are created by those who have a connection to chess, but aren't professional players. They don't really care if we enjoy it or not.

But this is a development that we need to fight back against. Look at the Scottish chess championships last year, they turned that into a five round weekender (mercifully this event is back to normality this year, and thus I have agreed to play.)

You do wonder how long it is before the British chess championships, or Hastings, are turned into two game a day events? You would imagine those are protected, in the same way that the BBC would describe events like Wimbledon as the crown jewels, and outside broadcasters were prevented from bidding for them.

But ultimately it comes down to money. If British chess can't find sponsorship soon, then more and more tournaments will go down this route. And in that case it will hardly worth being a professional chess player at all.