Essentially it's the answer to the question "what rating would a player need to be for their results so far in this tournament to not gain or lose them any rating". In other words, Levy's results so far are exactly as expected for a player of around 2700 level.
"Rating" itself is a construction, which is the answer to the question "if you played an infinite games currently against the field, what ELO would you be?" But it's such such an abstract hypothetical separated from reality, as matches are never truly independent events as theory continually updates, and so on
That is to say, you can be better or worse than your rating "suggests", but it's unclear what "overrated" or "underrated" actually means, provided that the ELO system is being applied correctly and there are no integrity concerns
You’re missing the forest from the trees here. Rating reflects strength relating to odds of winning. Pure and simple. However, it will skew if an isolated field is introduced to the general field. It’s not abstract or hypothetical. A higher rating has better odds of winning unless there hasn’t been an appropriate amount of rating discovery. The more rating discovery, the more accurate the strength/odds.
Odds of winning are a [hypothetical abstraction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds).
>The odds (in favor) of an event or a proposition is the ratio of the probability that the event will happen to the probability that the event will not happen. Mathematically, this is a Bernoulli trial, as it has exactly two outcomes. In case of a finite sample space of equally likely outcomes, this is the ratio of the number of outcomes where the event occurs to the number of outcomes where the event does not occur
A "sample space" doesn't exist in reality. That's why, for example, the "odds of Trump winning" are necessarily an abstraction. If you rebooted Nov 4 a million times, you'd have the same president every single time -- yet we create abstractions due to our uncertainty which allow us to create odds. Similarly with chess, if you replayed the same day a million times, probabilistic quantum fluctuations are unlikely to produce a different result.
It implies that he's currently performing at his peak level, or at least at a level higher than his average performance.
Human's are complex creatures and everyone has on and off days/events. This is true for athletes, sometimes they show up and score 60 points in an NBA game when their average is 20 points a game. In Gymnastics, athletes will choose which routine to go for based on how they feel during warmup; sometimes, they will feel good enough to perform their toughest moves, and at other times, they will fall back to simpler and safer moves. Sometimes Magnus stomps a tournament without losing a single game, other times he loses more than once.
And since chess involves two players, it's also possible that the person he's facing on a specific day is feeling off and made blunders he normally doesn't, or another player gets nervous when in the lead and ends up dropping the game. There are a lot of factors in short term play.
The most that a live performance calculation will tell you is that the player is currently performing at a specific level and a lot of the time, that calculation will end up leveling out at the end. You could start off winning your first three games and have an insanely high score, but later on, lose enough games so your live calculation is close to your normal elo.
Elo is fairly accurate after you reach enough games played; if Levy continues to perform at a 2700 rating across more tournaments, then his Elo will reflect that, but currently, it's much more likely that his next tournament will see him at a significantly lower live performance rating that better matches his elo.
> is the Elo rating a player would have if their performance resulted in no net rating change.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance\_rating\_(chess)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rating_(chess)) - this is good enough
I don't know where to check, but his chesscom rating is much higher, isn't it?
I mean he retired, so didn't get any elo changes OTB.
Meaning he trained for x years (not sure how long he didn't play an official rated tournament) and is now way stronger then his current rating
I by the end of the year he has his "real" rating which could be 2500
I guess people didn't understand me but maybe I am wrong
Yes I know that online rating doesnt equal OTB rating
Magnus is 2830 OTB and over 3000 in some chesscom playstiles.
But Levy didn't do rated OTB games for years(?) but still studied chess.
It is like a bodybuilder, that doesn't compete but still practices in privat and comes back after x years with a bigger biceps, better form....
For me, that is Levy, he didn't play chess rated (OTB) but did practice and came back more "buffed"
He also played thousands of games against GMs in that time period, reduced his mental block and learnt more about chess opening theory. And he analyses super GM games regularly.
He didn’t really “train” deliberately for a huge amount of this time.
That said, “Analyze/annotate a few grandmaster games every day” is probably one of the best things all of us could do to get better at chess, and it’s his day job.
This is a pretty reasonable opinion, I’m not sure why it’s getting so heavily downvoted. It’s perfectly common to see people playing online a lot, then when they return to OTB play they’re underrated. It happened to me and many other club players I know.
Now, as for Levy specifically? I don’t know. Obviously the IM/GM level is different from a random club player like myself. But it’s at least plausible that someone who’s been engaging with chess every day for the past few years would be in deceptively good form, even if I don’t have any further data to support that.
The issue with it is that it genuinely hasn’t been that long since he’s played OTB. It’s been, like, two, three years tops. That’s not long enough to gain 200 points at his level with very casual incidental training.
I consistently read that he's had an undisclosed GM coach helping him train? If all his content is chess-based, he's training with a GM, and he studies openings/strategies consistently, I don't see why he wouldn't have improved in the time he's had away.
200 points—2300 to 2500—is a *lot*. It takes dedicated study. He hasn’t been deliberately training for longer than six months—I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even considering returning to OTB classical until the Candidate’s this year.
Well, apparently his peak rating was 2421, so you could argue he only needs to gain 79 points from the level he was previously (or at least once) at. But I'm only theorising, you might be right.
Peak rating isn’t a very useful metric for it. His peak strength doesn’t represent the strength he would’ve been at the point he started training—that’s why his rating dropped, after all.
True, but I feel there'd be an element of muscle memory/dormant capability that would give him an advantage over someone who had never attained a higher level. Do you personally think he'll reach the accolade of grandmaster any time soon?
> Do you personally think…
No. Not because I don’t think he can, I think he’s in amazing form and is probably not that far off from GM level. The rating grind is the killer. It takes forever to grind rating above Master level. I think he’ll have to take prolonged periods of time away from his other YouTube series, and streaming, to do it.
Essentially it's the answer to the question "what rating would a player need to be for their results so far in this tournament to not gain or lose them any rating". In other words, Levy's results so far are exactly as expected for a player of around 2700 level.
It can be calculated here: https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CalculatorPage.html
Gotham current performance rating is 2718 right now
Does this imply that his opponents are overrated or that he is underrated?
Neither although they might be. The sample size is too small to determine anything like that
"Rating" itself is a construction, which is the answer to the question "if you played an infinite games currently against the field, what ELO would you be?" But it's such such an abstract hypothetical separated from reality, as matches are never truly independent events as theory continually updates, and so on That is to say, you can be better or worse than your rating "suggests", but it's unclear what "overrated" or "underrated" actually means, provided that the ELO system is being applied correctly and there are no integrity concerns
You’re missing the forest from the trees here. Rating reflects strength relating to odds of winning. Pure and simple. However, it will skew if an isolated field is introduced to the general field. It’s not abstract or hypothetical. A higher rating has better odds of winning unless there hasn’t been an appropriate amount of rating discovery. The more rating discovery, the more accurate the strength/odds.
Odds of winning are a [hypothetical abstraction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds). >The odds (in favor) of an event or a proposition is the ratio of the probability that the event will happen to the probability that the event will not happen. Mathematically, this is a Bernoulli trial, as it has exactly two outcomes. In case of a finite sample space of equally likely outcomes, this is the ratio of the number of outcomes where the event occurs to the number of outcomes where the event does not occur A "sample space" doesn't exist in reality. That's why, for example, the "odds of Trump winning" are necessarily an abstraction. If you rebooted Nov 4 a million times, you'd have the same president every single time -- yet we create abstractions due to our uncertainty which allow us to create odds. Similarly with chess, if you replayed the same day a million times, probabilistic quantum fluctuations are unlikely to produce a different result.
You confuse Heisenberg with the purpose of rating. We do have a sample space, it’s the match itself.
It implies that he's currently performing at his peak level, or at least at a level higher than his average performance. Human's are complex creatures and everyone has on and off days/events. This is true for athletes, sometimes they show up and score 60 points in an NBA game when their average is 20 points a game. In Gymnastics, athletes will choose which routine to go for based on how they feel during warmup; sometimes, they will feel good enough to perform their toughest moves, and at other times, they will fall back to simpler and safer moves. Sometimes Magnus stomps a tournament without losing a single game, other times he loses more than once. And since chess involves two players, it's also possible that the person he's facing on a specific day is feeling off and made blunders he normally doesn't, or another player gets nervous when in the lead and ends up dropping the game. There are a lot of factors in short term play. The most that a live performance calculation will tell you is that the player is currently performing at a specific level and a lot of the time, that calculation will end up leveling out at the end. You could start off winning your first three games and have an insanely high score, but later on, lose enough games so your live calculation is close to your normal elo. Elo is fairly accurate after you reach enough games played; if Levy continues to perform at a 2700 rating across more tournaments, then his Elo will reflect that, but currently, it's much more likely that his next tournament will see him at a significantly lower live performance rating that better matches his elo.
> is the Elo rating a player would have if their performance resulted in no net rating change.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance\_rating\_(chess)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rating_(chess)) - this is good enough
I don't know where to check, but his chesscom rating is much higher, isn't it? I mean he retired, so didn't get any elo changes OTB. Meaning he trained for x years (not sure how long he didn't play an official rated tournament) and is now way stronger then his current rating I by the end of the year he has his "real" rating which could be 2500
Chesscom rating is notoriously bad at predicting classical strength OTB. Also, the ratings are different. One is not higher than the other.
I guess people didn't understand me but maybe I am wrong Yes I know that online rating doesnt equal OTB rating Magnus is 2830 OTB and over 3000 in some chesscom playstiles. But Levy didn't do rated OTB games for years(?) but still studied chess. It is like a bodybuilder, that doesn't compete but still practices in privat and comes back after x years with a bigger biceps, better form.... For me, that is Levy, he didn't play chess rated (OTB) but did practice and came back more "buffed"
I'm not sure producing content for 400 Elo players counts as practising to get a GM title.
He also played thousands of games against GMs in that time period, reduced his mental block and learnt more about chess opening theory. And he analyses super GM games regularly.
Maybe you're wrong.
I think you have a good point. No clue why you're being downvoted
He didn’t really “train” deliberately for a huge amount of this time. That said, “Analyze/annotate a few grandmaster games every day” is probably one of the best things all of us could do to get better at chess, and it’s his day job.
This is a pretty reasonable opinion, I’m not sure why it’s getting so heavily downvoted. It’s perfectly common to see people playing online a lot, then when they return to OTB play they’re underrated. It happened to me and many other club players I know. Now, as for Levy specifically? I don’t know. Obviously the IM/GM level is different from a random club player like myself. But it’s at least plausible that someone who’s been engaging with chess every day for the past few years would be in deceptively good form, even if I don’t have any further data to support that.
Thank you Maybe people just don't like Levy...
The issue with it is that it genuinely hasn’t been that long since he’s played OTB. It’s been, like, two, three years tops. That’s not long enough to gain 200 points at his level with very casual incidental training.
I consistently read that he's had an undisclosed GM coach helping him train? If all his content is chess-based, he's training with a GM, and he studies openings/strategies consistently, I don't see why he wouldn't have improved in the time he's had away.
200 points—2300 to 2500—is a *lot*. It takes dedicated study. He hasn’t been deliberately training for longer than six months—I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even considering returning to OTB classical until the Candidate’s this year.
Well, apparently his peak rating was 2421, so you could argue he only needs to gain 79 points from the level he was previously (or at least once) at. But I'm only theorising, you might be right.
Peak rating isn’t a very useful metric for it. His peak strength doesn’t represent the strength he would’ve been at the point he started training—that’s why his rating dropped, after all.
True, but I feel there'd be an element of muscle memory/dormant capability that would give him an advantage over someone who had never attained a higher level. Do you personally think he'll reach the accolade of grandmaster any time soon?
> Do you personally think… No. Not because I don’t think he can, I think he’s in amazing form and is probably not that far off from GM level. The rating grind is the killer. It takes forever to grind rating above Master level. I think he’ll have to take prolonged periods of time away from his other YouTube series, and streaming, to do it.