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Chess - the world in black and white


Rorshach

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MVL-Nepo is definitely the big game of the round.  I think anything but a loss is a great result for Nepomniachtchi given the current tournament situation.  On the other hand, if MVL can manage a win he can catch Nepo in the lead (and potentially help Caruana or any of the other group currently on 50% move within half a point themselves).

On paper, Ding and Caruana are both fairly clear favourites in their games today (against Alekseenko and Wang Hao respectively), but given their seeming lack of form ... well, I'd not want to bet much on them both winning.  Or perhaps on either of them winning. The Ding-Alekseenko game in particular seems like it could be a battle to see who can avoid coming last, which is really not what I'd have predicted a month ago.

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3 hours ago, Plessiez said:

On the other hand, if MVL can manage a win he can catch Nepo in the lead (and potentially help Caruana or any of the other group currently on 50% move within half a point themselves). 

Looking pretty good for MVL at the moment, actually.

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Trying not to get ahead of myself here, but since I've already done that in this thread, I'll keep up:

I *did* say Nepo is inconsistent!

Doesn't seem like Caruana manages to take advantage of it today, however, so if things stay the same this is good news for MVL - and only him.

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Yep, we have reached the halfway mark now.

MVL and Nepo sitting at the top on +2, is a bit surprising to me.

Then we have the field on 50%

Caruana, Giri, Grischuk, Wang Hao

and as tail enders on -2 we have Ding Liren and Alekseenko.

The two favorites were fairly disappointing.

Caruana will have to admit, that his experiment with the Slav-defence has been an utter failure. Last time him uncorking the Petroff worked out pretty well for him, but the Slav really hasn't.

Ding Liren was just disappointing. I don't think there's another way to describe it. He is pretty much out of the competition, and would need to win 6 out of his last 7 games to have any hopes to qualify. That is simply not realistic.

Alekseenko was one my pick for tailender from before the start. So seeing him at the bottom is not that surprising.

Wang Hao is doing just fine.  Grischuk and Anish on 50% was to be expected. Altho, Sascha seems keen on finishing the tournament on a perfect Giri streak.

Nepo on top is the second big surprise for me. As I usually don't rate him that high. And I didn't see him of all people getting to be WCC challenger. MVL, the cinderella story. He stepped in as 11th hour replacement for Radja, and he has delivered the goods thus far. Maybe the last minute invitation is working in his favour. I assume he had his preparation more or less complete (except maybe for Aleeksenko), while the others had to work under the assumption they'd face Radja not MVL. But that's a mere speculation.

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Because I've got too much time on my hands, I put together a small spreadsheet to calculate each of the players' expected scores over the tournament, given their ratings, the results so far and the remaining pairings.  (I used the players' latest FIDE ratings, but made a small adjustment to account for the fact that in practical games at the top level White tends to score around 55% -- this can be modelled by increasing the White player's rating in each game by about 35 points).

Before any games were played, the expected results the model gave were obviously in line with the rating list:

  1. Caruana 8.52
  2. Ding Liren 7.71
  3. Grischuk 7.08
  4. Nepomniatchti 7.01
  5. Vachier-Lagrave 6.87
  6. Giri 6.76
  7. Wang Hao 6.73
  8. Alekseenko 5.32

After the first half of the tournament (and updating everyone's ratings to match the live ratings on 2700chess.com, where possible), the expected results now look like this:

  1. Nepomniatchi 8.16 (+1.15)
  2. Vachier-Lagrave 7.99 (+1.12)
  3. Caruana  7.73 (-0.79)
  4. Grischuk 6.99 (-0.09)
  5. Wang Hao 6.93 (+0.20)
  6. Giri 6.84 (+0.08)
  7. Ding Liren 6.15 (-1.56)
  8. Alekseenko 5.20 (-0.12)

(About 60% of Nepo's predicted 0.17 lead over MVL is because the former has four White games remaining while MVL has only three; the rest is just pure rating differences.  Obviously the model doesn't know anything about the tiebreak system, which favour MVL as things stand because he'd now go through against Nepo on head-to-head results.)

Not really sure what -- if anything -- this shows, but it's nice to have a semi-objective baseline against which to make predictions (... and I like spreadsheets?). 

I think it feels intuitively right to suggest that the current co-leaders and Caruana are the only players who have a real chance of winning the tournament now, and that Caruana doesn't have quite as good a chance as either of the other two.  It also feels right that Grischuk, Wang Hao, Giri and Alekseenko are all basically doing as well as expected.

I was hoping for Ding to win the Candidates, but I think it's more likely that he finishes the tournament outright last than win it, at this point.  Really reminded of Wesley So last cycle, although the circumstancs around Ding's collapse feel a little easier to explain.   I guess Ding is young enough that he might get another shot in two years -- but maybe not.

The good news for Caruana is that despite a fairly poor start his future is still entirely in his own hands: he only trails the co-leaders by a point, and hasn't lost to either of them.  (So in that sense MVL winning today helped him a lot, even though he didn't directly benefit this round.)  

If Caruana manages to win both his remaining games against MVL and Nepo, and at least equals them in other results then he'd go through on tiebreaks.  Which on paper seems doable -- and Caruana has shown that he can finish tournaments strongly in the past, including at Wijk earlier this year.   But if he doesn't beat MVL tomorrow his situation gets a lot worse.

So I guess tomorrow we find out if Caruana has anything special prepared against the Grunfeld.

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I don't think Caruana will go there.

He will either play 1.e4 and hope to get into a Najdorf battle with MVL. Or he will play the English and go for a long grind. Either is a better bet imho to get a decissive result of that than trying checking out each other prep in the Grunfeld.

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MVL’s Grunfeld hasn’t been that solid lately. Carlsen beat him last year and I think also Grischuk in the Grand Prix? 
 

About Caruana, obviously his past results reccomend him as a favorite to win the tournament. But I’d say his games this tournament have been fairly unimpressive and he’s probably playing a bit worse than the other players on the same score as he is. 

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16 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Nepo on top is the second big surprise for me. As I usually don't rate him that high. And I didn't see him of all people getting to be WCC challenger. MVL, the cinderella story. He stepped in as 11th hour replacement for Radja, and he has delivered the goods thus far. Maybe the last minute invitation is working in his favour. I assume he had his preparation more or less complete (except maybe for Aleeksenko), while the others had to work under the assumption they'd face Radja not MVL. But that's a mere speculation.

Partly, I would say yes. But only partly, as everyone and his dog knows that MVL will play Najdorf, Grünfeld and 1. e4. Basically, if you've met MVL and prepared for it anytime, you are prepared.

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Very sad news about Arianne Caoili.

 

In a happier development, Chess24 will be broadcasting an online top-level rapid event to start later this month; organised by (or at least named after) Magnus Carlsen.

It seems as though Ding and MVL will both be taking part -- not clear if any of the other Candidates will be, though I'd guess most of them will have been invited.  Probably not the best preparation for the second half of the Candidates tournament, but since nobody knows when (if?) that will happen, perhaps that won't be such a pressing concern.  (No word on whether Radjabov has been invited to this event, either, though if Carlsen has a say in who gets invited I'm guessing not...)

My guess would be that the World Championship itself gets delayed until next year, to coincide with the postponed Dubai World Expo.  So probably FIDE has a little more time left to organise the second-half of the Candidates than they claim.  (I guess it's probably not feasible to play the second half online, is it?)

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The full list of participants in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational has been announced, and it's actually pretty impressive.

  • Magnus Carlsen
  • Fabiano Caruana
  • Alireza Firouzja
  • Anish Giri
  • Ding Liren
  • Hikaru Nakamura
  • Ian Nepomniachtchi
  • Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

The first games should start next weekend on April 18th.  After an initial round-robin, there'll be a second stage where the top-finishing four from that first phase play a series of knockout games.  Based on rapid rating, that final four would be Calrsen, MVL, Ding and (somewhat surprisingly?) Nakamura; but I don't think it would shock anybody much if Firouzja ended up there.

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  • 7 months later...

It's pretty old news at this point, but I only just learned that the second half of the Candidates has officially been postponed to next Spring.  I really have no idea if the tournament is ever going to be finished (or, honestly, if it even should be, though I imagine FIDE don't really have the option to cancel it).

But at the same time, it feels like there's been a lot more chess this year than normal, albeit almost all of it online/rapid rather than traditional OTB stuff.  Enough that (some months ago) I basically gave up trying to keep track of it all.  Latest big online event is the Skilling Open, which started yesterday.   It also feels like there's been a big increase in the number of people playing online casually: my own club has shifted to online-events only and I guess the same is true pretty much everywhere.

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The candidates had to be concluded in some shape or form. We still need a challenger for Carlsen, and the tournament is too far prgoressed to just cancel it altogether. It's not ideal with the break, as it killed a lot of the momentum in that tournament, but rarely anything is ideal these days.

Small anecdote on the amateur level leagues (600-800 elo points (depending on the board) below Carlsen). Our final league games were scheduled to take place in April before our federation pulled the plug. The outstanding games will now (presumably) be played at the end of March. On a personal note, I wouldn't have been too sad, if the season in its entirety had been scrapped (it was a bad season for me personal and arguably more importantly for my team as a whole, and we are probably getting relegated). But maybe I can at least salvage a bit from the season on account of my personal result and rating now. Anyway, a few other clubs (primarily in the leagues below) with a more elderly player base, had way more games outstanding, and there were more than one club to ahve voiced concerns that their players wouldn't be willing to sit 4-5 hours in an unventilated room for their hobby.

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  • 4 months later...

Just realised that the Candidates is due to resume next week (and I guess the match with Carlsen must be happening at the end of the year?).

I still think Caruana has a decent chance of winning the tournament, if he can beat MVL in their game on Monday, because that would give him the better tiebreaks.  But it feels very hard to predict anything about this tournament.

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Won't count Caruana out, no. MVL's form since the candidates broke off last year has been .... erratic at best, and as such this may just be a good place for Caruana to start.

Hard to know which Nepo will show up most. He has a good starting position, anyway, I wouldn't be very surprised if he managed to hold on to a lead.

For the rest, I have no idea. Giri has been winning more online lately, can he suddenly take a new step? Will be interesting to see.

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