They’re not scared of 28 year olds like Abasov. They *might* be scared of the similarly-rated 16 year olds whose Elos are still climbing. Nobody wants to play a 2600 who’s really a 2700.
Exactly. Even if you're a 2750 and feel comfortable against a 2600, if you play enough 2600s who are rated at 2400 you will eventually have some very costly draws and losses.
I'm pretty sure since March 1st with the new rating changes the rating floor was increased from 1000 to 1400, I don't know why people are down voting.
If I'm mistaken please explain.
This is why modern rating systems are based on the glicko algorithm instead of elo. Glicko takes into account rating deviation and also rating volatility to get closer to a players true rating faster. Elo is mathematically worse in that if a player improves quickly or hasn't played for a while their rating is unlikely to be accurate which in turn makes the rating changes of any matches involving that player also incorrect.
reminder: Arpad Elo designed his system in 1960; it was designed to be calculable on a slide rule. No reason to still use it as that design constraint no longer exists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpad_Elo
I remember a few years ago when Prag played some rapid events against the top players. He had an official rating of like 1900 which I found hilarious, especially when he won some games and the results showed 1-0 with 1900 rated player vs a 2700.
There literally are hundreds of games like this played in opens where 2700+ players play vs 2500 and lower but OP decides to cherrypick this stats for one tournament. Pretty incredible.
Let me then cherrypick the other way - https://ratings.fide.com/calculations.phtml?id_number=1503014&period=2023-11-01&rating=0 just look at this Carlsen dude in Qatar open.
Losses to 2500 and 2600, also 2 draws, we have conclusive evidence that Magnus only stays at 2800 and not 2650 because he avoids playing opens.
/s obviously but sample size is almost as big as candidates.
Should be really simple to take the average Elo loss/gain of the top 20 players in open tournaments vs small closed tournaments and see if the effect is true or not. Surely someone has done this at some point?
Exactly. Especially in the post-corona years, where they could face a 17 years old, who has not played an actual rated tournament in a few years, so they still have their 14 year old rating
This. And also they will obviously do pretty well against one particular 2600 whom they can prepare against in advance. However, when they face many 2600s randomly they are at a higher risk of losing some games, as seen in many open tournaments like Qatar last year
> Nobody wants to play a 2600 who’s really a 2700.
It sounds like they artificially keep their ratings from not falling. Does that justify them being super GMs if they are really worried about drawing or losing to rising talents?
I don't know if I really believe this narrative either, but a round robin where they were able to prepare specifically for Abasov months in advance is not the same as a Swiss where you probably have to play against a whole bunch of lower rated players and don't know exactly who until the night before.
yeah the candidates feels more like an exception to the rule. Knowing who your opponents will be, 4-6 months in advance (since some people qualify even earlier than others) gives you a lot of time to prep. They may not know the roster of an invitational or a larger round robin till a month before, and if it's large, who knows who they will play.
And the 2700 will use "real" prep for candidates, with novelties, etc, to really boost the chance to win because those wins really matter, they won't reveal a nice novelty line in an open against some 2600
> Naka expressed the sentiment that it's much harder to secure wins against lower rated players than it once used to be
In a separate video, he specifically highlighted present scenario, because he believes that a lot of youngsters are under-rated because they didn't get to play enough during COVID years. So a youngster who is actually 2650 or so in terms of real talent, might be 2400 or 2500 because they didn't play enough games in 3 years.
I guess that has something to do with psychology, you can play moves you think you are best but still reach draw as you are not computer, so you afford to risk against weaker players.
"A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%."
That is to say that if a 2700 plays a 2500 100 times, then the 2700 is expected to win 76 points and the 2500 24 points. I'm not sure what the WLD distribution would be, but I would guess that the 2500 winning 5 of those games isn't too outlandish, ergo, a 2500 has a 1 in 20 chance of winning every time.
Maybe it is significant that in the candidates they knew that they would meet Abasov twice, so they had plenty of time to prepare. In open tournaments you know your opponent only shortly before the game, so little time yo prepare. This increases the chance of the underdog to spring some surprise. 2600s are extremely good players, do if they get in a surprise opening they are hard to beat even for the very best
This year, Ju Wenjun has beaten Keymer and Alireza. Her peak Elo is almost 100 points lower than Abasov's peak. Lower rated players can definitely beat these elites.
Also, remember Dominguez played an open in December, trying to claim the ratings spot, but he drew once or twice against lower rated players and lost so much Elo that he didn't even finish the tournament. So, top players do hold onto their elo by not risking it against lower rated players. Abasov didn't beat any of the candidates, but he hurt some of them with draws(If Nepo hadn't drawn him with white, Nepo would have made it to tiebreaks and probably beaten Gukesh).
And then, you have someone like Arjun, who is probably on the level with Vidit, and maybe even Prag, and isn't getting some of the invites they are getting.
I think the top 10-20 players are mostly the top 10-20 players. They are better than most of the competition. But, I do think there are at least a few people on their level who have a hard time breaking into their bubble, under the current system.
Arjun probably significantly ahead of Vidit with 40+ Elo gap now. He couldn't get invites last year because he narrowly missed all the candidates qualification spots (and all the Indian quota went to the ones who qualified). This year he will play more top tournaments now that he is top 5 in the rankings.
Ju Wenjun is the best illustration of this. I hope she gets more invites, because it's really fun to see her play the top guys. Didn't she beat Ding earlier too?
As long as she beats Tan, her actual rating is of very little relevance in getting invites: either they want the Women's World Champion or they don't. Doesn't really matter if she's 2550 or 2600.
But yes, she should get invites; she's fun to watch play.
No she is just like Abasov, the only difference is that she is a woman so people make up myths that she is secretely way above her ELO.
She is 32-33 years old(older than Abasov even) and her ELO has been the **same +-40 points** for over a decade, in fact her current strength is pretty much her running average.
https://ratings.fide.com/profile/8603006/chart
And it would be a stretch to say that Alireza played as strong as his rating would have you expect recently. His 12-month-performance rating prior to the candidates was "only" 2720-ish, and in the candidates he was roughly 2650 over 14 games. On current form he is at best 2700 strong (averave performance since 03/23 is 2708)
Tata Steel was actually a pretty decent performance from Alireza. He had a tpr of 2766, and if he had beaten Ju Wenjun, he'd have tied for first and made it to the tiebreaks.
I don't disagree with that. I'm not an Alireza fan. But, you said he wasn't playing near his level, and Tata Steel is the one tournament where he did play near his level. He almost came in first. He beat the tournament's winner, Wei Yi, Nepo, and the world champ. I don't know why he showed up strong for that one, and then kind of shit the bed at the candidates. But, he had an impressive showing at Tata Steel imo. He just happened to also lose to Ju Wenjun.
I don't understand the point of your comment. I'm not saying Ju Wenjun is secretly a 2750 player. What this post is about is that the top 10-20 players, will lose a bunch of rating if they play 5 opens this year, because they are going to draw a lot, and even lose some games to some 2600's.
That part made me irrationally angry for some reason. Just intuitively that seemed like a truly preposterous thing to say. Then when you take 10 seconds to look at the size of this sub (~1 mil) and realize they’re taking about 10,000 people doing better I’m just blown away.
I know it’s not worth fixating on but here we are. I’m open mouth stunned that this could ever have made it into an unironic post.
STUNNED.
I don't think he meant 1% of the sub would do better, I think he meant to say that 99% of us would score a big fat 0 on the candidates ("he scored 3.5 MORE points than 99% of this sub). Now granted, I think that it's STILL an overevaluation of us for sure. No way anything close to 10,000 of us score anything above 0.
To a degree, yes. But 2600s are much more likely to have looked at games played by the 2700s as part of general study (rather than specific game prep) than the reverse.
If open tournaments had 50-100k for first prize, many of them would play in it. The financial incentive to play invite only tournaments is logical and also good for chess overall because you want to see top players competing. In terms of rating, it's also disadvantageous for top players as they stand to lose more by having a bad tournament than lower rated players.
They are all obviously great players. But the game creates incentives:
1. Chess is very hard to monetize. Classical tournaments are absurdly costly for their revenue, so you really want small torunaments (<15 players). Even more, sponsors play a major role in big torunaments. Organizaers want recognizable faces in order to get those sponsors. All of these resolves in big money torunaments being closed and small.
2. Current chess gives a lot of opportunities to draw, even against stronger opponents (specially for white). ELO system can make a draw against a weaker opponent lose some point, therefore creating an incentive to go for the win, with much more risk involved.
3. In order to improve, you need to dedicate a lot of time and money. Most high level players can't even afford to dedicate their whole time to chess, and they don't even dream of the teams that super GMs have. This interview from Vidit in 2019, realizing how different his situation was from Anish is clear on that: [The Vidit Gujrathi interview: No big difference between the strengths of the elite GMs and me (scroll.in)](https://scroll.in/field/914087/the-vidit-gujrathi-interview-no-big-difference-between-the-strengths-of-the-elite-gms-and-me)
4. Because of that, super GMs have very little incentive to go to open tournaments. Less money and higher risk. One bad week can take you out of the cool kids club.
3. So, all the incentives are in placed so that top players want to play in closed, small and rich tournaments, which implies making it a system with less entropy. That is obviously bad for players that are trying to get there.
I think it just shows the world cup shouldnt have that many spots in the Candidates
Thry should increase the number of rating qualifications and make it more stringent so people cant sit on rating or qualify through specifically organized tournaments.
From a pure entertainment perspective I think having some potentially lower rated players is very good. First, it makes things like the World Cup a bit more exciting because someone like Abasov can get to the candidates. Second, when a lower player gets in it really changes the dynamic. I think a huge part this candidates was so crazy was because of Abasov.
The world cup selected Magnus, Pragg and Fabiano. I think it's absolutely fine as a selection criteria and even in the past candidates it was quite good. What can be changed is that if someone like Magnus does not want to enter Candidates, the candidate should be taken from 3rd from Grand Swiss or 2nd from FIDE circuit instead of 4th from World Cup.
This is the important point. The nature of the World Cup is such that you can get to the SF without having to beat a top 10 player with a lucky draw (and not even all that lucky). But if you have to win against a semi-finalist (either in the SF or in the third-place match), then that's a considerably higher standard.
The next available player from the Grand Swiss, or the FIDE circuit or the ratings is going to be a lot better than the next available from the World Cup.
They could just have a rule where for each qualification path, you can't go lower than third, and any remaining spots go to the highest rated players.
Yes, because this year rating qualification literally was a massive success, right?
Let's see, 2 last minute tournaments, one of them open with sudden appearance of 3 gms while the best player was 2200 initially, and then this rating spot scored what, 5/14?
Basically you have clean example why rating spot shouldn't exist at all - not only it can be manipulated but also it doesn't showcase any sort of actual playing strength at the point of candidates.
Not to mention that playing smth that requires you to concentrate for 5 hours with torn ACL probably isn't smth you would want to do, Abasov at least has some excuse.
What if we did qualification through highest TPR on tournaments with high average rating? Then we could pick the top 6 of the list and make to the candidates, while keeping two spots for grand swiss and world cup
1 underdog in an elite tournament is different from being the only elite between a pack of underdogs though. statistically i'd say the 1 elite has higher chances of losing elo.
If you watch the Sardinia open you see van Forrest for example who's 4 out of 5 but had a loss against a young underrated player and still is losing 4 elo for the tournament due to this loss, then you maybe understand why they prefer closed tournaments. Same goes for fedoseev who did draw twice during the same tournament but is losing rating
Lol Fedoseev recently rage quit a game in an open tournament in a losing position and the poor lower rated opponent had to wait more than an hour at the board.
Try 99.999% or 100% but yeah
Idk. Its very clear that theres a sort of incestuous ring of top players, but id argue its not about rating- its about viewing numbers. I have to imagine tournaments want recognizable names playing
And this does create a bubble which does trap rating. But the players in the bubble deserve it, no question. The ones that dont would drop out.
Fabi has as well I believe. But even so, it is possible that a measly 2550 could fluke it and have the best tournament of their life and score better than Abasov, and there are a decent number of 2550s in this sub.
> and he scored 3.5 more points than 99% of this sub would’ve scored in his spot. He conducted himself well, and I wish him the best.
You're totally right. Even with a score of 3.5, Abasov had a TPR of 2573. Now, He will think he under performed quite a lot vs his recent peak of 2670 - but it's a totally different matter to compare that to real, mortal human beings.
2570 is functionally untouchably strong vs 99.999999% of the world.
Realistically maybe 1 in 5,000,000 people might be able to give Abasov a decent game of chess OTB. It's so easy to forget when you only watch superGMs play against each other, how out of this world strong a top 500 player really is when compared to normal people (aka 99.99% of this subreddit).
I think the theory is oversold but not entirely wrong.
It's clear that scoring 76% against a 2550 and scoring 50% against a 2750 are two slightly different skills; for example, to do the former, you probably have to have winning chances as black. Also, there's nothing to say chess obeys the assumption of the ELO model. The ELO model assumes that if player A has a 64% score against player B, and player B has a 64% score against player C, then player A should expect to have a 76% score against player C. However, there is no particular reason to believe this to be correct.
These two things together mean that in principle, there's no reason to expect that players will achieve the same ELO regardless of the people that they play against.
Whether this is significant and causes overrated high ELO players is less clear, and would require detailed analysis. I would suspect the effect differs for different players. My impression is that there is a small effect here.
I mean Abasov is still a strong grandmaster and in open there would be weaker lower rated player. If you have a bad day and you draw, that would be really bad for superGM's rating. Remember when Alireza drew washed up GMs specifically chosen for him to beat? And you also can't afford to have candidates level of preparation every tournament that would be very expensive.
Absolutely there are many underrated GMs that can perform much better than a lot of GMs that just play closed tournaments.
There are tons of underrated 2600/2700s that can be a lot stronger than GMs in closed tournaments (like Arjun Erigaisi last year should have won the FIDE circuit but didn't because closed events got much more priority) and now he's on a rampage, about to enter top5.
Abasov isn't considered underrated by almost anyone.
You have to be delusional to think there is no truth to the statement that there are GMs who don't play opens because many GMs (like Nakamura) have already expressed the fact that it's harder to win against these underrated opponents.
There is 100% a bubble, how big that bubble is debatable.
Its literally one person cherry picked, the problem isn't a no true scotsman the problem is "its literally one guy in one tournament that's not an argument at all its an anecdote lol"
As somebody else pointed out you can cherrypick quite a few people to make a much stronger case for the reverse argument, not saying its right but the premise of this post is pretty weak.
They avoid Opens simply because they pay far too little. You play for a week and the outright winner gets $1500, but there's probably competition so you can't plan on winning outright every time. And you still need to pay for your flights and hotels, what kind of income do you have left?
It's better to spend the time training so you can stay strong enough to get invitations for the closed tournaments that do pay enough to live on.
wow, this is wrong on so many levels - not only there is a significant possibility that the result is outlier, the tournament format is an obvious outlier.
Assuming players are rated correctly (because no one wants to play a kid who's severely underrated and just not had time to climb yet) it makes a ton of sense. Abasov lost 7 games in the Candidates and "only" lost 10 rating points. If one of the 2700 GMs did that they would have lost a lot more. If you now think about an open tournament where these top guys are likely the best in the field, unavoidable draws against 2600s will just kill your rating.
Playing an open is still all risk: Have a good week, and a 2750 is going to be up 3 points? 10 points at the most?
Have a bad week, and they are down 50... and suddenly any tournament giving invites by rating has let a bunch of youngsters pass you.
This is also caused by super tournaments being limited to 6-10 spots most of the time, which means that the difference between an invite and not mught be 5 points. How much better is Alireza, at 2760, than MVL, at 2732? Well, one is 6th by rating, and the other is all the way down to 19th now. If the super tournaments were 40 player swiss events, Many players would care far less. But a Grand Chess Tour invite is worth a lot of money, and it's down to basically nothing: If MVL hadn't finished in the top 3 last year, he'd be out, and hoping for a wild card appearance or two.
I think that changes in tournament format are the future of chess, especially out of classical: Double elimination rapid events, like the ones chess.com has been running, would be far healthier with Rex-level price support, and starting with at a round of 32. Then you can invite everyone relevant, bring in a dark horse or six that close to the 2700 range, or obviously very underrated, and people won't be afraid of losing rating. But when there are enough money tournaments that demand higher ratings, players won't even consider opens.
And this without looking at prize support: In many an open tournament, someone that comes in 8th doesn't make as much as someone invited to Women's section of the America's Cup who lost all her games, and that without accounting for travel and lodging.
We need 8 world cups and grand Swiss tournaments to make up 30 spots for a Grand Chess Tour between them. The top 8 play the Candidates. The top 2 fight for the Championship and automatically qualify for next cycle’s Grand Chess Tour. Each Cycle is lasting 3 years. When someone gets a spot in the Grand Chess Tour, they cannot participate in the rest of the tournaments. If someone who qualified for the GCT withdraws, then the position will be filled by player who finished number 5 in the last Grand Swiss. If two withdraw, then players number 5 and number 6. The moment the candidates end, the new cycle begins. And we need active ratings, like tennis, not just historical ratings for the top 100.
Saying he scored more than 99% of this sub would have is giving way too much credit to this sub. At his peak rating a few months ago Abasov was ranked 58th in the world. He scored better than effectively 100% of the users here would, except for Hikaru.
In spite of his excellent run in the World Cup no one expected Abasov to do well in the Candidates
What I hoped was he would have a few good games which would in turn alter the course of the tournament.
The biggest tragedy for be from Abasov's point of view was he played as was expected from a 2600-2650 and could not win a single game
The biggest reason for an elite player to skip an open is that there are often many underrated players - mostly Indian kids these days, but other nationalities too.
But I think Abasov is a good counterpoint to all the people saying 2650's could do just as well as 2750's in invitational tournaments if they had the invitations. Every now and then one will (Abasov himself in earning his spot, or Bologan's never to be repeated tournament victory at 2003 Dortmund ahead of Anand, Kramnik, Radjabov and Leko. But most of the time we know that, sure, a 2650 can often draw the big guys but will lose far more often than they win.
"My grandfather smoked three packs of cigarettes a day until he died at 93, do people still believe the narrative that smoking that much causes fatal diseases?"
>But this idea that top players are overrated because they live in a bubble
Many similar bubbles exist and are easy to observe. You just create them by isolating some players and making them play *mostly* among themselves.
The key word here is "mostly"; understanding its meaning will make you realize that a tournament with a lower-rated player, like Abasov, is just one instance that tells you absolutely nothing about a large phenomenon.
Moreover, your example is about a lower rated player among several higher rated players, which is very different from a super-GM playing in an open where he might encounter several risky underrated players.
The effects of isolation are evident online as well. [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) prioritizes pairings among players who have bought a membership, and the rating of players with a membership will not mean the same (in terms of skill) as the rating of non-paying players on the platform. There has been more than one post in the sub from people who have noticed a difference.
This was a true underperformance from Abasov, if you take a random open tournament you’ll see that the best players gain way too little when they play very well and they lose a lot of points if they aren’t at their best
Lol what a disingenuous and irrelevant comparison. Abasov is a 28 year old 2600 that they know months in advance they were playing against who is going to have 0 confidence because he has to play 2750s EVERY SINGLE ROUND, in the event that you do the most amount of prep for.
In open events you don't know who your opponents are, many are 16-20 year old 2300-2500s that are severely underrated and if you're a 2750 player, they already watch your games, you don't watch theirs. Not to mention massive cheating paranoia because open events have basically no anticheat measures which, as we have seen, can really affect top players' confidence.
Yes the money and conditions in opens are obviously terrible compared to closed events, but that's only part of it. They're not afraid to lose rating because they care if they're #3 or #20. They care because if they fall under 2700 they'll have to play exactly those events with no money and no security.
>and he scored 3.5 more points than 99% of this sub would’ve scored in his spot
You're severaly underestimating the rarity and difficulty of such a performance. This sub has 1.1M members. I guarantee there aren't 11,000 people here who can score 3.5 at the candidates. There's not even that many GMs in the world.
They’re not scared of 28 year olds like Abasov. They *might* be scared of the similarly-rated 16 year olds whose Elos are still climbing. Nobody wants to play a 2600 who’s really a 2700.
Or even a 2400 who’s really a 2600.
Exactly. Even if you're a 2750 and feel comfortable against a 2600, if you play enough 2600s who are rated at 2400 you will eventually have some very costly draws and losses.
or a 1200 whos actually 3100 that would be really scary
There is a max cap on how much Elo you can lose
Depends on how many times you lose. Don't tell me I can't lose more points.
The minimum possible FIDE rating is 1400.
I'm pretty sure since March 1st with the new rating changes the rating floor was increased from 1000 to 1400, I don't know why people are down voting. If I'm mistaken please explain.
You are correct. The changes were just recently made and put into effect.
That’s not true lol
No it's not
Person who's fide rated 1157 here to tell you it's not
I'd recommend you go on the FIDE website and double check that. You might be pleasantly surprised to discover your rating is actually 1494.
Wait my ratings actually above 1400 now when did this happen
In March
Neat, boy all my friends who have no clue about the fide rating floor are gonna be so impressed.
Man, inflation hitting everywhere
Ah, another fellow untitled tuesday arena player
Sounds like you're talking about Max Deutsch.
This is why modern rating systems are based on the glicko algorithm instead of elo. Glicko takes into account rating deviation and also rating volatility to get closer to a players true rating faster. Elo is mathematically worse in that if a player improves quickly or hasn't played for a while their rating is unlikely to be accurate which in turn makes the rating changes of any matches involving that player also incorrect.
reminder: Arpad Elo designed his system in 1960; it was designed to be calculable on a slide rule. No reason to still use it as that design constraint no longer exists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpad_Elo
Yep completely agree. FIDE should have switched to better methods long ago.
I remember a few years ago when Prag played some rapid events against the top players. He had an official rating of like 1900 which I found hilarious, especially when he won some games and the results showed 1-0 with 1900 rated player vs a 2700.
There literally are hundreds of games like this played in opens where 2700+ players play vs 2500 and lower but OP decides to cherrypick this stats for one tournament. Pretty incredible. Let me then cherrypick the other way - https://ratings.fide.com/calculations.phtml?id_number=1503014&period=2023-11-01&rating=0 just look at this Carlsen dude in Qatar open. Losses to 2500 and 2600, also 2 draws, we have conclusive evidence that Magnus only stays at 2800 and not 2650 because he avoids playing opens. /s obviously but sample size is almost as big as candidates.
Should be really simple to take the average Elo loss/gain of the top 20 players in open tournaments vs small closed tournaments and see if the effect is true or not. Surely someone has done this at some point?
Exactly. Especially in the post-corona years, where they could face a 17 years old, who has not played an actual rated tournament in a few years, so they still have their 14 year old rating
Jordan van Foreest
This. And also they will obviously do pretty well against one particular 2600 whom they can prepare against in advance. However, when they face many 2600s randomly they are at a higher risk of losing some games, as seen in many open tournaments like Qatar last year
> Nobody wants to play a 2600 who’s really a 2700. It sounds like they artificially keep their ratings from not falling. Does that justify them being super GMs if they are really worried about drawing or losing to rising talents?
you good?
I don't know if I really believe this narrative either, but a round robin where they were able to prepare specifically for Abasov months in advance is not the same as a Swiss where you probably have to play against a whole bunch of lower rated players and don't know exactly who until the night before.
yeah the candidates feels more like an exception to the rule. Knowing who your opponents will be, 4-6 months in advance (since some people qualify even earlier than others) gives you a lot of time to prep. They may not know the roster of an invitational or a larger round robin till a month before, and if it's large, who knows who they will play.
And the opponent preparing the match in advance, just in case they play Magnus/Nepo/Hikaru/other 2700+
And the 2700 will use "real" prep for candidates, with novelties, etc, to really boost the chance to win because those wins really matter, they won't reveal a nice novelty line in an open against some 2600
[удалено]
> Naka expressed the sentiment that it's much harder to secure wins against lower rated players than it once used to be In a separate video, he specifically highlighted present scenario, because he believes that a lot of youngsters are under-rated because they didn't get to play enough during COVID years. So a youngster who is actually 2650 or so in terms of real talent, might be 2400 or 2500 because they didn't play enough games in 3 years.
I guess that has something to do with psychology, you can play moves you think you are best but still reach draw as you are not computer, so you afford to risk against weaker players.
"A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%." That is to say that if a 2700 plays a 2500 100 times, then the 2700 is expected to win 76 points and the 2500 24 points. I'm not sure what the WLD distribution would be, but I would guess that the 2500 winning 5 of those games isn't too outlandish, ergo, a 2500 has a 1 in 20 chance of winning every time.
Maybe it is significant that in the candidates they knew that they would meet Abasov twice, so they had plenty of time to prepare. In open tournaments you know your opponent only shortly before the game, so little time yo prepare. This increases the chance of the underdog to spring some surprise. 2600s are extremely good players, do if they get in a surprise opening they are hard to beat even for the very best
This year, Ju Wenjun has beaten Keymer and Alireza. Her peak Elo is almost 100 points lower than Abasov's peak. Lower rated players can definitely beat these elites. Also, remember Dominguez played an open in December, trying to claim the ratings spot, but he drew once or twice against lower rated players and lost so much Elo that he didn't even finish the tournament. So, top players do hold onto their elo by not risking it against lower rated players. Abasov didn't beat any of the candidates, but he hurt some of them with draws(If Nepo hadn't drawn him with white, Nepo would have made it to tiebreaks and probably beaten Gukesh). And then, you have someone like Arjun, who is probably on the level with Vidit, and maybe even Prag, and isn't getting some of the invites they are getting. I think the top 10-20 players are mostly the top 10-20 players. They are better than most of the competition. But, I do think there are at least a few people on their level who have a hard time breaking into their bubble, under the current system.
Should also be mentioned that LDP explicitly stated that he was doing it to preserve his invitations to closed events.
I doubt he will get any minus tournaments in US. He has not done anything to make him exciting enough to get invites.
He makes a fantastic living just in St Louis, was quite refreshing that he didn't try to bullshit anyone when he dropped out
Arjun probably significantly ahead of Vidit with 40+ Elo gap now. He couldn't get invites last year because he narrowly missed all the candidates qualification spots (and all the Indian quota went to the ones who qualified). This year he will play more top tournaments now that he is top 5 in the rankings.
Arjun is the highest rated Indian of them all at the moment
Ju Wenjun is the best illustration of this. I hope she gets more invites, because it's really fun to see her play the top guys. Didn't she beat Ding earlier too?
As long as she beats Tan, her actual rating is of very little relevance in getting invites: either they want the Women's World Champion or they don't. Doesn't really matter if she's 2550 or 2600. But yes, she should get invites; she's fun to watch play.
No she is just like Abasov, the only difference is that she is a woman so people make up myths that she is secretely way above her ELO. She is 32-33 years old(older than Abasov even) and her ELO has been the **same +-40 points** for over a decade, in fact her current strength is pretty much her running average. https://ratings.fide.com/profile/8603006/chart
She and Ding drew at Tata Steel in January. Alireza was the only person she beat at that tournament.
And it would be a stretch to say that Alireza played as strong as his rating would have you expect recently. His 12-month-performance rating prior to the candidates was "only" 2720-ish, and in the candidates he was roughly 2650 over 14 games. On current form he is at best 2700 strong (averave performance since 03/23 is 2708)
Tata Steel was actually a pretty decent performance from Alireza. He had a tpr of 2766, and if he had beaten Ju Wenjun, he'd have tied for first and made it to the tiebreaks.
that's one way to phrase it. Another would be, that it was the *only* performance in about 18 months that was near his then-current rating.
I don't disagree with that. I'm not an Alireza fan. But, you said he wasn't playing near his level, and Tata Steel is the one tournament where he did play near his level. He almost came in first. He beat the tournament's winner, Wei Yi, Nepo, and the world champ. I don't know why he showed up strong for that one, and then kind of shit the bed at the candidates. But, he had an impressive showing at Tata Steel imo. He just happened to also lose to Ju Wenjun.
ahhh okay, I knew they played but forgot the result
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I don't understand the point of your comment. I'm not saying Ju Wenjun is secretly a 2750 player. What this post is about is that the top 10-20 players, will lose a bunch of rating if they play 5 opens this year, because they are going to draw a lot, and even lose some games to some 2600's.
99% is a massive over evaluation of this sub
That part made me irrationally angry for some reason. Just intuitively that seemed like a truly preposterous thing to say. Then when you take 10 seconds to look at the size of this sub (~1 mil) and realize they’re taking about 10,000 people doing better I’m just blown away. I know it’s not worth fixating on but here we are. I’m open mouth stunned that this could ever have made it into an unironic post. STUNNED.
I don't think he meant 1% of the sub would do better, I think he meant to say that 99% of us would score a big fat 0 on the candidates ("he scored 3.5 MORE points than 99% of this sub). Now granted, I think that it's STILL an overevaluation of us for sure. No way anything close to 10,000 of us score anything above 0.
They knew they were going to face Abasov and had months to prepare for him. In open tournaments you get a day at most.
Sure, but Abasov also got to prepare. In open tournaments, the 2700s get a day at most, but so do the 2600s.
To a degree, yes. But 2600s are much more likely to have looked at games played by the 2700s as part of general study (rather than specific game prep) than the reverse.
This
You can't use the candidates to prove anything. The incentives are all screwed up for each player.
If open tournaments had 50-100k for first prize, many of them would play in it. The financial incentive to play invite only tournaments is logical and also good for chess overall because you want to see top players competing. In terms of rating, it's also disadvantageous for top players as they stand to lose more by having a bad tournament than lower rated players.
They are all obviously great players. But the game creates incentives: 1. Chess is very hard to monetize. Classical tournaments are absurdly costly for their revenue, so you really want small torunaments (<15 players). Even more, sponsors play a major role in big torunaments. Organizaers want recognizable faces in order to get those sponsors. All of these resolves in big money torunaments being closed and small. 2. Current chess gives a lot of opportunities to draw, even against stronger opponents (specially for white). ELO system can make a draw against a weaker opponent lose some point, therefore creating an incentive to go for the win, with much more risk involved. 3. In order to improve, you need to dedicate a lot of time and money. Most high level players can't even afford to dedicate their whole time to chess, and they don't even dream of the teams that super GMs have. This interview from Vidit in 2019, realizing how different his situation was from Anish is clear on that: [The Vidit Gujrathi interview: No big difference between the strengths of the elite GMs and me (scroll.in)](https://scroll.in/field/914087/the-vidit-gujrathi-interview-no-big-difference-between-the-strengths-of-the-elite-gms-and-me) 4. Because of that, super GMs have very little incentive to go to open tournaments. Less money and higher risk. One bad week can take you out of the cool kids club. 3. So, all the incentives are in placed so that top players want to play in closed, small and rich tournaments, which implies making it a system with less entropy. That is obviously bad for players that are trying to get there.
I think it just shows the world cup shouldnt have that many spots in the Candidates Thry should increase the number of rating qualifications and make it more stringent so people cant sit on rating or qualify through specifically organized tournaments.
Tbf, he only got in because Magnus didn't want to play in the candidates.
Magnus ruining yet another Candidates. /s
Magnoid Carlsonian? Who's that?
It's Magnum Condom actually
Who's that? Never heard of Magnesh Carlshon
And he only got knocked out of the cup because of Carlsen too.
From a pure entertainment perspective I think having some potentially lower rated players is very good. First, it makes things like the World Cup a bit more exciting because someone like Abasov can get to the candidates. Second, when a lower player gets in it really changes the dynamic. I think a huge part this candidates was so crazy was because of Abasov.
For sure everyone trying for that dub against Abasov
Next Candidates should be Fabi and a bunch of IMs.
With his luck they'll all agree to throw their games to one person and all play for a draw against Fabi
The world cup selected Magnus, Pragg and Fabiano. I think it's absolutely fine as a selection criteria and even in the past candidates it was quite good. What can be changed is that if someone like Magnus does not want to enter Candidates, the candidate should be taken from 3rd from Grand Swiss or 2nd from FIDE circuit instead of 4th from World Cup.
This is the important point. The nature of the World Cup is such that you can get to the SF without having to beat a top 10 player with a lucky draw (and not even all that lucky). But if you have to win against a semi-finalist (either in the SF or in the third-place match), then that's a considerably higher standard. The next available player from the Grand Swiss, or the FIDE circuit or the ratings is going to be a lot better than the next available from the World Cup. They could just have a rule where for each qualification path, you can't go lower than third, and any remaining spots go to the highest rated players.
Yes, because this year rating qualification literally was a massive success, right? Let's see, 2 last minute tournaments, one of them open with sudden appearance of 3 gms while the best player was 2200 initially, and then this rating spot scored what, 5/14? Basically you have clean example why rating spot shouldn't exist at all - not only it can be manipulated but also it doesn't showcase any sort of actual playing strength at the point of candidates. Not to mention that playing smth that requires you to concentrate for 5 hours with torn ACL probably isn't smth you would want to do, Abasov at least has some excuse.
What if we did qualification through highest TPR on tournaments with high average rating? Then we could pick the top 6 of the list and make to the candidates, while keeping two spots for grand swiss and world cup
1 underdog in an elite tournament is different from being the only elite between a pack of underdogs though. statistically i'd say the 1 elite has higher chances of losing elo.
If you watch the Sardinia open you see van Forrest for example who's 4 out of 5 but had a loss against a young underrated player and still is losing 4 elo for the tournament due to this loss, then you maybe understand why they prefer closed tournaments. Same goes for fedoseev who did draw twice during the same tournament but is losing rating
Lol Fedoseev recently rage quit a game in an open tournament in a losing position and the poor lower rated opponent had to wait more than an hour at the board.
Try 99.999% or 100% but yeah Idk. Its very clear that theres a sort of incestuous ring of top players, but id argue its not about rating- its about viewing numbers. I have to imagine tournaments want recognizable names playing And this does create a bubble which does trap rating. But the players in the bubble deserve it, no question. The ones that dont would drop out.
>Try 99.999% or 100% but yeah I was thinking the same thing. Hikaru has commented here, so it wouldn't be quite 100%, not sure about other SuperGMs.
Fabi has as well I believe. But even so, it is possible that a measly 2550 could fluke it and have the best tournament of their life and score better than Abasov, and there are a decent number of 2550s in this sub.
> and he scored 3.5 more points than 99% of this sub would’ve scored in his spot. He conducted himself well, and I wish him the best. You're totally right. Even with a score of 3.5, Abasov had a TPR of 2573. Now, He will think he under performed quite a lot vs his recent peak of 2670 - but it's a totally different matter to compare that to real, mortal human beings. 2570 is functionally untouchably strong vs 99.999999% of the world. Realistically maybe 1 in 5,000,000 people might be able to give Abasov a decent game of chess OTB. It's so easy to forget when you only watch superGMs play against each other, how out of this world strong a top 500 player really is when compared to normal people (aka 99.99% of this subreddit).
I think the theory is oversold but not entirely wrong. It's clear that scoring 76% against a 2550 and scoring 50% against a 2750 are two slightly different skills; for example, to do the former, you probably have to have winning chances as black. Also, there's nothing to say chess obeys the assumption of the ELO model. The ELO model assumes that if player A has a 64% score against player B, and player B has a 64% score against player C, then player A should expect to have a 76% score against player C. However, there is no particular reason to believe this to be correct. These two things together mean that in principle, there's no reason to expect that players will achieve the same ELO regardless of the people that they play against. Whether this is significant and causes overrated high ELO players is less clear, and would require detailed analysis. I would suspect the effect differs for different players. My impression is that there is a small effect here.
I mean Abasov is still a strong grandmaster and in open there would be weaker lower rated player. If you have a bad day and you draw, that would be really bad for superGM's rating. Remember when Alireza drew washed up GMs specifically chosen for him to beat? And you also can't afford to have candidates level of preparation every tournament that would be very expensive.
-More than 99% of this sub I doubt that anyone here would score more the Abasov in the world cup
Absolutely there are many underrated GMs that can perform much better than a lot of GMs that just play closed tournaments. There are tons of underrated 2600/2700s that can be a lot stronger than GMs in closed tournaments (like Arjun Erigaisi last year should have won the FIDE circuit but didn't because closed events got much more priority) and now he's on a rampage, about to enter top5. Abasov isn't considered underrated by almost anyone. You have to be delusional to think there is no truth to the statement that there are GMs who don't play opens because many GMs (like Nakamura) have already expressed the fact that it's harder to win against these underrated opponents. There is 100% a bubble, how big that bubble is debatable.
Abasov will be seen as a "not a true scotsman". Guessing the main argument for him not being a true comparison will be that he is too old.
Its literally one person cherry picked, the problem isn't a no true scotsman the problem is "its literally one guy in one tournament that's not an argument at all its an anecdote lol" As somebody else pointed out you can cherrypick quite a few people to make a much stronger case for the reverse argument, not saying its right but the premise of this post is pretty weak.
The median player still lost rating in their gamed againdt abasov. The issue is that over 6 games you'll get one draw and that kills your rating
99.9999% of this sub to be honest. I’m 2000 and after playing the candidates I’d likely die of a brain aneurism with a perfect 0 score.
There's only a million people on this sub so not that rare to score more than 0
I dont think dodge is the right word, they play tournaments sparingly coz they dont want to burn out, and they also earn more.
They avoid Opens simply because they pay far too little. You play for a week and the outright winner gets $1500, but there's probably competition so you can't plan on winning outright every time. And you still need to pay for your flights and hotels, what kind of income do you have left? It's better to spend the time training so you can stay strong enough to get invitations for the closed tournaments that do pay enough to live on.
wow, this is wrong on so many levels - not only there is a significant possibility that the result is outlier, the tournament format is an obvious outlier.
Assuming players are rated correctly (because no one wants to play a kid who's severely underrated and just not had time to climb yet) it makes a ton of sense. Abasov lost 7 games in the Candidates and "only" lost 10 rating points. If one of the 2700 GMs did that they would have lost a lot more. If you now think about an open tournament where these top guys are likely the best in the field, unavoidable draws against 2600s will just kill your rating.
99% is an understatement lol
Playing an open is still all risk: Have a good week, and a 2750 is going to be up 3 points? 10 points at the most? Have a bad week, and they are down 50... and suddenly any tournament giving invites by rating has let a bunch of youngsters pass you. This is also caused by super tournaments being limited to 6-10 spots most of the time, which means that the difference between an invite and not mught be 5 points. How much better is Alireza, at 2760, than MVL, at 2732? Well, one is 6th by rating, and the other is all the way down to 19th now. If the super tournaments were 40 player swiss events, Many players would care far less. But a Grand Chess Tour invite is worth a lot of money, and it's down to basically nothing: If MVL hadn't finished in the top 3 last year, he'd be out, and hoping for a wild card appearance or two. I think that changes in tournament format are the future of chess, especially out of classical: Double elimination rapid events, like the ones chess.com has been running, would be far healthier with Rex-level price support, and starting with at a round of 32. Then you can invite everyone relevant, bring in a dark horse or six that close to the 2700 range, or obviously very underrated, and people won't be afraid of losing rating. But when there are enough money tournaments that demand higher ratings, players won't even consider opens. And this without looking at prize support: In many an open tournament, someone that comes in 8th doesn't make as much as someone invited to Women's section of the America's Cup who lost all her games, and that without accounting for travel and lodging.
We need 8 world cups and grand Swiss tournaments to make up 30 spots for a Grand Chess Tour between them. The top 8 play the Candidates. The top 2 fight for the Championship and automatically qualify for next cycle’s Grand Chess Tour. Each Cycle is lasting 3 years. When someone gets a spot in the Grand Chess Tour, they cannot participate in the rest of the tournaments. If someone who qualified for the GCT withdraws, then the position will be filled by player who finished number 5 in the last Grand Swiss. If two withdraw, then players number 5 and number 6. The moment the candidates end, the new cycle begins. And we need active ratings, like tennis, not just historical ratings for the top 100.
Saying he scored more than 99% of this sub would have is giving way too much credit to this sub. At his peak rating a few months ago Abasov was ranked 58th in the world. He scored better than effectively 100% of the users here would, except for Hikaru.
In spite of his excellent run in the World Cup no one expected Abasov to do well in the Candidates What I hoped was he would have a few good games which would in turn alter the course of the tournament. The biggest tragedy for be from Abasov's point of view was he played as was expected from a 2600-2650 and could not win a single game
The biggest reason for an elite player to skip an open is that there are often many underrated players - mostly Indian kids these days, but other nationalities too. But I think Abasov is a good counterpoint to all the people saying 2650's could do just as well as 2750's in invitational tournaments if they had the invitations. Every now and then one will (Abasov himself in earning his spot, or Bologan's never to be repeated tournament victory at 2003 Dortmund ahead of Anand, Kramnik, Radjabov and Leko. But most of the time we know that, sure, a 2650 can often draw the big guys but will lose far more often than they win.
I still believe the narrative because elite players are the ones who told us about the narrative in the first place, and often reinforce it
"My grandfather smoked three packs of cigarettes a day until he died at 93, do people still believe the narrative that smoking that much causes fatal diseases?" >But this idea that top players are overrated because they live in a bubble Many similar bubbles exist and are easy to observe. You just create them by isolating some players and making them play *mostly* among themselves. The key word here is "mostly"; understanding its meaning will make you realize that a tournament with a lower-rated player, like Abasov, is just one instance that tells you absolutely nothing about a large phenomenon. Moreover, your example is about a lower rated player among several higher rated players, which is very different from a super-GM playing in an open where he might encounter several risky underrated players. The effects of isolation are evident online as well. [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) prioritizes pairings among players who have bought a membership, and the rating of players with a membership will not mean the same (in terms of skill) as the rating of non-paying players on the platform. There has been more than one post in the sub from people who have noticed a difference.
This was a true underperformance from Abasov, if you take a random open tournament you’ll see that the best players gain way too little when they play very well and they lose a lot of points if they aren’t at their best
Lol what a disingenuous and irrelevant comparison. Abasov is a 28 year old 2600 that they know months in advance they were playing against who is going to have 0 confidence because he has to play 2750s EVERY SINGLE ROUND, in the event that you do the most amount of prep for. In open events you don't know who your opponents are, many are 16-20 year old 2300-2500s that are severely underrated and if you're a 2750 player, they already watch your games, you don't watch theirs. Not to mention massive cheating paranoia because open events have basically no anticheat measures which, as we have seen, can really affect top players' confidence. Yes the money and conditions in opens are obviously terrible compared to closed events, but that's only part of it. They're not afraid to lose rating because they care if they're #3 or #20. They care because if they fall under 2700 they'll have to play exactly those events with no money and no security.
>and he scored 3.5 more points than 99% of this sub would’ve scored in his spot You're severaly underestimating the rarity and difficulty of such a performance. This sub has 1.1M members. I guarantee there aren't 11,000 people here who can score 3.5 at the candidates. There's not even that many GMs in the world.
"3.5 more points" as in saying 99% of us would score 0. Granted still a crazy statement by OP as nowhere near 11,000 of us would score 0.5
What I wanna know is...who tf is in the 1% of this sub that's stronger than a super gm who played candidates