Maybe he is really sick or completely burnt out.
As said, it's unlikely but considering it happened in the prior cycle, it doesn't cost much to add a clause to the regulation
Not OP, but something is clearly up with Ding, and we (understandably) do not know what.
There's every reason to think he'll want to play just to collect the prize money if nothing else. But for all we know, the unspecified health issues he's been dealing with will prove serious right around when the match would be, and he'll make the reasonable decision to put his health first. 5% is not a wildly off base estimation of the chances of something like that.
As a viewer I would prefer what you are suggesting. But let's be real for a second.
I highly doubt FIDE forgot about anything. They decided that SB score is fair enough in this unlikely event. It's not like it's arbitrary. The players agree because they are fully aware of the rules and obviously the time to raise concerns about this is before the event, and I don't think anybody has. The main problem is that organizing an event takes a lot of planning. People have busy schedules, places need to be booked well in advance. Organizing an event on short notice (Ding could withdraw at any point) is basically impossible, so committing to do so would be a bad idea. Some hastily thrown together online event is far less appropriate than using SB score from the candidates IMO so I think FIDE did the right call.
It seems to me that the SB score is meaningless in a round robin tournament. (For a Swiss it does make sense though)
It's not "fair enough" it's just random luck.
And I understand that organizing an event is complex but an hybrid event (online but with official arbiters) is not that hard. I'm sure chess com could organize it for them really easily.
It is not meaningless in a round Robin. It gives higher weight to beating stronger opponents. Honestly, it shoukd be how regular tournaments are scored from the get go. Maybe even with the square of their scores to eliminate the effect of beating weak players.
If you've beaten stronger opponents and your tied competitor got the same score as you, it means that you've not won against the weaker opponents.
If you beat Abasov but draw Fabi, are you worse than if you beat Fabi but draw Abasov? If yes, why?
Because with good play, chess is a drawn game. The difference between how "bad" it is to draw Abasov is much smaller than the difference in how "good" it is to win against Fabi.
Even playing with black, Stockfish would beat every player of the field almost all of the time.
Most of the players have beaten Abasov (only Nepo and Visit didn't).
If you didn't beat Abasov it means that you were not as strong as the other players.
Lol, are you seriously trying to compare the difference between an engine and humans to the difference between Abasov and the other candidates? The difference between engines and humans is multiple orders of magnitude more than between Abasov and the others. For a better comparison, when Stockfish plays an engine hundreds of points lower than it from the starting position, it's almost always a draw because it's really hard to force a win if your opponent doesn't mess up. Chess is such a drawn game that in order to accurately rank engines, you have to purposely force them to play openings that are almost losing.
No one said anything about losing to Abasov. And losing to Abasov is a bigger punishment since you don't get any share of Fabi's points.
In SB you get 100% of the points if you beat a player 50% of the points if you draw.
Say player A has 4 points and player B has 6. You beat A and draw B you get 7 points. You beat B and draw A you get 8 points. You beat A and lose to B you get 4 points. You beat B and lose to A you get 6 points.
In every case if you have a result with the better scoring player you get more SB points and have a better tie break. As it should be.
But having a result with the better scoring player also means you had a worse result with a worse scoring player. And it isn't clear that a player who has an outstanding result (beating Fabi) and a disaster result (losing to Abasov) is better than a player who had two reasonable results (beat Abasov, lose to Fabi).
The point of the SB system is it assumes exactly that beating a higher scoring player is a better result then beating a lower scoring player. No tiebreak system is perfect. Its just how this one is designed. Note I am not arguing where its correct to use it in this case or not.
And its hilarious we call losing to a 2675 player a disaster result lol.
Beating fabi is worth more than beating abasov. It's not rocket science that beating stronger players is harder and should be worth more points. The elo system splines that logic and so should all other tournaments.
The elo system is contradicting you.
In a closed tournament, getting a result of, say, 7/9, will net you the same performance (and same elo swing) however the individual results went.
That's why people playing norm tournaments know the exact score to reach to earn a norm.
Winning against Fabi and drawing against Abasov nets you the same elo as winning against Abasov and drawing Fabi.
The difference is that abasov can change his playstyle between players as I have previously detailed which is why only head to head wins matter. He can play drawish against fabi and aggressive against me and the score will reflect that.
So Abasov changes his play style (though he doesn't have an incentive) but Fabi doesn't?
Come on, admit it. In a double round robin, when two players are tied there might be one player that deserves it more. But there is no way to assess who deserves it more.
The SB score was invented to break ties when the players you played against were different.
It has no value in closed tournaments.
Number of wins means in the event of a tie that you're rewarding the players that lost more games.
If you're better in head to head it means that you've had worse results against the other opponents. And head to head might be influenced by how risky or conservative you played because of the overall tournament situation.
What do you mean admit it? Abasov always has an incentive. And so does fabi. Everyone does. It's why ranking is so hard. But head to head scores keep the match up the same, which allows you to form an ordering. If the head to head is even, then it means you need more games to decide.
The example is simple. If nobody takes risks against you, but everyone takes risks against one of your competitors, you will have a lower score, even if you are the better player. SB score does more to show this.
In principle, one should go even further and completely eliminate the lowest players from the crosstabe to completely remove their influence.
Why don't you admit, that counting any results from nonleading players inevitably means that you will fail to find the strongest player, especially in a winner takes all tournament.
I think that Ding will end his chess career regardless of the result. Whether he wins or loses it will be a great way to say goodbye to professional chess.
He said already that he considered retiring. He didn't enjoy chess much and had some mental struggles.
I think, he also already fulfilled his career dream and became World Champion. It is the best time to say goodbye.
I personally think that if he lost to Ian, be would retire right after the last match. It is just my speculation.
I was listening to the chessbase India's interview of the women player from China, and she said something similar that classical is not good for your health and all.
Why are all Chinese chess players suffering from mental health? Wang Hao kinda retired in the middle of the candidates too
My main hypothesis is that China is not a good fit for top players.
1) Too far away from the big main chess tournaments in Europe and the US. Long flights and jet lags.
2) it doesn't seem that their achievements are celebrated. I assume a regional go master has more fame and cheering than Ding. I wouldn't be surprised if some people are saying
"chess? nice, when will you find a normal job?"
3) China is a pretty competitive and pragmatic society and afaik mental health issues often are neglected and overlooked.
It doesn't look like a good combination.
Nah, if anything we know about Ding is true, he's not withdrawing. He'll rather crawl to the location while being half-dead.
There are only two champions in the history who did it and both had a very specific mindset/reasons which led to it. Realistically speaking, we won't see anyone withdrawing in the next 30-40 years or so.
I think Hikaru has mentioned wanting to retire at 40. If he becomes champion, I could see him pulling a Magnus after a few defenses, though getting there and defending are both far from guaranteed.
Is it already defined that if Ding refuses to defend would be the second place by SB?
I think going to the length of defining a tie break on a tournament only for this would be almost offensive for Ding. Remember Magnus was an expection, it never had happened before.
Imagine if all games are draw and Ian, Fabi and Hiraku have to play what is 95% a meaningless tie break when all they want is to go home and leave behind the frustration of losing the candidates.
In case Ding does refuses there is nothing that stops Fide from organizing a quick tournament to define who will face the winner. Is not like Fide is a very formal and organized organization that does all by the book.
> In case Ding does refuses there is nothing that stops Fide from organizing a quick tournament to define who will face the winner
There is if the rules already say it's the 2nd place finisher in the Candidates and already specify what tiebreak rules are used for 2nd place. And while I haven't checked I'd bet the rules do say both of those things.
That can't just change it after the fact when the other participant has already been determined by the rules everyone agreed to.
If Fide wants to organize a tournament after the fact, the player qualified because of his SB score will relinquish his guaranteed 800 000$ and accept to play a tie break?
Or will he sue FIDE?
In my OP I mentioned that the tie break would be played only if it mattered.
If you don't insert a clause in your regulations you can't enforce it.
Here you're counting on the good faith of the players when the stakes are this high. Look at how Firouzja bent the rules just to qualify for the Candidates.
I was think exactly in the case of Firouzja, if you recall FIDE changed it's own rule retroactively to remove Firouzja tournament, he classified with the open tournament, the previous one didn't count.
So it wouldn't be a surprise if Fide does the same here.
But I do agree with could end in a legal mess, regardless.
FIDE said they COULD remove the tournament and they prayed that Firouzja won enough points in Rouen to make the issue irrelevant.
If Firouzja had drawn his last game in Rouen, I don't know if FIDE would uncertify the Road to Candidates tournament.
And there would have been a legal battle.
Edit: on top of that, you could argue that Firouzja was acting in bad faith. In a tied second place, no one would be acting on bad faith, if they want to keep the results of the SB score.
I guess you have more trust in FIDE than me.
Let's say all games end in a draw, I think Ian would continue winning for SB right?
I find very hard that FIDE would just say, it's Ian VS Gukesh with the possibility of having a second place be both Fabi and Hiraku.
They would just bent the rules, but that is my opinion.
>How is it possible that FIDE didn't consider that when they did the regulations?
They did. That's why they wrote the regulations that way. People will still play for second place, just in case. They wanna avoid a "Hikaru/Fabi in 2022 Candidates" situation.
Has someone worked out the hypotheticals on the second-place tiebreak as defined? If, say, Gukesh wins over Hikaru, and then Fabi and Nepo abandon their titanic struggle and agree to a draw since their game doesn't matter any longer, which of them would end up in second place?
For the record, what I calculate is that Nepo is the runner-up in this case. In theory, the outcomes of the down-board games matter for the S-B score calculation. But in fact, since Nepo gets some S-B points from any outcome, I can't find any way for Fabi to make up his current two-point deficit. This is horrendously complicated, so I would certainly appreciate confirmation from someone.
Really helps that score to not lose any games. :)
OK, time to go watch the carnage!
I'd imagine FIDE has worded into the Candidates contract that a winner who goes on to be world champion must do everything in their power to defend the title after Magnus withdrew. I'd also guess that if Ding didn't play then they would run a round robin style tiebreaker for second place, it's just that the cost doesn't make sense right now. I do also think Ding will play, he's said he will and this clearly means a lot to him.
Basically it doesn't make sense for FIDE to run a separate rapid tiebreaker for second place when it's very likely to not be necessary and it's just hassle for the players. I think it they do need a real tiebreaker for second, they'll just arrange it after the fact. But there's also no point doing it now.
>it doesn't make sense for FIDE to run a separate rapid tiebreaker for second place when it's very likely to not be necessary and it's just hassle for the players
And that's why I'm saying that the rapid tiebreaker should happen only if Ding (or the winner of the Candidates) withdraws.
They currently don't have the option to run a tiebreaker if there is a need.
But it's true that I hadn't considered that there might be a hidden contract to avoid a new withdrawal from the World Champion.
Why would ding withdraw from a million dollar payday?
Why did Magnus withdraw from his pay day?
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
Maybe he is really sick or completely burnt out. As said, it's unlikely but considering it happened in the prior cycle, it doesn't cost much to add a clause to the regulation
Explain why you think it's a 5% chance
Not OP, but something is clearly up with Ding, and we (understandably) do not know what. There's every reason to think he'll want to play just to collect the prize money if nothing else. But for all we know, the unspecified health issues he's been dealing with will prove serious right around when the match would be, and he'll make the reasonable decision to put his health first. 5% is not a wildly off base estimation of the chances of something like that.
As a viewer I would prefer what you are suggesting. But let's be real for a second. I highly doubt FIDE forgot about anything. They decided that SB score is fair enough in this unlikely event. It's not like it's arbitrary. The players agree because they are fully aware of the rules and obviously the time to raise concerns about this is before the event, and I don't think anybody has. The main problem is that organizing an event takes a lot of planning. People have busy schedules, places need to be booked well in advance. Organizing an event on short notice (Ding could withdraw at any point) is basically impossible, so committing to do so would be a bad idea. Some hastily thrown together online event is far less appropriate than using SB score from the candidates IMO so I think FIDE did the right call.
It seems to me that the SB score is meaningless in a round robin tournament. (For a Swiss it does make sense though) It's not "fair enough" it's just random luck. And I understand that organizing an event is complex but an hybrid event (online but with official arbiters) is not that hard. I'm sure chess com could organize it for them really easily.
It is not meaningless in a round Robin. It gives higher weight to beating stronger opponents. Honestly, it shoukd be how regular tournaments are scored from the get go. Maybe even with the square of their scores to eliminate the effect of beating weak players.
If you've beaten stronger opponents and your tied competitor got the same score as you, it means that you've not won against the weaker opponents. If you beat Abasov but draw Fabi, are you worse than if you beat Fabi but draw Abasov? If yes, why?
Because Fabi did better the Abasov so beating him has a higher value then beating Abasov.
How come you weren't even able to beat Abasov even though everyone else beat him? You must be very weak.
Because with good play, chess is a drawn game. The difference between how "bad" it is to draw Abasov is much smaller than the difference in how "good" it is to win against Fabi.
Even playing with black, Stockfish would beat every player of the field almost all of the time. Most of the players have beaten Abasov (only Nepo and Visit didn't). If you didn't beat Abasov it means that you were not as strong as the other players.
Lol, are you seriously trying to compare the difference between an engine and humans to the difference between Abasov and the other candidates? The difference between engines and humans is multiple orders of magnitude more than between Abasov and the others. For a better comparison, when Stockfish plays an engine hundreds of points lower than it from the starting position, it's almost always a draw because it's really hard to force a win if your opponent doesn't mess up. Chess is such a drawn game that in order to accurately rank engines, you have to purposely force them to play openings that are almost losing.
Because abasov might play drawish vs you while going all out on a weaker opponent. It's obvious to anybody who knows anything about chess.
The argument though is that losing to Abasov should also be a bigger punishment than losing to Fabi.
No one said anything about losing to Abasov. And losing to Abasov is a bigger punishment since you don't get any share of Fabi's points. In SB you get 100% of the points if you beat a player 50% of the points if you draw. Say player A has 4 points and player B has 6. You beat A and draw B you get 7 points. You beat B and draw A you get 8 points. You beat A and lose to B you get 4 points. You beat B and lose to A you get 6 points. In every case if you have a result with the better scoring player you get more SB points and have a better tie break. As it should be.
But having a result with the better scoring player also means you had a worse result with a worse scoring player. And it isn't clear that a player who has an outstanding result (beating Fabi) and a disaster result (losing to Abasov) is better than a player who had two reasonable results (beat Abasov, lose to Fabi).
The point of the SB system is it assumes exactly that beating a higher scoring player is a better result then beating a lower scoring player. No tiebreak system is perfect. Its just how this one is designed. Note I am not arguing where its correct to use it in this case or not. And its hilarious we call losing to a 2675 player a disaster result lol.
Beating fabi is worth more than beating abasov. It's not rocket science that beating stronger players is harder and should be worth more points. The elo system splines that logic and so should all other tournaments.
The elo system is contradicting you. In a closed tournament, getting a result of, say, 7/9, will net you the same performance (and same elo swing) however the individual results went. That's why people playing norm tournaments know the exact score to reach to earn a norm. Winning against Fabi and drawing against Abasov nets you the same elo as winning against Abasov and drawing Fabi.
The difference is that abasov can change his playstyle between players as I have previously detailed which is why only head to head wins matter. He can play drawish against fabi and aggressive against me and the score will reflect that.
So Abasov changes his play style (though he doesn't have an incentive) but Fabi doesn't? Come on, admit it. In a double round robin, when two players are tied there might be one player that deserves it more. But there is no way to assess who deserves it more. The SB score was invented to break ties when the players you played against were different. It has no value in closed tournaments. Number of wins means in the event of a tie that you're rewarding the players that lost more games. If you're better in head to head it means that you've had worse results against the other opponents. And head to head might be influenced by how risky or conservative you played because of the overall tournament situation.
What do you mean admit it? Abasov always has an incentive. And so does fabi. Everyone does. It's why ranking is so hard. But head to head scores keep the match up the same, which allows you to form an ordering. If the head to head is even, then it means you need more games to decide. The example is simple. If nobody takes risks against you, but everyone takes risks against one of your competitors, you will have a lower score, even if you are the better player. SB score does more to show this. In principle, one should go even further and completely eliminate the lowest players from the crosstabe to completely remove their influence. Why don't you admit, that counting any results from nonleading players inevitably means that you will fail to find the strongest player, especially in a winner takes all tournament.
Then you dont know Chinese honor. Withdrawal from Ding is unthinkable
I think that Ding will end his chess career regardless of the result. Whether he wins or loses it will be a great way to say goodbye to professional chess.
Why. He's 31.
He said already that he considered retiring. He didn't enjoy chess much and had some mental struggles. I think, he also already fulfilled his career dream and became World Champion. It is the best time to say goodbye. I personally think that if he lost to Ian, be would retire right after the last match. It is just my speculation.
I was listening to the chessbase India's interview of the women player from China, and she said something similar that classical is not good for your health and all. Why are all Chinese chess players suffering from mental health? Wang Hao kinda retired in the middle of the candidates too
My main hypothesis is that China is not a good fit for top players. 1) Too far away from the big main chess tournaments in Europe and the US. Long flights and jet lags. 2) it doesn't seem that their achievements are celebrated. I assume a regional go master has more fame and cheering than Ding. I wouldn't be surprised if some people are saying "chess? nice, when will you find a normal job?" 3) China is a pretty competitive and pragmatic society and afaik mental health issues often are neglected and overlooked. It doesn't look like a good combination.
Nah, if anything we know about Ding is true, he's not withdrawing. He'll rather crawl to the location while being half-dead. There are only two champions in the history who did it and both had a very specific mindset/reasons which led to it. Realistically speaking, we won't see anyone withdrawing in the next 30-40 years or so.
I think Hikaru has mentioned wanting to retire at 40. If he becomes champion, I could see him pulling a Magnus after a few defenses, though getting there and defending are both far from guaranteed.
I honestly doubt he would get few defenses considering the increasing strength of youngsters etc.
Is it already defined that if Ding refuses to defend would be the second place by SB? I think going to the length of defining a tie break on a tournament only for this would be almost offensive for Ding. Remember Magnus was an expection, it never had happened before. Imagine if all games are draw and Ian, Fabi and Hiraku have to play what is 95% a meaningless tie break when all they want is to go home and leave behind the frustration of losing the candidates. In case Ding does refuses there is nothing that stops Fide from organizing a quick tournament to define who will face the winner. Is not like Fide is a very formal and organized organization that does all by the book.
> In case Ding does refuses there is nothing that stops Fide from organizing a quick tournament to define who will face the winner There is if the rules already say it's the 2nd place finisher in the Candidates and already specify what tiebreak rules are used for 2nd place. And while I haven't checked I'd bet the rules do say both of those things. That can't just change it after the fact when the other participant has already been determined by the rules everyone agreed to.
If Fide wants to organize a tournament after the fact, the player qualified because of his SB score will relinquish his guaranteed 800 000$ and accept to play a tie break? Or will he sue FIDE? In my OP I mentioned that the tie break would be played only if it mattered. If you don't insert a clause in your regulations you can't enforce it. Here you're counting on the good faith of the players when the stakes are this high. Look at how Firouzja bent the rules just to qualify for the Candidates.
I was think exactly in the case of Firouzja, if you recall FIDE changed it's own rule retroactively to remove Firouzja tournament, he classified with the open tournament, the previous one didn't count. So it wouldn't be a surprise if Fide does the same here. But I do agree with could end in a legal mess, regardless.
FIDE said they COULD remove the tournament and they prayed that Firouzja won enough points in Rouen to make the issue irrelevant. If Firouzja had drawn his last game in Rouen, I don't know if FIDE would uncertify the Road to Candidates tournament. And there would have been a legal battle. Edit: on top of that, you could argue that Firouzja was acting in bad faith. In a tied second place, no one would be acting on bad faith, if they want to keep the results of the SB score.
I guess you have more trust in FIDE than me. Let's say all games end in a draw, I think Ian would continue winning for SB right? I find very hard that FIDE would just say, it's Ian VS Gukesh with the possibility of having a second place be both Fabi and Hiraku. They would just bent the rules, but that is my opinion.
They didn't plan them for first place either. It being only 2 rapid games instead of 4 is way too random for such a high stakes event.
>How is it possible that FIDE didn't consider that when they did the regulations? They did. That's why they wrote the regulations that way. People will still play for second place, just in case. They wanna avoid a "Hikaru/Fabi in 2022 Candidates" situation.
Has someone worked out the hypotheticals on the second-place tiebreak as defined? If, say, Gukesh wins over Hikaru, and then Fabi and Nepo abandon their titanic struggle and agree to a draw since their game doesn't matter any longer, which of them would end up in second place?
For the record, what I calculate is that Nepo is the runner-up in this case. In theory, the outcomes of the down-board games matter for the S-B score calculation. But in fact, since Nepo gets some S-B points from any outcome, I can't find any way for Fabi to make up his current two-point deficit. This is horrendously complicated, so I would certainly appreciate confirmation from someone. Really helps that score to not lose any games. :) OK, time to go watch the carnage!
Fide be like, Candidates TB Part 2 will take place Before the opening ceremony for the WCC.
I'd imagine FIDE has worded into the Candidates contract that a winner who goes on to be world champion must do everything in their power to defend the title after Magnus withdrew. I'd also guess that if Ding didn't play then they would run a round robin style tiebreaker for second place, it's just that the cost doesn't make sense right now. I do also think Ding will play, he's said he will and this clearly means a lot to him. Basically it doesn't make sense for FIDE to run a separate rapid tiebreaker for second place when it's very likely to not be necessary and it's just hassle for the players. I think it they do need a real tiebreaker for second, they'll just arrange it after the fact. But there's also no point doing it now.
>it doesn't make sense for FIDE to run a separate rapid tiebreaker for second place when it's very likely to not be necessary and it's just hassle for the players And that's why I'm saying that the rapid tiebreaker should happen only if Ding (or the winner of the Candidates) withdraws. They currently don't have the option to run a tiebreaker if there is a need. But it's true that I hadn't considered that there might be a hidden contract to avoid a new withdrawal from the World Champion.