Bad Beat in Chess?

[Post-Oak]

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This may be one reason your bet could have been -ev. Humans make mistakes, computers don't

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If an announcement was made tomorrow that they were starting over with a 6 game match, their is no way Pinnacle would hang the same 0.5 +226 line. Like I said earlier, based upon the first two games, there is no way to conclude that the line was -EV.

Now you can say, wait Kramnik is down 1.5-0.5 due to a human error, but the nature of the error is so absurd that it should "never" happen. This probably a one in a million mistake, and errors of this nature shouldn't really play any role in the handicapping of the event. Errors of a different nature are definitely a factor.

One of the many rules which are meant to benefit Kramnik is that if the computer sees a draw, his team must offer a draw to Kramnik. His team can not force Kramnik to play on in the endgame, hoping he screws something up (which the computer of course won't do). Also, the computer was only allowed a 5 piece end game table base. In other words, it is already clear that no human being can beat a computer in chess, and rules were initiated to mitigate the human mistake factor. But no one could have foreseen this type of blunder.

IMO, I am now convinced the bet was +EV (although when I placed it I was not sure). My only question now is whether Kramnik can win a game as white, and I think the answer is no. Kramnik gets 500K Euros just for participating in the match and an extra 500K if he wins the match outright, but I think at this point he would be very happy with salvaging a draw.