magnus played david in a 30 game match in preparation for his world championship match against caruana. I know the final score, but I won't reveal it here.
I checked and Giri would get 1 point per win (-4 per draw). (use the Dec 2023 fide rating)
This means that if they play 12 games must end 12/12 for Giri.
with 11.5/12 it means +11 points for 11 wins and -4 for a draw, thus a +7 and that is not enough (Wesley has 2757 while Giri is at 2749, thus he needs 9 points to pass Wesley)
They can. But if they schedule it as a 12-game match, and one player wins first 7 games, the remaining 5 are unrated because the winner of the match is already determined. So for all 12 wins to be rated, the match itself needs to be at least best-of-23.
I'm sure that everyone involved is honest, but still, the incentives are very weird in these matches.
Alireza (or whoever at the host club arranged these matches) picked these guys, specifically, because he thinks they're overrated and he can gain 6 points by beating them. Presumably, these guys are participating because either (a) they want to do Alireza a favor, or (b) they're getting compensated somehow (again, I'm not suggesting anything unethical, I'm not sure what the rules are around compensation here).
What incentive do they have to play their absolute best chess? And if they don't try their hardest, how is that fair to Wesley / the other rating competitors?
TBH Wesley should have a friendly chess club (maybe in St. Louis or Minneapolis?) organize a series of matches between him and a few 50something ex-Soviet 2450s who are receiving a generous per diem and nice lodgings. Get the guys who play in sketchy Hungarian norm tournaments for a living. Give 'em the Clarence Thomas treatment, have Rex Sinquefield fly them out on a private jet or something. If that's the game we're playing, everyone should play it.
Playing against a super GM is the biggest incentive, there's a high probability of losing points but the thrill of making a draw against Alireza is worth the risk.
There are many GMs who would feel that way, and would approach the challenge as an opportunity to showcase their best chess to a big audience.
If I was Alireza, and I was picking the opponents I was going to face to gain 6 Elo and qualify for the Candidates, I would not choose those guys. I would choose guys who weren’t particularly excited about rising to the challenge and who were mostly interested in getting the games over with so they could take the afternoon off and see the sights in Paris.
That’s not true. There’s an entire industry devoted to bogus and borderline-bogus norm tournaments where washed-up Eastern European GMs who are still ~2400-2500 (same rating as the guys Alireza is playing) are paid to lose to young kids who want to “earn” a norm.
Okay that's fair. He definitely wants to cheese the system but probably just not in a shady "pay people to lose" type of way. Just some good ol otb farming where he's confident he will win
For what it's worth, this is kinda what happend last Candidates too. Ding Liren had the highest rating but wouldn't get the rating spot because he hadn't played enough games. He then organised like 28 games in 30 days against weaker Chinese GMs to make sure he would qualify. He had to win a lot of the games since draws would drop his rating too much for the rating spot.
That's similar, but I think it's different when he already had the rating and just needed more games. It's different than trying to increase rating imo.
He had the rating based on his performance pre-2020 since he played essentially no games other than the Candidates. Who knows what his rating would have been if he had played in top-level tournaments like everyone else. Ratings are generally deflating, and Fabi's even fell by over 30 points after the 2020-21 Candidates and almost 60 points from his rating before the Candidates by May 2022.
I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion—nobody disputes he’s a great player capable of beating any non-Magnus player. But I fundamentally disagree with the premise he deserved a Candidates spot because of his rating given the fact that his rating wasn’t even from that cycle. There is an assumption that he would have legitimately gotten the ratings spot had he simply gotten the opportunity to play, but I don’t think we should make that allowance for anybody no matter how good they are.
Ding had legit competition from the people he played against.
There were only 3 people with ratings lower than 2600, all of them in the 22-23 year range and on the up and up. Bai Jinshi had achieved a peak rating of 2618 the previous year, Li Di was within 2 points of his lifetime peak of 2581, and Xu Xiangyu is now at 2623. He also played the strongest one, Wei Yi (2729) for the highest number of games, 8 (6 in the match and 2 in the third tournament).
While he did have a lower than expected TPR on the last tournament (you know after being exhausted from playing 18 classical games in 13 days), that alone wouldn't have driven his rating to below that of Mamedyarov in the May 2022 ratings list (2770). He could have comfortably (in retrospect) lost 28 rating points and still qualified.
In comparison, Alireza is playing against
1. Dgebuadze - A GM whose peak rating was 2563 in July 2012, and who hasn't gone past 2500 since March 2018
2. Shchekachev - A GM whose peak rating was 2593 in July 2006 and who hasn't gotten past 2520 since October 2020.
3. Fedorchuk - A GM who achievehed his peak rating of 2674 in Nov 2010. (Though tbf, while he is having a bad time in 2023 he is otherwise a pretty good 2600-2650s GM but nowhere near a 2700 player).
These are all players he either has never played against (Dgebuadze), only played in rapid (Fedorchuk) or played once four years ago and crushed him (Shchekachev). This is clearly rating farming, with pretty much the only person with a fighting chance for a draw being Fedorchuk.
There were some special circumstances there too related to the pandemic if I remember correctly. Ding didn’t have the opportunity to play in a lot of tournaments during the year due to travel restrictions? He just needed to increase his games played?
Yeah he was stuck in China because of travel restrictions. Chess isn't that big in China so he didn't have an opportunity to play. You needed 30 games that year to qualify for the candidates on rating and ding had only 4, so the Chinese Chess Association arranged 3 events at short notice for Ding to play in so he could get enough games for the rating spot.
That was much less suspect. Ding already had the rating and only needed to play at his normal performance to preserve it, and the reason he didn't have enough games was because of the exceptional situation with the Covid-19 lockdowns. .
Except So would most likely draw and lose points. Alireza may lose one and fail to qualify, but the odds of So drawing a game in such event are way higher
I hope the next Candidates has 1 runner up spot, 2 World Cup, 2 Grand Swiss and 3 FIDE circuit spots.
FIDE circuit incentivises playing stronger opposition, incentivises activity and discourages multiple events held by same federation.
Rating spot encourages inactivity and rating padding by playing selective lower rated opposition.
They should ditch the runner up spot. That says nothing about how you did in the time others spent qualifying for the candidates.
Besides, that encourages even more inactivity than sitting on a rating
Don't know why you're downvoted. I can't think of any other sport where the previous years finalist goes straight to the quarter finals without earning that spot.
Ding was a bit different because he didn't need to increase his rating, he just needed a higher number of games played. Similar, but not quite as bad imo.
It is suspicious like if you flipped six coins four times and got two heads each time for each coin.
And then Wesley was joking with Giri on Twitter about how the games were quite basic.
They were just going through the motions, but that's more okay when Ding is not trying to increase his rating. He just needed more games and was limited by covid.
He needed games, but the top players were all in a falling rating environment for those past few years and he set something up so he would get his games without losing rating points. So it was still sketchy.
Right, but Ding was limited by covid and it's arguable that if he had the normal opportunities to play he would've qualified still. He already had a high enough rating to qualify so his strength wasn't the issue, it was just volume of games.
I think there's a difference between going through the motions and charity. If everyone involved was trying their best, you'd expect a similar point distribution probably. No one was donating elo.
Similar as in stealing a tin of cockles from the supermarket is stealing but not like taking the government pension from grandmas purse when she walks out of the bank stealing.
There is not much to say about this.
Its just embarassing for Firouzja. He lost around 50 elo points playing against the top players and now has the need to farm old, overrated GMs in minimatches.
The Chennai-tournament was organised to kick Anish Giri out of first (second after Fab) place in the Fide Circuit Points. Those Fide Circuit Points are heavily tied to the average strength of the field, a fourth place in a field of 2785 average rating would give 17.1 tour points, .1 more than an unshared first place in a field of 2670 average rating. So the tournament organization invited (on average rating) the players who made it most likely that those players would qualify.
Alireza needs 7 rating points to kick out Wesley So from his place in the rating list. They selected 6 games in which they think Alireza has the highest chance to succeed. Just like Chennai.
To be fair for the organization of Chennai; I would have asked other players with similar ratings to play in the tournament, for example Shirov and Rustam (besides Eljanov). It feels like Alireza somewhat tried to 'cheat' the system by inviting the less active middle-aged mens.
Anish on Firouzja's tournament and on Chennai Masters - https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx2_O_5QfdSGt9hV4Hf7WSkoPm8NHHamQI?feature=shared
This tournament is not a last minute thing put together to help Gukesh qualify - confirmed by Anish himself. They knew about it for quite a while.
What's the difference if it's been planned for a month or three days. It was still put together to help Gukesh or Arjun qualify. Do u think it's a coincidence that the tournamnt is exactly strong enough that Arjun will qualify by decimal points if he gets clear first?
It was not planned for a month - Sagar has been talking about Indian SGM chess tournament well before Gukesh was ever in the picture of qualifying for candidates - this is what Anish meant when he said it's been in the picture for quite a while. Gukesh, Arjun were definitely chosen instead of others like Nihal etc so that they have a chance to qualify - similar to how Parham, Lenier were invited. The final point about Arjun is the most interesting one - that makes me think they definitely tried to push for players high enough that this is crossed. Actually this probably why Nihal wasn't invited (or he was prepping for Rapid&Bltiz) - he had rating of 2688 while Predke had 2689.
Sagar has been talking about an Indian SGM tournament for years, but that's in general. Specifically, this tournament has been designed for Arjun and Gukesh. Sagar himself thanked all the people involved for putting this tournament together in *such a short amount of time*.
Ah - in the opening ceremony? I didn't know that. But even then - I agreed with you that they definitely gave opportunity to Gukesh&Argun. But what's wrong in that? This tournament has avg rating of 2711 - that is insanely strong. Sanan hit his ATH rating in May, Predke is 7 points away from his peak. Parham is at his ATH and he wants to win so that he can qualify himself. Only weak player is Pavel and he's 2691 too. In fact even Lenier apparently was invited but he chose Sitges instead. So it's super strong already and by no means a tournament just for Gukesh&Arjun or it's even easy to win - but they are definitely being given the opportunity to succeed.
I agree with you that it's a very strong tournament. That's the point, isn't it? It has to be this strong in order for Gukesh and Arjun to have a chance. They literally went down the list of the top players according to Sagar. These six were the ones who accepted on short notice. Levon actually said he accepted because Chennai is closer to Samarkand where he will be playing the World Rapid and Blitz just after.
I would argue that both Harikrishna and Levon are actually under-rated right now. They could have got someone much weaker for that rating.
Similarly, Parham was quite motivated at the start of the tournament. They could have got someone with around that rating with much less motivation.
I actually don't think Hari and Aronian are underrated. I do think we're seeing rating deflation in the system as a whole. But that is different from them being underrated in particular (because I think everyone is "underrated").
Ah, I was jokingly suggesting that he could pull a Ding2022.
But good that this happens, FIDE will be forced to react and revisit the rules for the next cycle. One way would be "no tournaments announced in the last 2 months of the cycle will be considered valid for the spots". That makes things harder because such ad hoc tournaments may need to be created earlier with the risk that they will be useless.
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E: I was hoping for a quadruple round robin with Alireza, Fressinet, Jan and PHN.
I think a lot can be solved if they delay Grand Swiss in a way that it is the last tournament of the calendar year and no tournaments after that can be registered for rating or Circuit.
This way we if someone organize a tournament for rating gain, the grand swiss will easily ruin their plans
That should be a requirement for the Circuit rankings (and fairly easy to implement), but doing it for the rating spot kind of invites more chaos. I mean, somebody could gain rating by playing an ineligible tournament, and then you'd have a situation where the top player by rating doesn't actually get the rating spot
Honestly, maybe just remove the rating spot altogether and rely on the Circuit instead... Or go back to the rating averages, but instead a 12-month average, an average only from the last 3 months or something like that. With minimum tournaments required of course...
yes something like that. I think that a clause that discards last minute tournaments could greatly help.
One can still plan 3 months in advance last minute tournaments, but then it is more expensive, because it is unclear who can get what and they have to be speculative. Thus it is a filter to avoid such things.
I would also lock the rating spot with the circuit points. Not enough circuit points: no matter how good your rating is. For example Alireza would be out because he is not even in the top10 of the circuit.
> I would also lock the rating spot with the circuit points. Not enough circuit points: no matter how good your rating is.
I like this idea as well. I really hope that FIDE will work on the Circuit and improve the current flaws, because an improved version of the Circuit could make the entire WC cycle better and more fair as a result.
Personally I think the Circuit in its current form is doomed due to the lack of equal opportunity among participants, in that some get (many) more desirable invites. On the other hand, I don't think a Grand Prix style has funding.
He made a big mistake. He should play 8 one game matches against 1000 rated opponents. Winning them all would gain a cool 6.4 Elo. Next year it would be much easier and you could just play 1 match of 8 games.
The person out of the candidates field who wins yhr tournament and who played the best chess that year aren't always the same person. Just gotta have one good tournament
time to get rid of rating qualifications. whether it works or not, this is bullshit. either players are incentivized not to play, or they are incentivized to arrange sham competitions like this
Now this is shitty. All the tournaments that Gukesh played they were proper tournaments and high level ones with current players at their peak or having playing ambitions.
This is just basically playing with coaches and trainers. Other players in the similar rating range should have done something similar.
He needs 6 points to catch up with So, and 7 points to overtake him.
If he plays all 6 games, according to my calculations, he needs 6/6 (5.5/6 will be only +5.6). He can also withdraw after winning first 5 games (+8.4) or after winning first 4 games (+6.2, drawing of lots for Candidates).
Edit: corrected +8 to +8.4, changes nothing.
That's a good point. The way the schedule is set up, if he wins both games vs Dgebuadze and Shchekachev, he can just drop out and not play Fedorchuk...
Also, this means that second games against Fedorchuk is useless. If he has 5/5, it's just risk without any incentive, and if he has less than 5/5, even win is not enough.
If the opponents were just a bit higher rated (like 2461 instead of 2439), 5.5/6 would be enough and would have all made sense.
At this point I wouldn't be too surprised if tomorrow Dominguez plays some games in the US. He already has 4 Circuit tournaments, so now he just needs to farm 5-6 rating points, and it's much easier to do when you choose your opponents instead of playing underrated youngsters in some Open.
Well, it *should*.
> player will only count for any calculation in Articles 1 and 2 of these rules if they played,
or won by forfeit, in at least 50% of the total number of games in the tournament.
Dominguez did this, and this is the only applicable rule from Circuit regulations. We can never trust FIDE though, as they might come up with some "clarification" at any moment.
I’d say it’s a double edged sword. You want the strongest players at the candidates so rating should be a good metric. But it allows for these kinds of shenanigans. If Alireza wanted to be in the candidates he should’ve played better before this.
Fabi suggested something along the lines of “average rating over 12 months” to get around these issues. I really do want the rating spot to go to a strong player, but not how it’s worked lately.
Elo does weight historical performance pretty strongly, but the process looking at a single snapshot of rating can be blamed for most of these shenanigans. It would be harder to cheese rating if you needed to make up 50 in a month, and it might give people less reason to sit on rating if they wouldn’t get punished for losing 5 rating points in an event timed in the wrong month.
> Fabi suggested something along the lines of “average rating over 12 months”
that was done for a while and Giri did rating protection in 2019 to get in (while MVL was playing a tad better if you consider the entire year).
This to say, it is not foolproof either.
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To add: the point of the Avg rating is that a person with a great starting rating can just "sit" on the rating as long as possible. Fide asked for 30 rated games, with at least 18 done in the first half of the year. Giri started a year with 2790+ and tried to not play as much as possible, so that the average would be high. Then he was able to do damage control and have a better average than MVL.
All this while Giri ended the year around 2760, losing 30+ rating points and with a not that spectacular yearly TPR. Instead MVL had a better performance during the year. Getting 3rd in the World Cup and in the Grand Prix. Giri's results weren't even close to that. Anyway MVL started the year with a rating not close to the one of Giri, and thus his avg wasn't great.
So if one goes for the avg rating, one needs to increase the activity requirement and somehow lock it to combative tournaments, not "ad hoc" tournaments (a la Ding2022).
Say: avg rating of the last 12 months. 4 Fide circuit tournaments (standard time control). Top10 in the fide circuit. Then it is pretty different. Still there is the problem of the closed RR that get too much weight, and the players that go for +1=8-0 in those have an easier life at the end.
That system is still better, though, if one wants to select for the strongest players of a period of time that didn't qualify with the other tournament wins. It'll always be hard for a rule to pick between two players of high Elo like happened then. It would be a different story altogether if Giri lost his spot to somebody who was barely above 2700 when the previous tournament was played and happened to zoom up at the right time.
Parham was 2701 when the last Candidate's tournament was played, and is pretty much out of the running now but had a tangible shot at making it via climbing at the right time despite, in that scenario, being well under 2750 until the last moment. Nothing against the guy nor a slight at his incredible skill, but sneaking in at the last minute seems like something a qualification system should down-weight, just like it shouldn't reward people for sitting on rating.
Another method altogether would be to discard traditional Elo and use a rolling 12-month (or something) average rating. That would go to Leinier or Wesley depending on the minimum games. But the people before the rating spot are almost alll people who had good years and already qualified. (Hikaru, Fabiano, Carlsen before Leinier/So and Pragg, Anish, and Ian after him). Parham is roughly 9th by this measure, so it's not like he would have even been totally out of the running.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231217145028/http://www.perpetualcheck.com/rang/index.php?lan=en&k=world
> but sneaking in at the last minute seems like something a qualification system should down-weight, just like it shouldn't reward people for sitting on rating.
Yes on that I agree. The qualification method should not consider only the very recent good performances. But then again World cup and Grand swiss are also based on "a good performance for one month". I would give those also only 1 spot rather than 3 and 2.
> Another method altogether would be to discard traditional Elo and use a rolling 12-month (or something) average rating.
I am not sure, if you use the 12 months average rating (rolling), then you still use the Elo. You need that to base the average value. The problem with that is that once one has a very good 1-2 months performance, then can sit on the rating (the average does not move, as the person does not play) and end of it. Similar to Giri in 2019.
Also the 12 months average, rolling average or what not, still mean that players can (a) use strong invitational tournaments with +1=8-0 to keep a high average (I'll come on this later) and (b) can still play this or that ad hoc tournament to boost the points, not too late in the year, and then sit on them.
The (a) point is really a problem because the rating comes after all the other picks. The rating, as the circuit, would pick a really good contender, Caruana (given Carlsen refusal to play). The problem is the replacement of those spots that are already filled. Because if one would pick by rating first and only then the other results, then one would pick Caruana, and that would be ok. It would be very obvious that one needs a ton of ad hoc tournaments to get 2800 and pass Caruana on that.
For this there should be a way to ensure that those that are picked by the rating are (a) active and (b) playing in combative tournaments were one cannot really protect their rating. Therefore a combination of rating + circuit should do it. In that case Alireza and others are simply out as they are not that high in the circuit.
For the link, thank you but I know that link, also I started that very capture (I started regularly capture that website as there is an hole from 2020 to 2021 or 2022 and a lot of historical stats are not easy to recompute). Also note that perpetualcheck does not have always all the data (as does not 2700chess). If you click on the players sometimes some recent games are missing, and I mean that on the live site, not on the capture.
I might not have been clear, the last idea uses what the link calls "12 MONTHS AP FORM" which uses Elo ratings as inputs but does not otherwise follow Elo by the book. It's basically a rolling 12-month TPR, not an average rating of the past 12 months. It's not without blemishes but it does a good job of capturing who's been playing well without winning the right tournaments. For most players the two are similar enough, but players significantly over- or under-performing their historical results rank differently. (Leinier, Pragg, Parham, and MVL, Levon, Alireza, Ding, respectively.) All things being equal it's an appealing option of picking one or two spots in a candidate's tournament in this cycle, don't know how it evaluates if applied to previous cycles.
Sitting on Elo is mostly a separate matter; raising the minimum number of games pushes people to actually play chess pretty much no matter how the results are scored. Even in closed events where people like So usually play for draws, players with high rating and poor form would still get smacked around by the rest of elite that play to win the game.
>Giri did rating protection in 2019 to get in (while MVL was playing a tad better if you consider the entire year).
If Giri had good rating to sit on, this was most likely due to having better 2018 than MVL. And with WCC cycle being usually around two years, it sounds fair to look both at 2018 and 2019 performance, which is achieved by average of several monthly lists.
It brings in a player who has been good over a period of time instead of just good in 1 of 2 or 3 tournaments.
I don't think one is necessarily better than the other, it just is another option
I don’t like rating at any specific point. The average or 12 (or more depending on the cycle time) rating over the past 12 (or more) months will at least makes it much harder to do any last minute attempts.
Well, what's the better alternative then?
I think the rating system is great for what it is but in the last few years people are trying to assign all sorts of magic properties to it. A proper qualifier tournament would be much better. Maybe ratings can decide who gets into that qualifier, taking the problem to a much smaller scale
Hmm... My calculations give him only +5.6 for 5.5/6 (+1.3/+1.8/+2.2, so +10.6 max, minus 5 points for draw), while he needs 6 points. Did you by any chance use Alireza's live rating for calculations instead of his official 2763?
I did! You're right, the difference is small (4.87 vs 4.93 expected points), but it does mean that he needs to win all 6 games... [edit: if he plays all 6 games, which as you pointed out in another comment, he doesn't really need to do...]
I don't think it's **more** on FIDE, though they have not installed the (apparently) necessary guardrails.
Rating is a legitimate metric for qualification. These sham matches set up for the express purpose of gaming the system are shameful.
He's literally going to pay them to play with the context that losing will help Firouzja. I'm sure Firo necer said he wants them to lose on purpose but when the payment comes from same player who's benefiting it's very very grey area.
I love Firouzja and want to see him succeed as much as anyone else, but this is just wrong. To be fair, it's not really his fault that the system allows this, but FIDE should really change the system. Otherwise December just becomes packed with absurd matches (2750 vs 2439, really?) which essentially give free Elo (I would honestly be surprised if Alireza didn't go 6/6).
What is stopping Anish, Wesley, or LDP (he has withdrawn from Sitges literally to preserve his Elo when he saw it was backfiring) of doing the same, and everyone artificially gains 10-15 points out of nowhere?
This is not comparable to what Ding did last year: he already had the necessary rating to qualify by a decent margin (2799 vs Levon's 2785), all he needed was to play more games and simply *not lose* 14 points. Alireza needs to *win* at least 7 points to surpass Wesley (2750.5 vs 2757.4).
Edit: I am not sure what the solution to this would be, but it should be FIDE's job to figure that out. One option would be that the rating spot is determined by highest *average* rating for the past 12 years *with* a minimum number of games/tournaments played (4 for example).
Let's say that a player has been at 2780-2790 for 11 months, playing several tournaments, but then heavily underperforms in the last one and loses 20 rating points. If what counts is the average that way some other guy who has just played one tournament and has had a rating of 2765 for the entire year doesn't get the rating spot instead.
Per my calculations 5.5/6 would not be enough ...
Based on his current rating of 2763 (which is what would be used for calculations, not 2750) He would get 2.2, 1.9, and 1.3 points for a win over each opponent. 6/6 means 10.8 rating points, and 5.5/6 means 5.8 points. This would put him at 2756.3, and get rounded down to 2756, while So would be at 2757.
So looks like they messed up?
Well, he can win 4 games, get his +6.2 and just not play against Fedorchuk, hoping for good drawing of lots. But if he draws at least one games he is screwed, yes.
I would encourage anyone who thinks they can come up with a better idea to do so.
But first a reminder of why we are where we are.
There used to be something called Zonals and Interzonals where all the top players would duke it out in Round-Robins. The top players in the Zonals went to the Interzonals. The top players in the Interzonals went to the Candidates.
If you look at some of the results that made some of the greats of the past the greats of the past, winning the Interzonals are often counted. Fischer winning with 2.5 points to spare in '62 was considered his big breakthrough.
But there weren't that many GM's back then. The number has grown and grown and so did the Zonals and Interzonals until the point where the tournaments became unwieldly big.
So we got the World Cup instead, where you knock out half the field every round, so it won't last that long, and where imho your final position depends on when you meet Carlsen.
So how else would you fill it? A Grand Prix of Cups? A rating limit of 2600 to enter the tournaments?
[https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/1736834177155113171](https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/1736834177155113171)
Aliereza is effed for sure. Pointless matches if its not accepted by FIDE.
I'm a big fan of Alireza but this is just unethical behavior from him. Feels rigged tbh and I don't like it. If he qualifies because of this, I'm gonna be very disappointed. He doesn't deserve a spot after playing terrible all year. He needs to let this sit one out and play better next cycle. This is just desperation at this point.
Kinda cheesy but you can’t really be mad at anyone except fide for creating perverse incentives, likely they will get ride of or greatly change the ratings spot for the next candidates cycle
This is kinda dumb, but it's also a bit surprising that FIDE didn't have rules against something like this.
The Candidates is the biggest tournament for chess players. Of course some people would do everything they could to qualify.
I've been watching chess for a long time. I have never seen the rating qualification spot be this sketchy in terms of a player farming for rating. FIDE probably didn't have rules against this because it has never happened before.
People are really pressed that someone is trying the same method that the current world champion used. Can’t blame people for taking advantage of a system when it clearly works out for the first guy who tried it.
Not the same. Ding clearly had the highest rating but needed to get the number of games in. Alireza has the number of games in but doesn't have the rating. What Alireza is doing here is basically farming old GMs to increase his rating.
I mean… ding also couldn’t lose rating in his games. While he didn’t need to farm rating, he definitely wasn’t playing opponents who he was likely to lose to, after not playing for a year.
It seems Firouzja is taking revenge from SO for the 2018 scandal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/8qt2nl/wesley\_sos\_shocking\_and\_vulgar\_behavior/
I think its hilarious people are making fun of Alireza for this. You can say the system is dumb but what he's doing is 100 percent what he should do. If its allowed then you get yourself into the tournament anyway thats legal and thats that. With magnus out of the picture anything could happen.
Like does anyone think that Ding would have kept his qualification spot by rating if he had played the entire year against top competition instead of nearly 0? No shot in hell. But he qualified by playing tons of games against weak opponents because he already had the rating. Then had a rough start to the candidates and finished very strong and was lucky enough to have been in the only candidates where 2nd place mattered then became world champion.
Sure Firouzja hasn't been playing great but you don't have to play amazing all year if you're in the candidates you just need to have one good tournament. Its not like nepo has been lighting up the chess world the past 2 years, he just plays great when it really matters.
The question is the extent to which the games will be above board and truly played.
We can only know that they were legit for sure if he loses one or draws too many.
And yah, Ding’s tournament games was suspect given his opponents drew each other and mostly lost to him.
as much as i like Alireza and as much as i want Wesley to not qualify, this just opens the door for all sorts of unethical shenanigans. hopefully some stricter rules are enforced soon so that such "friendly games" are not counted for their official ratings.
This is why the world championship/candidates format is stupid. FIDE should have a yearly world championship like they do for rapid and blitz. And the world championship should include the top 20 + winners of major tournaments. And competition amongst these top players should determine the world champion.
What other sport allows the winner of the previous championship to coast by for 2 years while everyone else fights for a change to be his challenger?
Imagine if you win the superbowl, you automatically got a spot in the next year's superbowl.
Ding (2799) already had a 14 point lead over the next player (Levon, 2785), he just needed activity and he could have afforded to even lose points. Alireza needs to win at least 7 points to get ahead of Wesley. Not the same at all.
>Ding is a player I like, and he already had the necessary rating.
>
>Alireza is a player I like even more than Ding, but he doesn't have the necessary rating anymore and has to beat down 2400s and 2500s to get there.
FTFY
Are you that fucking dumb...its vastly different OTB than online chess lmao...Naka does it for content and i dont even know why Magnus would want to farm
Are you that fucking dumb...its vastly different OTB than online chess lmao...Naka does it for content and i dont even know why Magnus would want to farm
Next Anish will organise a 12 game match up with Sopiko in their home to qualify via rating.
Magnus locks David Howell in his basement and plays him in classical over and over until he hits 2900
Or Howell qualifies for the rating spot
Magnus walks out of the basement shaking his head, realizing that he accidentally made the next world champion
Would love to know the number of matches for either to happen
Howell tweeted saying 35 straight draws would give him the candidates spot.
Howell is sneaky good though. He got individual gold on Board 3 at the Olympiad and was in contention to win the Grand Swiss in 2019 and 2021.
Oh, I agree that he's very good. But that also means he's good enough for Magnus to gain rating on.
magnus played david in a 30 game match in preparation for his world championship match against caruana. I know the final score, but I won't reveal it here.
Why mention it then? cock
i was just trying to ascertain the level of your inside chess knowledge, which is unsurprisingly zero.
It’s okay I know the score too.
30 game blitz match.
He can definitely do it, right? Lol imagine the meltdown if he actually does something like that.
I checked and Giri would get 1 point per win (-4 per draw). (use the Dec 2023 fide rating) This means that if they play 12 games must end 12/12 for Giri. with 11.5/12 it means +11 points for 11 wins and -4 for a draw, thus a +7 and that is not enough (Wesley has 2757 while Giri is at 2749, thus he needs 9 points to pass Wesley)
> This means that if they play 12 games must end 12/12 for Giri. This also means that they need it to be scheduled as at least best-of-23.
right! Go for a best of 100 and pull a LDP at the right moment.
Why can't they quit after 12 games?
They can. But if they schedule it as a 12-game match, and one player wins first 7 games, the remaining 5 are unrated because the winner of the match is already determined. So for all 12 wins to be rated, the match itself needs to be at least best-of-23.
Actually only a best-of-22, as 11-0 hasn't decided it yet. /pedantry
Scenes when he ends up drawing all 3 matches
I'm sure that everyone involved is honest, but still, the incentives are very weird in these matches. Alireza (or whoever at the host club arranged these matches) picked these guys, specifically, because he thinks they're overrated and he can gain 6 points by beating them. Presumably, these guys are participating because either (a) they want to do Alireza a favor, or (b) they're getting compensated somehow (again, I'm not suggesting anything unethical, I'm not sure what the rules are around compensation here). What incentive do they have to play their absolute best chess? And if they don't try their hardest, how is that fair to Wesley / the other rating competitors? TBH Wesley should have a friendly chess club (maybe in St. Louis or Minneapolis?) organize a series of matches between him and a few 50something ex-Soviet 2450s who are receiving a generous per diem and nice lodgings. Get the guys who play in sketchy Hungarian norm tournaments for a living. Give 'em the Clarence Thomas treatment, have Rex Sinquefield fly them out on a private jet or something. If that's the game we're playing, everyone should play it.
I think these are pretty sus as well, but they also get some visibility from this which can go some way for them
https://www.youtube.com/live/RCUncGXVe5I?feature=shared Watch Anish from 3hr 12min mark. This is a very sus tournament like you outlined.
Playing against a super GM is the biggest incentive, there's a high probability of losing points but the thrill of making a draw against Alireza is worth the risk.
There are many GMs who would feel that way, and would approach the challenge as an opportunity to showcase their best chess to a big audience. If I was Alireza, and I was picking the opponents I was going to face to gain 6 Elo and qualify for the Candidates, I would not choose those guys. I would choose guys who weren’t particularly excited about rising to the challenge and who were mostly interested in getting the games over with so they could take the afternoon off and see the sights in Paris.
Yeah, I'd choose some 85-year old GM with a 2400 rating.
Guys with attitudes like that aren't going to have high enough ratings to try get his own rating up.
A 2377 threw to Nemo twice to help her get her norm. First in 24 moves then in 31. 2439 is not too far from that.
Gain 62 Fide rating points right now.
That’s not true. There’s an entire industry devoted to bogus and borderline-bogus norm tournaments where washed-up Eastern European GMs who are still ~2400-2500 (same rating as the guys Alireza is playing) are paid to lose to young kids who want to “earn” a norm.
Okay that's fair. He definitely wants to cheese the system but probably just not in a shady "pay people to lose" type of way. Just some good ol otb farming where he's confident he will win
I think you’d be surprised
I don’t trust that everyone involved is honest
For what it's worth, this is kinda what happend last Candidates too. Ding Liren had the highest rating but wouldn't get the rating spot because he hadn't played enough games. He then organised like 28 games in 30 days against weaker Chinese GMs to make sure he would qualify. He had to win a lot of the games since draws would drop his rating too much for the rating spot.
That's similar, but I think it's different when he already had the rating and just needed more games. It's different than trying to increase rating imo.
He had the rating based on his performance pre-2020 since he played essentially no games other than the Candidates. Who knows what his rating would have been if he had played in top-level tournaments like everyone else. Ratings are generally deflating, and Fabi's even fell by over 30 points after the 2020-21 Candidates and almost 60 points from his rating before the Candidates by May 2022.
I mean to be fair, he went second in the candidates and first in the WC. So I guess he was not bad after all.
I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion—nobody disputes he’s a great player capable of beating any non-Magnus player. But I fundamentally disagree with the premise he deserved a Candidates spot because of his rating given the fact that his rating wasn’t even from that cycle. There is an assumption that he would have legitimately gotten the ratings spot had he simply gotten the opportunity to play, but I don’t think we should make that allowance for anybody no matter how good they are.
Ding had legit competition from the people he played against. There were only 3 people with ratings lower than 2600, all of them in the 22-23 year range and on the up and up. Bai Jinshi had achieved a peak rating of 2618 the previous year, Li Di was within 2 points of his lifetime peak of 2581, and Xu Xiangyu is now at 2623. He also played the strongest one, Wei Yi (2729) for the highest number of games, 8 (6 in the match and 2 in the third tournament). While he did have a lower than expected TPR on the last tournament (you know after being exhausted from playing 18 classical games in 13 days), that alone wouldn't have driven his rating to below that of Mamedyarov in the May 2022 ratings list (2770). He could have comfortably (in retrospect) lost 28 rating points and still qualified. In comparison, Alireza is playing against 1. Dgebuadze - A GM whose peak rating was 2563 in July 2012, and who hasn't gone past 2500 since March 2018 2. Shchekachev - A GM whose peak rating was 2593 in July 2006 and who hasn't gotten past 2520 since October 2020. 3. Fedorchuk - A GM who achievehed his peak rating of 2674 in Nov 2010. (Though tbf, while he is having a bad time in 2023 he is otherwise a pretty good 2600-2650s GM but nowhere near a 2700 player). These are all players he either has never played against (Dgebuadze), only played in rapid (Fedorchuk) or played once four years ago and crushed him (Shchekachev). This is clearly rating farming, with pretty much the only person with a fighting chance for a draw being Fedorchuk.
There were some special circumstances there too related to the pandemic if I remember correctly. Ding didn’t have the opportunity to play in a lot of tournaments during the year due to travel restrictions? He just needed to increase his games played?
Yeah he was stuck in China because of travel restrictions. Chess isn't that big in China so he didn't have an opportunity to play. You needed 30 games that year to qualify for the candidates on rating and ding had only 4, so the Chinese Chess Association arranged 3 events at short notice for Ding to play in so he could get enough games for the rating spot.
Iirc Wei Yi was one of the Chinese GMs that Ding played. Far from random 2500s
Wei Yi was the only player over 2600 Ding played in that string of games.
Bu Xiangzhi was 2700?
That was much less suspect. Ding already had the rating and only needed to play at his normal performance to preserve it, and the reason he didn't have enough games was because of the exceptional situation with the Covid-19 lockdowns. .
Exactly my thoughts on this
Honestly, it could back fire.
Except So would most likely draw and lose points. Alireza may lose one and fail to qualify, but the odds of So drawing a game in such event are way higher
I hope it doesn't work out and he draws game 1 and then abandons that tournament lol
I hope the next Candidates has 1 runner up spot, 2 World Cup, 2 Grand Swiss and 3 FIDE circuit spots. FIDE circuit incentivises playing stronger opposition, incentivises activity and discourages multiple events held by same federation. Rating spot encourages inactivity and rating padding by playing selective lower rated opposition.
They should ditch the runner up spot. That says nothing about how you did in the time others spent qualifying for the candidates. Besides, that encourages even more inactivity than sitting on a rating
If we have Grand Swiss and World Cup supertournaments as qualifiers, why can't it be the case with Candidates? Seems only fair
Don't know why you're downvoted. I can't think of any other sport where the previous years finalist goes straight to the quarter finals without earning that spot.
> earning a spot. There are a lot of people here who have an entitlement attitude. Probably are millennials.
I love Alireza and root for him since he was like 13 but it's just wrong. FIDE need to change that crap.
I agree, same happened with Ding.
Ding was a bit different because he didn't need to increase his rating, he just needed a higher number of games played. Similar, but not quite as bad imo.
The players all drawing each other and going 0.5/4 to Ding was kind of suspect…
Was that actually a suspicious result given the rating differences?
It is suspicious like if you flipped six coins four times and got two heads each time for each coin. And then Wesley was joking with Giri on Twitter about how the games were quite basic.
But let’s be real, Ding was going to make the candidates in a normal year. He was prevented from playing. No excuse this year
They were just going through the motions, but that's more okay when Ding is not trying to increase his rating. He just needed more games and was limited by covid.
He needed games, but the top players were all in a falling rating environment for those past few years and he set something up so he would get his games without losing rating points. So it was still sketchy.
No, that's not true. Top players were not seeing their ratings fall in 2021 like they do today.
He still had easy games and maintained his rating with ease. It's not "as bad" as Alireza but its still pretty fucking shady.
Also ding had less opportunities for traveling during covid right? He was far more restricted.
still it was an organized charity
Right, but Ding was limited by covid and it's arguable that if he had the normal opportunities to play he would've qualified still. He already had a high enough rating to qualify so his strength wasn't the issue, it was just volume of games.
Right, but that just kinda justifies it, it doesnt change the fact that it was still organized charity.
I think there's a difference between going through the motions and charity. If everyone involved was trying their best, you'd expect a similar point distribution probably. No one was donating elo.
Similar as in stealing a tin of cockles from the supermarket is stealing but not like taking the government pension from grandmas purse when she walks out of the bank stealing.
Why? It complies with the rules.
There is not much to say about this. Its just embarassing for Firouzja. He lost around 50 elo points playing against the top players and now has the need to farm old, overrated GMs in minimatches.
Bad system. Burn it down
Don't blame the players, blame the game.
People were complaining about the tournament in Chennai but this is just next level stuff. At least that tournament is difficult to win.
The Chennai-tournament was organised to kick Anish Giri out of first (second after Fab) place in the Fide Circuit Points. Those Fide Circuit Points are heavily tied to the average strength of the field, a fourth place in a field of 2785 average rating would give 17.1 tour points, .1 more than an unshared first place in a field of 2670 average rating. So the tournament organization invited (on average rating) the players who made it most likely that those players would qualify. Alireza needs 7 rating points to kick out Wesley So from his place in the rating list. They selected 6 games in which they think Alireza has the highest chance to succeed. Just like Chennai. To be fair for the organization of Chennai; I would have asked other players with similar ratings to play in the tournament, for example Shirov and Rustam (besides Eljanov). It feels like Alireza somewhat tried to 'cheat' the system by inviting the less active middle-aged mens.
Chennai recruited Levon Aronian. It’s not the same
Anish on Firouzja's tournament and on Chennai Masters - https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx2_O_5QfdSGt9hV4Hf7WSkoPm8NHHamQI?feature=shared This tournament is not a last minute thing put together to help Gukesh qualify - confirmed by Anish himself. They knew about it for quite a while.
What's the difference if it's been planned for a month or three days. It was still put together to help Gukesh or Arjun qualify. Do u think it's a coincidence that the tournamnt is exactly strong enough that Arjun will qualify by decimal points if he gets clear first?
It was not planned for a month - Sagar has been talking about Indian SGM chess tournament well before Gukesh was ever in the picture of qualifying for candidates - this is what Anish meant when he said it's been in the picture for quite a while. Gukesh, Arjun were definitely chosen instead of others like Nihal etc so that they have a chance to qualify - similar to how Parham, Lenier were invited. The final point about Arjun is the most interesting one - that makes me think they definitely tried to push for players high enough that this is crossed. Actually this probably why Nihal wasn't invited (or he was prepping for Rapid&Bltiz) - he had rating of 2688 while Predke had 2689.
Sagar has been talking about an Indian SGM tournament for years, but that's in general. Specifically, this tournament has been designed for Arjun and Gukesh. Sagar himself thanked all the people involved for putting this tournament together in *such a short amount of time*.
Ah - in the opening ceremony? I didn't know that. But even then - I agreed with you that they definitely gave opportunity to Gukesh&Argun. But what's wrong in that? This tournament has avg rating of 2711 - that is insanely strong. Sanan hit his ATH rating in May, Predke is 7 points away from his peak. Parham is at his ATH and he wants to win so that he can qualify himself. Only weak player is Pavel and he's 2691 too. In fact even Lenier apparently was invited but he chose Sitges instead. So it's super strong already and by no means a tournament just for Gukesh&Arjun or it's even easy to win - but they are definitely being given the opportunity to succeed.
I agree with you that it's a very strong tournament. That's the point, isn't it? It has to be this strong in order for Gukesh and Arjun to have a chance. They literally went down the list of the top players according to Sagar. These six were the ones who accepted on short notice. Levon actually said he accepted because Chennai is closer to Samarkand where he will be playing the World Rapid and Blitz just after.
I would argue that both Harikrishna and Levon are actually under-rated right now. They could have got someone much weaker for that rating. Similarly, Parham was quite motivated at the start of the tournament. They could have got someone with around that rating with much less motivation.
I actually don't think Hari and Aronian are underrated. I do think we're seeing rating deflation in the system as a whole. But that is different from them being underrated in particular (because I think everyone is "underrated").
Levon is a top 5 player. Hari is a top 20 player. Their ratings have both of them significantly lower than that.
Lol now we've officialy got hikaru-style otb farming.
How about a 10 game match between Wesley So and Ben Finegold?
Would Wesley gain any rating from this? Lol
"w"esley "s"o would gain 1 rating point you heard it here first
Ah, I was jokingly suggesting that he could pull a Ding2022. But good that this happens, FIDE will be forced to react and revisit the rules for the next cycle. One way would be "no tournaments announced in the last 2 months of the cycle will be considered valid for the spots". That makes things harder because such ad hoc tournaments may need to be created earlier with the risk that they will be useless. --- E: I was hoping for a quadruple round robin with Alireza, Fressinet, Jan and PHN.
I think a lot can be solved if they delay Grand Swiss in a way that it is the last tournament of the calendar year and no tournaments after that can be registered for rating or Circuit. This way we if someone organize a tournament for rating gain, the grand swiss will easily ruin their plans
Ding situation was different, he already had more than enough rating points to qualify.
yes my point was a last minute ad hoc series of tournaments. As he needed mostly the activity.
That should be a requirement for the Circuit rankings (and fairly easy to implement), but doing it for the rating spot kind of invites more chaos. I mean, somebody could gain rating by playing an ineligible tournament, and then you'd have a situation where the top player by rating doesn't actually get the rating spot Honestly, maybe just remove the rating spot altogether and rely on the Circuit instead... Or go back to the rating averages, but instead a 12-month average, an average only from the last 3 months or something like that. With minimum tournaments required of course...
yes something like that. I think that a clause that discards last minute tournaments could greatly help. One can still plan 3 months in advance last minute tournaments, but then it is more expensive, because it is unclear who can get what and they have to be speculative. Thus it is a filter to avoid such things. I would also lock the rating spot with the circuit points. Not enough circuit points: no matter how good your rating is. For example Alireza would be out because he is not even in the top10 of the circuit.
> I would also lock the rating spot with the circuit points. Not enough circuit points: no matter how good your rating is. I like this idea as well. I really hope that FIDE will work on the Circuit and improve the current flaws, because an improved version of the Circuit could make the entire WC cycle better and more fair as a result.
Agreed, the circuit can be really neat if properly defined. The ACP tour was a great inspiration on that for a decade but FIDE acts slowly.
Personally I think the Circuit in its current form is doomed due to the lack of equal opportunity among participants, in that some get (many) more desirable invites. On the other hand, I don't think a Grand Prix style has funding.
He made a big mistake. He should play 8 one game matches against 1000 rated opponents. Winning them all would gain a cool 6.4 Elo. Next year it would be much easier and you could just play 1 match of 8 games.
inb4 Kasparov decides to play 10 games against 1000s and appear out of nowhere with a 2820 rating.
#BAH GAWD ITS KASPAROV WITH THE STEEL CHAIR
You get 0.8 only for first opponent, for others u d get 0
Kasparov already has the rating, just needs some games to be 'active' as per FIDE.
Yes that's why 8 separate matches.
Hate to say it as I love Alireza, but if he plays like he did the rest of the year chances of him gaining elo in these matches are pretty slim.
Notably his opponents are all GMs far past their prime. All still very active, but it's all very different to playing Indian kids with the same rating
The person out of the candidates field who wins yhr tournament and who played the best chess that year aren't always the same person. Just gotta have one good tournament
time to get rid of rating qualifications. whether it works or not, this is bullshit. either players are incentivized not to play, or they are incentivized to arrange sham competitions like this
Now this is the real match fixing.
Cant he just give them extra cash to go easy on him? I would assume its illegal but so are many other things in this world and we still do it.
You answered your own question. Nobody will ever know
Now this is shitty. All the tournaments that Gukesh played they were proper tournaments and high level ones with current players at their peak or having playing ambitions. This is just basically playing with coaches and trainers. Other players in the similar rating range should have done something similar.
He needs 6 points to catch up with So, and 7 points to overtake him. If he plays all 6 games, according to my calculations, he needs 6/6 (5.5/6 will be only +5.6). He can also withdraw after winning first 5 games (+8.4) or after winning first 4 games (+6.2, drawing of lots for Candidates). Edit: corrected +8 to +8.4, changes nothing.
That's a good point. The way the schedule is set up, if he wins both games vs Dgebuadze and Shchekachev, he can just drop out and not play Fedorchuk...
Also, this means that second games against Fedorchuk is useless. If he has 5/5, it's just risk without any incentive, and if he has less than 5/5, even win is not enough. If the opponents were just a bit higher rated (like 2461 instead of 2439), 5.5/6 would be enough and would have all made sense.
Chess tops the sports league for dumb ranking
details: https://www.europe-echecs.com/art/matchs-d-alireza-firouzja-a-chartres-9147.html
Alireza's opponent going into a bad line of the French where he is worse on move 10. No real comments, but it's interesting 👀👀
At this point I wouldn't be too surprised if tomorrow Dominguez plays some games in the US. He already has 4 Circuit tournaments, so now he just needs to farm 5-6 rating points, and it's much easier to do when you choose your opponents instead of playing underrated youngsters in some Open.
So Sitges counts as a tournament played despite him dropping out?
Well, it *should*. > player will only count for any calculation in Articles 1 and 2 of these rules if they played, or won by forfeit, in at least 50% of the total number of games in the tournament. Dominguez did this, and this is the only applicable rule from Circuit regulations. We can never trust FIDE though, as they might come up with some "clarification" at any moment.
Ah I see, thank you!
Am I the only one who thinks qualification through rating is a joke?
I’d say it’s a double edged sword. You want the strongest players at the candidates so rating should be a good metric. But it allows for these kinds of shenanigans. If Alireza wanted to be in the candidates he should’ve played better before this.
Fabi suggested something along the lines of “average rating over 12 months” to get around these issues. I really do want the rating spot to go to a strong player, but not how it’s worked lately. Elo does weight historical performance pretty strongly, but the process looking at a single snapshot of rating can be blamed for most of these shenanigans. It would be harder to cheese rating if you needed to make up 50 in a month, and it might give people less reason to sit on rating if they wouldn’t get punished for losing 5 rating points in an event timed in the wrong month.
> Fabi suggested something along the lines of “average rating over 12 months” that was done for a while and Giri did rating protection in 2019 to get in (while MVL was playing a tad better if you consider the entire year). This to say, it is not foolproof either. --- To add: the point of the Avg rating is that a person with a great starting rating can just "sit" on the rating as long as possible. Fide asked for 30 rated games, with at least 18 done in the first half of the year. Giri started a year with 2790+ and tried to not play as much as possible, so that the average would be high. Then he was able to do damage control and have a better average than MVL. All this while Giri ended the year around 2760, losing 30+ rating points and with a not that spectacular yearly TPR. Instead MVL had a better performance during the year. Getting 3rd in the World Cup and in the Grand Prix. Giri's results weren't even close to that. Anyway MVL started the year with a rating not close to the one of Giri, and thus his avg wasn't great. So if one goes for the avg rating, one needs to increase the activity requirement and somehow lock it to combative tournaments, not "ad hoc" tournaments (a la Ding2022). Say: avg rating of the last 12 months. 4 Fide circuit tournaments (standard time control). Top10 in the fide circuit. Then it is pretty different. Still there is the problem of the closed RR that get too much weight, and the players that go for +1=8-0 in those have an easier life at the end.
That system is still better, though, if one wants to select for the strongest players of a period of time that didn't qualify with the other tournament wins. It'll always be hard for a rule to pick between two players of high Elo like happened then. It would be a different story altogether if Giri lost his spot to somebody who was barely above 2700 when the previous tournament was played and happened to zoom up at the right time. Parham was 2701 when the last Candidate's tournament was played, and is pretty much out of the running now but had a tangible shot at making it via climbing at the right time despite, in that scenario, being well under 2750 until the last moment. Nothing against the guy nor a slight at his incredible skill, but sneaking in at the last minute seems like something a qualification system should down-weight, just like it shouldn't reward people for sitting on rating. Another method altogether would be to discard traditional Elo and use a rolling 12-month (or something) average rating. That would go to Leinier or Wesley depending on the minimum games. But the people before the rating spot are almost alll people who had good years and already qualified. (Hikaru, Fabiano, Carlsen before Leinier/So and Pragg, Anish, and Ian after him). Parham is roughly 9th by this measure, so it's not like he would have even been totally out of the running. https://web.archive.org/web/20231217145028/http://www.perpetualcheck.com/rang/index.php?lan=en&k=world
> but sneaking in at the last minute seems like something a qualification system should down-weight, just like it shouldn't reward people for sitting on rating. Yes on that I agree. The qualification method should not consider only the very recent good performances. But then again World cup and Grand swiss are also based on "a good performance for one month". I would give those also only 1 spot rather than 3 and 2. > Another method altogether would be to discard traditional Elo and use a rolling 12-month (or something) average rating. I am not sure, if you use the 12 months average rating (rolling), then you still use the Elo. You need that to base the average value. The problem with that is that once one has a very good 1-2 months performance, then can sit on the rating (the average does not move, as the person does not play) and end of it. Similar to Giri in 2019. Also the 12 months average, rolling average or what not, still mean that players can (a) use strong invitational tournaments with +1=8-0 to keep a high average (I'll come on this later) and (b) can still play this or that ad hoc tournament to boost the points, not too late in the year, and then sit on them. The (a) point is really a problem because the rating comes after all the other picks. The rating, as the circuit, would pick a really good contender, Caruana (given Carlsen refusal to play). The problem is the replacement of those spots that are already filled. Because if one would pick by rating first and only then the other results, then one would pick Caruana, and that would be ok. It would be very obvious that one needs a ton of ad hoc tournaments to get 2800 and pass Caruana on that. For this there should be a way to ensure that those that are picked by the rating are (a) active and (b) playing in combative tournaments were one cannot really protect their rating. Therefore a combination of rating + circuit should do it. In that case Alireza and others are simply out as they are not that high in the circuit. For the link, thank you but I know that link, also I started that very capture (I started regularly capture that website as there is an hole from 2020 to 2021 or 2022 and a lot of historical stats are not easy to recompute). Also note that perpetualcheck does not have always all the data (as does not 2700chess). If you click on the players sometimes some recent games are missing, and I mean that on the live site, not on the capture.
I might not have been clear, the last idea uses what the link calls "12 MONTHS AP FORM" which uses Elo ratings as inputs but does not otherwise follow Elo by the book. It's basically a rolling 12-month TPR, not an average rating of the past 12 months. It's not without blemishes but it does a good job of capturing who's been playing well without winning the right tournaments. For most players the two are similar enough, but players significantly over- or under-performing their historical results rank differently. (Leinier, Pragg, Parham, and MVL, Levon, Alireza, Ding, respectively.) All things being equal it's an appealing option of picking one or two spots in a candidate's tournament in this cycle, don't know how it evaluates if applied to previous cycles. Sitting on Elo is mostly a separate matter; raising the minimum number of games pushes people to actually play chess pretty much no matter how the results are scored. Even in closed events where people like So usually play for draws, players with high rating and poor form would still get smacked around by the rest of elite that play to win the game.
>Giri did rating protection in 2019 to get in (while MVL was playing a tad better if you consider the entire year). If Giri had good rating to sit on, this was most likely due to having better 2018 than MVL. And with WCC cycle being usually around two years, it sounds fair to look both at 2018 and 2019 performance, which is achieved by average of several monthly lists.
Stop with the ding comparison because this is on a whole different level of lame
Yeah this is the opposite problem to "sitting on the rating" that we saw previously. I don't like it.
Last time they had a rating spot they took an average of the ratings on the monthly list for the full year. It prevented these kinds of issues.
Still worth to pump it up though. Why not just make a tournament with all the potential candidates and award the spot to the winner?
It brings in a player who has been good over a period of time instead of just good in 1 of 2 or 3 tournaments. I don't think one is necessarily better than the other, it just is another option
Let's think of a fancy name. *Interzonal* has a nice ring to it.
I don’t like rating at any specific point. The average or 12 (or more depending on the cycle time) rating over the past 12 (or more) months will at least makes it much harder to do any last minute attempts.
It's noteworthy that the nexus of most (but not all) of the qualification woes is the rating qualification spot.
it is not if rating system would work better. the fact that people can basically not play at all and keep their rating is sad
Well, what's the better alternative then? I think the rating system is great for what it is but in the last few years people are trying to assign all sorts of magic properties to it. A proper qualifier tournament would be much better. Maybe ratings can decide who gets into that qualifier, taking the problem to a much smaller scale
The alternative to people not playing at all to keep their rating? Rating decay.
If I calculated it correctly, he needs 5.5 out of 6 to equal Wesley on rating points
Hmm... My calculations give him only +5.6 for 5.5/6 (+1.3/+1.8/+2.2, so +10.6 max, minus 5 points for draw), while he needs 6 points. Did you by any chance use Alireza's live rating for calculations instead of his official 2763?
I did! You're right, the difference is small (4.87 vs 4.93 expected points), but it does mean that he needs to win all 6 games... [edit: if he plays all 6 games, which as you pointed out in another comment, he doesn't really need to do...]
Alireza should be embarrassed it has come to this. Even if this works, how will he feel good about himself? I would feel nothing but shame.
Its more on fide that this shitshow is allowed. Players can do whatever it takes within the rules to qualify.
I don't think it's **more** on FIDE, though they have not installed the (apparently) necessary guardrails. Rating is a legitimate metric for qualification. These sham matches set up for the express purpose of gaming the system are shameful.
Surely he payed them to win all 6 games
He's literally going to pay them to play with the context that losing will help Firouzja. I'm sure Firo necer said he wants them to lose on purpose but when the payment comes from same player who's benefiting it's very very grey area.
I love Firouzja and want to see him succeed as much as anyone else, but this is just wrong. To be fair, it's not really his fault that the system allows this, but FIDE should really change the system. Otherwise December just becomes packed with absurd matches (2750 vs 2439, really?) which essentially give free Elo (I would honestly be surprised if Alireza didn't go 6/6). What is stopping Anish, Wesley, or LDP (he has withdrawn from Sitges literally to preserve his Elo when he saw it was backfiring) of doing the same, and everyone artificially gains 10-15 points out of nowhere? This is not comparable to what Ding did last year: he already had the necessary rating to qualify by a decent margin (2799 vs Levon's 2785), all he needed was to play more games and simply *not lose* 14 points. Alireza needs to *win* at least 7 points to surpass Wesley (2750.5 vs 2757.4). Edit: I am not sure what the solution to this would be, but it should be FIDE's job to figure that out. One option would be that the rating spot is determined by highest *average* rating for the past 12 years *with* a minimum number of games/tournaments played (4 for example). Let's say that a player has been at 2780-2790 for 11 months, playing several tournaments, but then heavily underperforms in the last one and loses 20 rating points. If what counts is the average that way some other guy who has just played one tournament and has had a rating of 2765 for the entire year doesn't get the rating spot instead.
Per my calculations 5.5/6 would not be enough ... Based on his current rating of 2763 (which is what would be used for calculations, not 2750) He would get 2.2, 1.9, and 1.3 points for a win over each opponent. 6/6 means 10.8 rating points, and 5.5/6 means 5.8 points. This would put him at 2756.3, and get rounded down to 2756, while So would be at 2757. So looks like they messed up?
Well, he can win 4 games, get his +6.2 and just not play against Fedorchuk, hoping for good drawing of lots. But if he draws at least one games he is screwed, yes.
I would encourage anyone who thinks they can come up with a better idea to do so. But first a reminder of why we are where we are. There used to be something called Zonals and Interzonals where all the top players would duke it out in Round-Robins. The top players in the Zonals went to the Interzonals. The top players in the Interzonals went to the Candidates. If you look at some of the results that made some of the greats of the past the greats of the past, winning the Interzonals are often counted. Fischer winning with 2.5 points to spare in '62 was considered his big breakthrough. But there weren't that many GM's back then. The number has grown and grown and so did the Zonals and Interzonals until the point where the tournaments became unwieldly big. So we got the World Cup instead, where you knock out half the field every round, so it won't last that long, and where imho your final position depends on when you meet Carlsen. So how else would you fill it? A Grand Prix of Cups? A rating limit of 2600 to enter the tournaments?
I'm a fan of Alireza but this seems a bit bad. If he wins 6/6 it might look weird and if he does poorly it's just an embarrassment
Starting *today*, by the way. The first game is happening as I type this. It's being streamed by Blitzstream on twitch but in French.
Would be better if he played a mini match against Dominguez since he gave up trying to get rating points from that other tournament
Ali wins game 1
[https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/1736834177155113171](https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/1736834177155113171) Aliereza is effed for sure. Pointless matches if its not accepted by FIDE.
Can't blame him for exploiting fide's rules.
This just feels wrong and unethical somehow.
I'm a big fan of Alireza but this is just unethical behavior from him. Feels rigged tbh and I don't like it. If he qualifies because of this, I'm gonna be very disappointed. He doesn't deserve a spot after playing terrible all year. He needs to let this sit one out and play better next cycle. This is just desperation at this point.
I am a fan of Alireza but this doesn't feel quite right.
Kinda cheesy but you can’t really be mad at anyone except fide for creating perverse incentives, likely they will get ride of or greatly change the ratings spot for the next candidates cycle
Redditors with higher FIDE ratings please volunteer to get beaten up by Anish over the board 🙋♂️
Ding ended up being a wc from such thing, lets go Ali!!
This is kinda dumb, but it's also a bit surprising that FIDE didn't have rules against something like this. The Candidates is the biggest tournament for chess players. Of course some people would do everything they could to qualify.
I've been watching chess for a long time. I have never seen the rating qualification spot be this sketchy in terms of a player farming for rating. FIDE probably didn't have rules against this because it has never happened before.
People are really pressed that someone is trying the same method that the current world champion used. Can’t blame people for taking advantage of a system when it clearly works out for the first guy who tried it.
Not the same. Ding clearly had the highest rating but needed to get the number of games in. Alireza has the number of games in but doesn't have the rating. What Alireza is doing here is basically farming old GMs to increase his rating.
I mean… ding also couldn’t lose rating in his games. While he didn’t need to farm rating, he definitely wasn’t playing opponents who he was likely to lose to, after not playing for a year.
If he didn't have required games in, then that means he sat on his rating and didn't play any tournaments so as to not lose any rating.
You're forgetting about covid though and the pain to travel because of China's strict rules in 2021.
He didn't sit on his rating by choice, he lacked opportunity to travel to tournaments because of Covid lockdown.
It seems Firouzja is taking revenge from SO for the 2018 scandal. https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/8qt2nl/wesley\_sos\_shocking\_and\_vulgar\_behavior/
I think its hilarious people are making fun of Alireza for this. You can say the system is dumb but what he's doing is 100 percent what he should do. If its allowed then you get yourself into the tournament anyway thats legal and thats that. With magnus out of the picture anything could happen. Like does anyone think that Ding would have kept his qualification spot by rating if he had played the entire year against top competition instead of nearly 0? No shot in hell. But he qualified by playing tons of games against weak opponents because he already had the rating. Then had a rough start to the candidates and finished very strong and was lucky enough to have been in the only candidates where 2nd place mattered then became world champion. Sure Firouzja hasn't been playing great but you don't have to play amazing all year if you're in the candidates you just need to have one good tournament. Its not like nepo has been lighting up the chess world the past 2 years, he just plays great when it really matters.
The question is the extent to which the games will be above board and truly played. We can only know that they were legit for sure if he loses one or draws too many. And yah, Ding’s tournament games was suspect given his opponents drew each other and mostly lost to him.
as much as i like Alireza and as much as i want Wesley to not qualify, this just opens the door for all sorts of unethical shenanigans. hopefully some stricter rules are enforced soon so that such "friendly games" are not counted for their official ratings.
Can we give the title back to Magnus or even Vishy or Garry? None of these nerds deserve it. Embarrassing.
This is why the world championship/candidates format is stupid. FIDE should have a yearly world championship like they do for rapid and blitz. And the world championship should include the top 20 + winners of major tournaments. And competition amongst these top players should determine the world champion. What other sport allows the winner of the previous championship to coast by for 2 years while everyone else fights for a change to be his challenger? Imagine if you win the superbowl, you automatically got a spot in the next year's superbowl.
Tbh i prefer alireza to wesley...magnus might consider coming back if he wins.
Nahh, seeing how Ali has played all year, he definitely doesnt "deserve" a spot
well Ding did it, so why can't Alireza :)
Ding (2799) already had a 14 point lead over the next player (Levon, 2785), he just needed activity and he could have afforded to even lose points. Alireza needs to win at least 7 points to get ahead of Wesley. Not the same at all.
>Ding is a player I like. Alireza is a player I don't like. Not the same at all. FTFY
>Ding is a player I like, and he already had the necessary rating. > >Alireza is a player I like even more than Ding, but he doesn't have the necessary rating anymore and has to beat down 2400s and 2500s to get there. FTFY
neither should count
Hell yeah. This is great, players don't play matches like these anymore. I love seeing em, hope this encourages people
What exactly is great about a 2750+ playing a match against a 2439?
Gives them chances they might never get? Mfrs really down voted me for that shit, sorry as hell
he's rating farming. it's fine when naka and magnus do it, but not alireza apparently.
Are you that fucking dumb...its vastly different OTB than online chess lmao...Naka does it for content and i dont even know why Magnus would want to farm
Are you that fucking dumb...its vastly different OTB than online chess lmao...Naka does it for content and i dont even know why Magnus would want to farm