World championship chess "draw".

The "classical chess" portion of the chess world championship match has ended in a draw. Moreover, this is the first time in the 132 year history of the world championship that every single game of a title match has also ended in a draw! The match will now be decided by a tie-breaker with rapid-play games and (if necessary) blitz games and an "Armageddon" game.

Lots of commentators are beating up on Carlsen for drawing the match and today's game. I lack the expertise to really assess this. But it seems to me it's an issue of incentives: the short length of the match (12 games) gives the player who is better in rapid play a strong incentive to avoid taking risks in the "classical" games. He knows

he need only draw a few games to get to the tie-breaker, and ..
doing so is almost as good as winning the match the regular way.

That surely affected Carlsen's strategy in this match, and also the 2016 match against Karjakin (which also ended in a tie, after which Carlsen won the tie-breaker). If we were in his place, we might act the same way.

Just a bit of economics insight : if you want different outcomes, you need different rules that create better incentives. Make the match longer (thereby making it harder to draw every game), eliminate the tie-breaker system in favour of more "classical" games, or even go back to the old Fischer policy of playing to a set number of wins. No doubt, experts can suggest other (and perhaps better) options.

I used to play chess a lot when I was in school. I rarely play these days but I should start playing again just for fun. My games rarely ended in draws. At the higher levels draws are very common as so much analysis goes into each opening and then following series of moves. Playing something different from studied lines is more likely to result in defeat as the player has to be able analyse new positions on the spot. Playing something different could throw an opponent off but they are often playing from a slight advantage as the deviation from the mainline usually results in a weaker position for the initiator.

Rapid chess games are more likely to favour someone who can shake things up a bit as the opponent has less time to think out new variations even if they would be at an advantage in a standard chess game.

Magnus, being the World number one Blitz Chess player, definitely had incentive to play for draws. I think his opponent is ranked very much lower in Blitz Chess.

I would prefer they play for a particular number of wins. Then the tournament can end on a win as well. In the current system, if someone wins the first game, they just play for 11 draws and win the series. That's not particularly exciting. I think Bobby Fischer won 19 consecutive games against Grand Masters. That doesn't look likely these days.