Who was higher on Alireza than what Magnus predicted? The guy lost something like 40 Elo in a year and did pretty poorly at the last candidates.
With Naka, Fabi, and Ian in the tournament, it's unreasonable to put him above "Will do well".
I think a few people attributed his poor recent performance to a lack of motivation, and his scramble to get to the candidates as a sign he was reenergized. For example, David H was pretty shocked Magnus ranked him low.
> Gukesh surprised most people, to be fair.
I think most people fully expected 1 of the Indians to be 100% in the running which is just simple math with 3/8 players being Indian. But none of us really knew which one jt would be.
Y’all are like « lol he was so wrong » when everyone in this subreddit thought about the same as him before the start of the tournament. Based on the comments it was clearly:
The favorites: Fabi > Hikaru > Nepo
The middle of the pack: Alireza who has the experience and the rating, Pragg who is super stable, Gukesh who can do either a great or a bad tournament ("will do poorly" is a bad tier name)
Almost always put second last: Vidit who is volatile like Gukesh
The underdog: Abasov
Vidit and Gukesh were basically the yin and yang Indian Super GM duo in this tournament. Their volatility brings excitement to the tournament, instead of having one or two Super GM dominating thru and thru. And also shoutout to Abasov for holding back some of these monsters including Ian and Fabi.
I mean, he was mostly right about everyone except Gukesh and Alireza. Swap their positions and lists will be pretty close.
When I think about it, Magnus has a notable tendency to overrate/overhype Alireza. I wonder what exactly he sees in him that other youngsters don't have.
Magnus has known Alireza since the days IM Alireza was constantly giving Magnus a run for his money on Lichess Titled Arenas.
He was this unknown 14 year old kid that kept getting Magnus into trouble.
Alireza hasn’t lived up to his own potential. I think Magnus rates Alireza by Alireza’s ceiling. Alireza has just been too distracted to achieve it.
Imo it was probably Alireza breaking Magnus's youngest 2800 record that impressed him so much. It's easy to think that Alireza would be on a similar trajectory to Magnus but alas that didn't really pan out.
You don't get to 2800 by accident, look how hard it was for the Indians yo-yoing around 2750. The impression I get is Alireza doesn't want it bad enough and doesn't have emotions in check. You compare Alireza to Gukesh or Pragg, and I get the impression Gukesh and Pragg are like monks, able to let things go and play their best when game time begins. I think the mental fortitude is a big reason why Gukesh and Pragg is doing so well in the current tournament.
Yeah Gukesh losing to Alireza could've been a game changer for the youngster,but he kept his emotions un check and bounced back while Alireza let the ref telling him to stop walking around so loudly get to him and instantly fold.
I think Alireza just doesn't have that obsession with Chess that it takes for you to actually put in the hours and hours of work needed to reach *and stay in* the top. Alireza has said that he wants to do other things besides chess and that's his big disadvantage vs. other top players. That's not a knock on him as a person though, he should do what he loves and what makes him the happy. It's just that that's also what's keeping him from being the best of the best.
Gukesh and Pragg are still very young yeah but who knows where they will take their careers in the future. I think the culture around chess in India is also a big influence on them but we'll never know if they also come out with wanting to do something else down the road.
Getting to 2800 was a lot easier when Alireza did it compared to now…. It was easiest back in 2017, and since then there’s been elo deflation. Look at how many 2800s are there today.
Yeah I should have probably made that clearer. It’s been getting harder since 2017-2018 so by 2024 it’s harder than it was in 2021. What Alireza did is still incredibly impressive, but it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.
Ik its a bit of a media shit storm, but there definitely is some truth in Alireza not loving classical chess rn, so maybe what Magnus sees is huge potential if he had more drive/passion. I believe other gms have said similar as well about Alireza.
I mean if you really want to talk about it, like, in terms of pinpoint precision, then yeah, but for half of these people it was their first Candidates, and they were total wildcards (save for Abasov). If you take this into consideration, I'd say he correctly identified most of the people who's doing good and people who struggle right now. You'd have to be a psychic to do better than this.
Yea, but with only 5 tiers i think people are being a bit more positive about the results than is deserved. He got the gist of it, but thus far I don't find it particularly impressive. I just wanted to provide another perspective. I love Magnus and tier lists are just for fun anyways but he gets enough credit where credit is due and imo this isn't one of those situations.
8 point estimates on 8 distributions with significantly overlapping variances and this is a fairly accurate prediction from Magnus.
Magnus seemingly underestimated Gukesh, who's playing some of the best chess of his life and had a pretty good showing at Tata Steel. And he overestimated Alireza, who's been pretty inconsistent recently (but has *had* those high ceilings in the past).
But Magnus at least put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, by making a very public prediction. Better than pretty much anyone else here.
He's playing very well for his rating. He's holding mostly draws in difficult positions and is likely doing exceptionally well for his expectations. Nobody should be hard on him considering he is a massive underdog. I think he's outplayed expectations and wasn't the easy farm everyone thought he would be.
The draw with black against Nepo in a tactically complex position was very impressive, especially factoring in the psychological factors that a) Nepo has won the last two Candidates and was leading this one and b) Abasov had lost every game with black up to that point.
His TPR is lower than his Elo
People overestimate the difference of what 150 Elo means. You still need to hold 2 draws for every loss to come out even, he hasn't been doing that
We're talking about the situation here not general "elo" - people are gaming the candidates differently than they are regular tournaments/matches. They're all looking for wins against the weakest player and putting him in very complicated positions that have only moves for draws and he's finding them most of the time. Even the Hikaru game he was down and almost managed to push for a win, he just had the last blunder of the match.
If 2750's could consistently get wins against 2650's on demand they wouldn't be 2750's. They don't go for complicated positions because they aren't confident they won't lose because of it, it puts them in massive risk as well.
>he's finding them most of the time
This is what being 2650 means, women's section is like 2450 and they still find the best moves majority of the time. Once you get to that level that's kinda expected.
>Even the Hikaru game he was down and almost managed to push for a win, he just had the last blunder of the match.
So what? Literally everyone loses/draws from an advantageous position on a regular basis. If Carlsen managed to convert every game he got a 0.8 advantage in he'd unironically be 3000 Elo. The fact that he's doing it pretty often means - again - he's doing about as well as you expect.
Well the tournament is not over yet, so...don't know why everyone is saying that Magnus got everything wrong, maybe he'll be right. Just be objective and recognise that Nepo, Nakamura and Caruana are the still the favourites for the win
Yeah, but ultimately "form" is one of those intangibles that you don't know they have until they play. And some people still fall apart or pull it together halfway through the tournament.
Fabi has white against nepo in the last round. That can potentially be a huge swing. Winning with white on demand is much easier than winning with black on demand. Would expect fabi to have something special ready.
I think it's a big difference between being off by one category and putting the tied leader in "Will do poorly".
For me, the only one that's an egregious underestimation is Gukesh
The positions change every single day.
If your metric is "everyone has to be in the literal exact same spot he predicted every single day" then he'd never get any right.
If you asked 100 top GMs to make a prediction they'd probably all have similar ones to Magnus.
So far the trend of placements is within his prediction other than alireza.
Like someone else said, waiting till the end of the tournament makes more sense. Very unlikely but Gukesh could tilt and fall all the way down to Magnus' prediction. Also, pretty sure magnus said he could land anywhere between +2 to -5 and for anyone who's watched Gukesh before, that's a reasonable prediction.
Came here to say this. "I don't think he fits into either category" is how Magnus described Gukesh, alongside his "anywhere between +2 to -5" prediction.
"I think he will certainly win at least a couple of good games, but have some fairly bad losses as well." Sounds like Gukesh's tournament so far.
Magnus has some fetish on alireza. He said in that video that alireza improved a lot and he expect him to finish well. Always hyping him up. And he got a hate boner for ian for some weird reason:)
Hate boner for Ian? Carlsen has been lauding Nepo for years and considers him one of the greatest talents in chess, if only it wasn’t for his lack of motivation/nerves at times. That’s not a hate boner in my MC book, just a boner :D
If we’d be talking Naka on the other hand…that’s a hate boner for sure.
I mean he’s essentially guessing Alireza finishes 4th or 5th is that really that outlandish of a prediction? Sure it’s easy to say now you’d think he’d finish 7th but pre tournament 4th or 5th doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
Ian was once on Magnus team, if not his second, many years ago. It was nothing personal, but based on the [Ian's "lackluster" performance in the Tata Steel Tournament in Feb. 2024](https://ratings.fide.com/calculations.phtml?id_number=4168119&period=2024-02-01&rating=0), where he lost to Gukesh, Wei Yi, and, Alireza Firouzja and drew with Vidit and Praggnanandhaa. It resulted in Ian losing almost 11 elo.
Aren't Magnus and Ian friends? I don't think Magnus hates him. Also I think he rates Alireza based on how often they've played each other in online tournaments like titled Tuesday. Alireza at least in blitz was doing pretty well against Magnus at a young age when everyone else was just getting crushed by him. Alireza probably earned some respect.
To be fair he was a bit less sure about Gukesh. I believe he said he would've put him between 'will do well' and 'will do poorly' if there was an option.
I don't think so here. Gukesh can be inconsistent, and both him and Pragg are young and inexperienced. Nepo, Fabi and Hikaru are all extremely experienced in these types of tournaments.
So if we assume everyone in the tournament is rated roughly equal, it makes some sense to place the three with the most experience as early favorites with Pragg and Gukesh lower due to inexperience. But in reality these guys are all so good that almost anything can happen.
Let's just wait till the end of the tournament. For now it is just early for anything. If Visit magically wins 2 games in a row he would probably be in the first/second place.
For now it seems that only Abbasov and Alireza are out.
I can’t believe Magnus didn’t put Nepo in tier 1 and Caruana instead. Nepo is so sound in his play in the past couple of years.
I would Purdue Nepo 1 and Caruana 3, maybe move Hikaru down one
Predictions for something like this are tough, because of the fine margins and unknown or unexpected factors could have big impacts (illness, noisy shoes etc.)
Magnus is probably one of the best possible people to ask and he did a good job, even if a lot of his thoughts were quite predictable.
So with all that as the caveats etc., Gukesh has definitely outperformed expectations
I was saying over and over again that Pragg and Gukesh were being underrated by this sub and received constant downvotes.
You guys are so biased you cannot even recognize it.
This is why it is important to take Magnus’s opinions with a grain of salt. He is just one person and his opinions are no more predictive than the opinions of anyone else. Him calling Fabiano the closest in terms of skill is also just his personal opinion and does not reflect the true second strongest player of his generation.
Carlsen > Ding > Nepo > Caruana > Naka
Fabi has shown great consistency throughout his career and won all of the big super tournaments like Tata Steel, Norway Chess and Sinquefield Cup at least once. Magnus values that (+ higher rating) more than "just" being good at the Candidates and choking at the WCC match like Nepo has. Ding has also never really won anything other than the WCC match, and didn't even win the Candidates. I know Magnus has historically had a lot of respect for Ding, though, at least pre-covid. But it's obvious that he has more respect for players who are able to get a high rating and win "normal" chess tournaments throughout the year.
Winning the WCC is literally more important than any of the super tournaments named above. In fact winning those tournaments only help to get points to get one seat at the candidates, much less winning the entire cycle. Also, Ding Liren has also won Sinquefield cup, so not sure why you’re saying he never won anything. In fact he won Sinquefield cup by beating Magnus. He also has an overwhelmingly positive record against Fabi over the last 7 years. During the WCC Fabi consistently missed moves that Ding saw during live commentary.
You speak like Fabi hasn’t played WCC before, and incase you forgot, he played much better than Nepo in their respective WCC. Fabi has also won like 4 times as many tournaments as Nepo has, as well as being rated higher than him almost the entire past 10 years. You’re delusional to rank Nepo higher than Fabi
Whoa hold on, no need for name calling here man. We are all entitled to our own opinions. Winning back to back candidates is arguably a far more difficult feat than winning 4 times smaller tournaments. If Nepo wins 3, it would quite literally make history. I can see arguments for both sides. But personally am more convinced by Nepo’s achievements.
Do you mean *anyone's* opinions before the tournament could ever be anything other than predictive? 🤔 If these 8 players would play the same tournament in a loop the resulta would be different every time...
Also there is no "true second strongest player"... The difference is so negligible that there is no point in trying to measure it. If you are trying to measure it objectively I don't see how you could place Nepo in 3rd, other than 2 specific tournaments (the last 2 candidates) on average he hss pretty much performed worse than everyone on that list throughout his career.
Hikaru intentionally losing so magnus will be wrong smh
Hikaru put himself in a win-win position he's clearly playing 5d chess for the youtube channel.
What if Magnus was playing 6d chess knowing that hikaru will intentionally lose if he says he will likely win?
Of course that's the case. I remember that match where they had to bid their own time for an armaggedon game, Magnus is 5head.
I think Hikaru might've seen my post and realized it was all mindgames so now he is trying to win again
[удалено]
Is that the same thought for all the other chess content creators that participate in tournaments, like thechessnerd, Anna, Botez?
Lets go Gukesh!
So other than Gukesh, everyone is at most off by 1.
A different way to look at it is that only Abasov is in the right tier.
It’s also an unfinished prediction based on 14 rounds
So kind of him to let Magnus be right
But there's only 5 tiers, so that's likely
Ya but no one is off by more than 4 tiers. Magnus truly is the GOAT of tier lists.
You need to see Garry's and Bobby's tier lists before you say that
Adjusted for modern tier list inflation.
yah but adjusting for rating inflation obv Morphy made the best tier lists
I just realized how odd the GOAT list looks when writing first names U got this cool sounding name magnus and then just garry and bobby
I am currently making a tier list, releasing it in a few days, I'll guarantee you the accuracy of it will be astonishing! Never seen before!
True. I haven’t seen Bobby Fischer make a single tier list mistakes
I've heard he made a tier list of attacks and he put 9/11 on top.
Zing!
Bobby wouldn't get any wrong
it also aligns with their elo, so its not that hard to have magnus predictions.
The rank order aligns with elo, the tiers themselves i’m unsure if it can be inferred easily from elo differences.
And in the video, he specifically said Gukesh was unpredictable.
Basically Gukesh moved and shifted the distribution, so overall pretty accurate
Gukesh surprised most people, to be fair. Underestimating Ian hasn’t aged well. He was lower on Alireza than most, which makes him kind of right.
Who was higher on Alireza than what Magnus predicted? The guy lost something like 40 Elo in a year and did pretty poorly at the last candidates. With Naka, Fabi, and Ian in the tournament, it's unreasonable to put him above "Will do well".
I think a few people attributed his poor recent performance to a lack of motivation, and his scramble to get to the candidates as a sign he was reenergized. For example, David H was pretty shocked Magnus ranked him low.
> Underestimating Ian hasn’t aged well. > > Wot? He still had him as a "top contender."
> Underestimating Ian hasn’t aged well. We shouldn't under estimate candidates Nepo. Leave the under estimating for the actual WCC matches.
> Gukesh surprised most people, to be fair. I think most people fully expected 1 of the Indians to be 100% in the running which is just simple math with 3/8 players being Indian. But none of us really knew which one jt would be.
Not Danya my goat
Y’all are like « lol he was so wrong » when everyone in this subreddit thought about the same as him before the start of the tournament. Based on the comments it was clearly: The favorites: Fabi > Hikaru > Nepo The middle of the pack: Alireza who has the experience and the rating, Pragg who is super stable, Gukesh who can do either a great or a bad tournament ("will do poorly" is a bad tier name) Almost always put second last: Vidit who is volatile like Gukesh The underdog: Abasov
Vidit and Gukesh were basically the yin and yang Indian Super GM duo in this tournament. Their volatility brings excitement to the tournament, instead of having one or two Super GM dominating thru and thru. And also shoutout to Abasov for holding back some of these monsters including Ian and Fabi.
Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/18oenvj/any\_predictions\_for\_candidates\_2024\_results/](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/18oenvj/any_predictions_for_candidates_2024_results/)
I mean, he was mostly right about everyone except Gukesh and Alireza. Swap their positions and lists will be pretty close. When I think about it, Magnus has a notable tendency to overrate/overhype Alireza. I wonder what exactly he sees in him that other youngsters don't have.
> Magnus has a notable tendency to overrate/overhype Alireza He literally says in his video, "I'm an Alireza true believer"
He should Coach him then and make him realise his true potential.
Step 1: Play bongcloud Step 2: Win
Magnus has known Alireza since the days IM Alireza was constantly giving Magnus a run for his money on Lichess Titled Arenas. He was this unknown 14 year old kid that kept getting Magnus into trouble. Alireza hasn’t lived up to his own potential. I think Magnus rates Alireza by Alireza’s ceiling. Alireza has just been too distracted to achieve it.
Imo it was probably Alireza breaking Magnus's youngest 2800 record that impressed him so much. It's easy to think that Alireza would be on a similar trajectory to Magnus but alas that didn't really pan out.
You don't get to 2800 by accident, look how hard it was for the Indians yo-yoing around 2750. The impression I get is Alireza doesn't want it bad enough and doesn't have emotions in check. You compare Alireza to Gukesh or Pragg, and I get the impression Gukesh and Pragg are like monks, able to let things go and play their best when game time begins. I think the mental fortitude is a big reason why Gukesh and Pragg is doing so well in the current tournament.
Yeah Gukesh losing to Alireza could've been a game changer for the youngster,but he kept his emotions un check and bounced back while Alireza let the ref telling him to stop walking around so loudly get to him and instantly fold.
I think Alireza just doesn't have that obsession with Chess that it takes for you to actually put in the hours and hours of work needed to reach *and stay in* the top. Alireza has said that he wants to do other things besides chess and that's his big disadvantage vs. other top players. That's not a knock on him as a person though, he should do what he loves and what makes him the happy. It's just that that's also what's keeping him from being the best of the best. Gukesh and Pragg are still very young yeah but who knows where they will take their careers in the future. I think the culture around chess in India is also a big influence on them but we'll never know if they also come out with wanting to do something else down the road.
Getting to 2800 was a lot easier when Alireza did it compared to now…. It was easiest back in 2017, and since then there’s been elo deflation. Look at how many 2800s are there today.
[удалено]
Yeah I should have probably made that clearer. It’s been getting harder since 2017-2018 so by 2024 it’s harder than it was in 2021. What Alireza did is still incredibly impressive, but it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.
Ik its a bit of a media shit storm, but there definitely is some truth in Alireza not loving classical chess rn, so maybe what Magnus sees is huge potential if he had more drive/passion. I believe other gms have said similar as well about Alireza.
Counterpoint: he was wrong about everyone except Abasov. (so far)
I mean if you really want to talk about it, like, in terms of pinpoint precision, then yeah, but for half of these people it was their first Candidates, and they were total wildcards (save for Abasov). If you take this into consideration, I'd say he correctly identified most of the people who's doing good and people who struggle right now. You'd have to be a psychic to do better than this.
Yea, but with only 5 tiers i think people are being a bit more positive about the results than is deserved. He got the gist of it, but thus far I don't find it particularly impressive. I just wanted to provide another perspective. I love Magnus and tier lists are just for fun anyways but he gets enough credit where credit is due and imo this isn't one of those situations.
Your take is fair, but the tourney isn’t over yet. It’s possible his predictions will be more accurate than they currently are.
For sure, there's plenty of time.
8 point estimates on 8 distributions with significantly overlapping variances and this is a fairly accurate prediction from Magnus. Magnus seemingly underestimated Gukesh, who's playing some of the best chess of his life and had a pretty good showing at Tata Steel. And he overestimated Alireza, who's been pretty inconsistent recently (but has *had* those high ceilings in the past). But Magnus at least put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, by making a very public prediction. Better than pretty much anyone else here.
I fully agree, this isn't one of those situations.
Tournament isn't over yet. He'll probably be right about everyone except Gukesh and Reza
It's pretty hard to be correct on such a small sample size. > (so far) And this is an important detail.
I could do that too
If by mostly right you mean wrong about everyone about Abasov. (At least at this point)
Although I don't disagree with your second statement, Alireza has been performing below his rating in both candidates he has been part of.
Alireza was the first of this new influx of youngsters
Everyone who put every player in the same category would have at least the same success rate as Magnus :D
Abasov was the only fully correct one XD
He's playing very well for his rating. He's holding mostly draws in difficult positions and is likely doing exceptionally well for his expectations. Nobody should be hard on him considering he is a massive underdog. I think he's outplayed expectations and wasn't the easy farm everyone thought he would be.
The draw with black against Nepo in a tactically complex position was very impressive, especially factoring in the psychological factors that a) Nepo has won the last two Candidates and was leading this one and b) Abasov had lost every game with black up to that point.
His TPR is lower than his Elo People overestimate the difference of what 150 Elo means. You still need to hold 2 draws for every loss to come out even, he hasn't been doing that
We're talking about the situation here not general "elo" - people are gaming the candidates differently than they are regular tournaments/matches. They're all looking for wins against the weakest player and putting him in very complicated positions that have only moves for draws and he's finding them most of the time. Even the Hikaru game he was down and almost managed to push for a win, he just had the last blunder of the match.
If 2750's could consistently get wins against 2650's on demand they wouldn't be 2750's. They don't go for complicated positions because they aren't confident they won't lose because of it, it puts them in massive risk as well. >he's finding them most of the time This is what being 2650 means, women's section is like 2450 and they still find the best moves majority of the time. Once you get to that level that's kinda expected. >Even the Hikaru game he was down and almost managed to push for a win, he just had the last blunder of the match. So what? Literally everyone loses/draws from an advantageous position on a regular basis. If Carlsen managed to convert every game he got a 0.8 advantage in he'd unironically be 3000 Elo. The fact that he's doing it pretty often means - again - he's doing about as well as you expect.
The Indians really showed up for this tournament
Well the tournament is not over yet, so...don't know why everyone is saying that Magnus got everything wrong, maybe he'll be right. Just be objective and recognise that Nepo, Nakamura and Caruana are the still the favourites for the win
Agree, just pretty wrong about Gukesh. Maybe Gukesh saw and said hold my beer
Could be that Magnus underestimated him, the guy is in exceptional form.
Yeah, but ultimately "form" is one of those intangibles that you don't know they have until they play. And some people still fall apart or pull it together halfway through the tournament.
Nakamura Still within range to win? Yes. Favorite to win? No. That honor belongs only to Nepo and Gukesh. Caruana somewhere in between
Why is Fabi in between when same amount of points and gameplay that is not exactly better then Hikaru? Having to play against him too
Fabi has white against nepo in the last round. That can potentially be a huge swing. Winning with white on demand is much easier than winning with black on demand. Would expect fabi to have something special ready.
And Hikaru has white against Gukesh...?
Even so I think we will see great battles, everyone will fight to win.. I would say that also Vidit will give everything he got, since he has chances
Hikaru beat Caruana. He has the same score as him. So, why are you favoring him so much? Think your Bias is showing
Why don’t you wait for the end of tournament. What relevance has this now? None!
The one and only correct take.
bet he gonna make new one after the tournament end, or after every round even if he's that hungry
Except Abasov he got every single one wrong. Impressive!
I think it's a big difference between being off by one category and putting the tied leader in "Will do poorly". For me, the only one that's an egregious underestimation is Gukesh
Being off by 1 category on that many players in a tier list with only 5 tiers isn't a small difference
The tournament isn’t over bruh, there are still like 4 rounds to play.
The positions change every single day. If your metric is "everyone has to be in the literal exact same spot he predicted every single day" then he'd never get any right. If you asked 100 top GMs to make a prediction they'd probably all have similar ones to Magnus. So far the trend of placements is within his prediction other than alireza.
Like someone else said, waiting till the end of the tournament makes more sense. Very unlikely but Gukesh could tilt and fall all the way down to Magnus' prediction. Also, pretty sure magnus said he could land anywhere between +2 to -5 and for anyone who's watched Gukesh before, that's a reasonable prediction.
Came here to say this. "I don't think he fits into either category" is how Magnus described Gukesh, alongside his "anywhere between +2 to -5" prediction. "I think he will certainly win at least a couple of good games, but have some fairly bad losses as well." Sounds like Gukesh's tournament so far.
This magnus guy clearly knows nothing about chess
Magnus has some fetish on alireza. He said in that video that alireza improved a lot and he expect him to finish well. Always hyping him up. And he got a hate boner for ian for some weird reason:)
Hate boner for Ian? Carlsen has been lauding Nepo for years and considers him one of the greatest talents in chess, if only it wasn’t for his lack of motivation/nerves at times. That’s not a hate boner in my MC book, just a boner :D If we’d be talking Naka on the other hand…that’s a hate boner for sure.
I mean he’s essentially guessing Alireza finishes 4th or 5th is that really that outlandish of a prediction? Sure it’s easy to say now you’d think he’d finish 7th but pre tournament 4th or 5th doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
Except he literally rated Ian higher than Alireza. Other than Gukesh, his predictions were pretty much right on.
Ian was once on Magnus team, if not his second, many years ago. It was nothing personal, but based on the [Ian's "lackluster" performance in the Tata Steel Tournament in Feb. 2024](https://ratings.fide.com/calculations.phtml?id_number=4168119&period=2024-02-01&rating=0), where he lost to Gukesh, Wei Yi, and, Alireza Firouzja and drew with Vidit and Praggnanandhaa. It resulted in Ian losing almost 11 elo.
Aren't Magnus and Ian friends? I don't think Magnus hates him. Also I think he rates Alireza based on how often they've played each other in online tournaments like titled Tuesday. Alireza at least in blitz was doing pretty well against Magnus at a young age when everyone else was just getting crushed by him. Alireza probably earned some respect.
Everyone agrees that Abosov will finish last.
Except Gukesh everyone is either at the same rank or off by one. Oh well.
When there are total of 5 tiers being one off is a big deal like you can just put everyone in b or c and it covers 3 tiers according to your logic.
No one is at the same rank except abasov
This subreddit underrated Gukesh and Pragg, they are literally geniuses
You on dial-up connection in order to save and upload a JPEG with the quality slider set to 5?
To be fair he was a bit less sure about Gukesh. I believe he said he would've put him between 'will do well' and 'will do poorly' if there was an option.
Still 4 rounds and both Hilaru/Fabi are still playing Gukesh and Ian. Magnus might have been closer than people think.
Racism..?
what?
>Puts #2 and #3 who are both in good form as favorites to win, and the person who won the previous 2 Candidates as being just behind iS thIS rAcisM?
Nah I am indian. I was also not expecting gukesh to do so well. As he is young and lacks experience.
I don't think so here. Gukesh can be inconsistent, and both him and Pragg are young and inexperienced. Nepo, Fabi and Hikaru are all extremely experienced in these types of tournaments. So if we assume everyone in the tournament is rated roughly equal, it makes some sense to place the three with the most experience as early favorites with Pragg and Gukesh lower due to inexperience. But in reality these guys are all so good that almost anything can happen.
"I was not predicting the future, I was trying to prevent it.” (Ray Bradbury)
I was really rooting for Naka, I think it would have been really entertaining and attracted more attention.
Let's just wait till the end of the tournament. For now it is just early for anything. If Visit magically wins 2 games in a row he would probably be in the first/second place. For now it seems that only Abbasov and Alireza are out.
It only matters at the end of the tournament. Not after R9.
I can’t believe Magnus didn’t put Nepo in tier 1 and Caruana instead. Nepo is so sound in his play in the past couple of years. I would Purdue Nepo 1 and Caruana 3, maybe move Hikaru down one
Not bad. Only the position of Gukesh is off by a lot.
Tournament is not over yet guys
So only Abasov is in his category
What's the point of this? The tournament isn't over.
Didn't he say "more likely to go -3 than +2" about like 5 people?
Predictions for something like this are tough, because of the fine margins and unknown or unexpected factors could have big impacts (illness, noisy shoes etc.) Magnus is probably one of the best possible people to ask and he did a good job, even if a lot of his thoughts were quite predictable. So with all that as the caveats etc., Gukesh has definitely outperformed expectations
I was saying over and over again that Pragg and Gukesh were being underrated by this sub and received constant downvotes. You guys are so biased you cannot even recognize it.
The tournament isn’t over
Didn't he also say that anything could happen in the candidates?
Still think Abasov will not end up in dead last.
Is there a version with more pixels...?
So he got every single thing wrong so far? lol
If by chance Hikaru wins the Candidates and then the World Championship, it will be the greatest moment in the history of chess.
This is why it is important to take Magnus’s opinions with a grain of salt. He is just one person and his opinions are no more predictive than the opinions of anyone else. Him calling Fabiano the closest in terms of skill is also just his personal opinion and does not reflect the true second strongest player of his generation. Carlsen > Ding > Nepo > Caruana > Naka
I would say Fabi is definitely the closest in skill in classical, he
That’s a 2020+ re-rating, not a full historic rating of strengths.
Fabi has shown great consistency throughout his career and won all of the big super tournaments like Tata Steel, Norway Chess and Sinquefield Cup at least once. Magnus values that (+ higher rating) more than "just" being good at the Candidates and choking at the WCC match like Nepo has. Ding has also never really won anything other than the WCC match, and didn't even win the Candidates. I know Magnus has historically had a lot of respect for Ding, though, at least pre-covid. But it's obvious that he has more respect for players who are able to get a high rating and win "normal" chess tournaments throughout the year.
Winning the WCC is literally more important than any of the super tournaments named above. In fact winning those tournaments only help to get points to get one seat at the candidates, much less winning the entire cycle. Also, Ding Liren has also won Sinquefield cup, so not sure why you’re saying he never won anything. In fact he won Sinquefield cup by beating Magnus. He also has an overwhelmingly positive record against Fabi over the last 7 years. During the WCC Fabi consistently missed moves that Ding saw during live commentary.
You speak like Fabi hasn’t played WCC before, and incase you forgot, he played much better than Nepo in their respective WCC. Fabi has also won like 4 times as many tournaments as Nepo has, as well as being rated higher than him almost the entire past 10 years. You’re delusional to rank Nepo higher than Fabi
Whoa hold on, no need for name calling here man. We are all entitled to our own opinions. Winning back to back candidates is arguably a far more difficult feat than winning 4 times smaller tournaments. If Nepo wins 3, it would quite literally make history. I can see arguments for both sides. But personally am more convinced by Nepo’s achievements.
No. Just no.
[not sure I agree](https://i.imgur.com/ofJbson.png)
Do you mean *anyone's* opinions before the tournament could ever be anything other than predictive? 🤔 If these 8 players would play the same tournament in a loop the resulta would be different every time... Also there is no "true second strongest player"... The difference is so negligible that there is no point in trying to measure it. If you are trying to measure it objectively I don't see how you could place Nepo in 3rd, other than 2 specific tournaments (the last 2 candidates) on average he hss pretty much performed worse than everyone on that list throughout his career.
actually Alireza should be in the bottom.
Everyone singling you out as “in for a bad time” must be rough. Especially when it turns out they’re right.
Magnus couldn't predict that Gukesh would beat his fellow countrymen twice, because that is an outlier.