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| Dec-18-23 | | Bobby Fiske: A STAGED TOURNAMENT
Alireza will play these matches in his hometown, against 3 lesser GMs in their 50s, handpicked by his own chess club.
Obviously they have been invited and paid to participate, with all costs covered and likely a fitting show-up fee. The organizer is not shy about the purpose of the "tournament". On their website it is named: <En route vers les Candidates?> which translates into "On the way to the Candidates?" The dice is loaded... |
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Dec-19-23
 | | Sally Simpson: This rating rigging has been going on for years. See
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-f... for just one event. And then there was The Don Cup, Azuv, Russia, 2010 which handed out 3 GM norms and 3 IM norms. Upon further investigation it was discovered the event never took place and some of these GM games were in fact blatant copies, move for move from a computer tournament. This game was submitted Mobile Chess vs Sjeng, 2008 as being played by D. Yamnov - V.Eryomenko (there is every chance that one of the players or indeed both of them did not know they were playing in this event. An event that did not take place!) They should stop this qualifying for the candidates by rating, I've never liked it and replace it with an event where you have to qualify on merit. Add another seat in the Isle of Man FIDE Open. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | stone free or die: Well, perhaps they could do a short match or quad-RR for the highest rated non-qualifiers. Then at least we could still allow a high-rated non-qualifier one last chance and at least expect a couple of quality games along the way. The rating snapshot should be done at the time of the last (or next to last) qualifying tournament to avoid "gaming" the system afterwards. . |
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Dec-19-23
 | | Williebob: ChessBase News' report today from the ongoing Sunway Stiges event focuses on the Candidates' ratings spot chaos right out of the gate:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/sunwa...
Good quote from Jacob Aagard
<This is why the rating spot is nonsense. The number 7 player in the world cannot win rating in an open tournament (no surprise). Try to think that there are usually 10 rating spots in top tournaments and no way to qualify. It takes superhuman results to break into the elite. But maintaining a spot there is easier. It is by no means obvious [that] our elite is the real elite, as we see in Grand Swiss, Olympiad, Qatar and other events, where they play the players who make a living playing open tournaments.This is not said out of disrespect or dislike of anyone. I don’t care about the names of the elite players. I want the elite players to be players who win games and events and who qualify for top tournaments. Not by making draws with each other, but by winning games and events. It will make chess far more entertaining.>
I am a little confused as to why the French event should be singled out by FIDE as something to be "investigated" (sorry for scare quotes, but anything FIDE does in its enforcement capacity is worth at least one raised eyebrow). They changed the rating spot rule at a late hour, didn't they? So there's a mad rush at three different events (Chennai, Stiges, France) for the few players who might be able to pass Wesley So's rating. This seems like the logical result of the policy change, Aagard's points aside. I don't blame the players or their backers for trying to win FIDE's game. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | fabelhaft: <FIDE taking a critical view on Alireza Firouzja rating-stunt. The event might be disregarded rating wise> It’s not really different from what Ding Liren did though, when the Chinese Chess Feseration handpicked lower rated Chinese players to give him the required games and results, without which he would not have become World Champion. This is one of the games where Ding Liren had a lost position (after his 35th move) but his opponent conveniently blundered and lost. Does anyone really think these players ever would have beaten Ding Liren and defeated the purpose of the whole event? https://lichess.org/study/HmwAMtgb
One difference is that Ding Liren didn’t need all wins, he just needed not to be passed by Aronian through losing rating, while Firouzja needs a bit more help with convenient losses by his opponents. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | fabelhaft: <It is by no means obvious [that] our elite is the real elite, as we see in Grand Swiss, Olympiad, Qatar and other events> This is often repeated but I doubt it. Carlsen or Caruana losing rating in some events doesn’t mean that they are not the real elite. Vidit won the Grand Swiss, Yakubboev won Qatar etc but how often have they repeated results like that? I think the elite is the real elite, it’s just that any top player having a bad result is taken as an indication that he is overrated. Nakamura was top rated in the Grand Swiss and finished second, the previous Grand Swiss had Firouzja and Caruana in the top two. The previous Qatar Masters was won by Carlsen. The penultimate OTB Chess Olympiad had Ding Liren as the player with the best first board performances, the latest had Gukesh (Carlsen’s +6-0=3 on first board wasn’t enough). |
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Dec-19-23
 | | perfidious: The event at Chartres has all the earmarks of Strumica 1995, only the organiser appears not at all reticent about announcing its purpose. <Geoff....And then there was The Don Cup, Azuv, Russia, 2010 which handed out 3 GM norms and 3 IM norms.Upon further investigation it was discovered the event never took place and some of these GM games were in fact blatant copies, move for move from a computer tournament....> This is taking matters one step beyond a Canadian junior championship in the early 1980s, in which one game was discovered to have followed all the moves of a recent White win published by Informator. The winner was shorn of the title, which would have meant an automatic invitation to the World Junior, while curiously, the runner-up played anyway despite involvement in the fix. |
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Dec-19-23
 | | Troller: <perfidious: The event at Chartres has all the earmarks of Strumica 1995, only the organiser appears not at all reticent about announcing its purpose.> I think the Chartres event is actually being played as opposed (?) to Strumica. As <fabelhaft> points out, it bears close resemblance to the events Ding Liren played last year in order to qualify for the candidates. Bulgaria has been notorious for providing such events. One can also question the way Abhimanyu Mishra got his GM title by playing tournament after tournament in Hungary against relatively lowly rated opponents. Mishra is of course a strong player, just like Ding and Firouzja are elite GMs. But events like these come with a rather sour taste... |
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| Dec-19-23 | | Bobby Fiske: Comparing rigged tournaments, Strumica 1995 is the worst kind. It was all fake. Only “positive” thing to say about such setups, is that they are cheating “the system”, not individuals. We get a few more GMs with IM play strength. With the advent of internet and social media, such fake title attempts have become less attractive though, because rumours travel fast and puts the involved players in the pillory. I don’t find anything wrong with Ding Lirens qualification to the June 2022 Candidates. Ding didn’t need rating points, he needed games, which was more of a formality. At the time FIDE activated the rating spot, after banning Karjakin, Ding (2799) had a clear 27 rating point lead on Aronian (2772). Aronian made an effort, but ultimately dropped down to 2765, while Ding increased his Elo (2806) = 41 point lead by May. As a conclusion, Ding had an untouchable rating lead during the whole period. No other player was even close to threatening him. The in-house tournaments in China were needed only for him to reach the minimum game-limit set by FIDE. Ding was scheduled for the Grand Prix series, but couldn’t attend because of visa problems, due to the corona travel restrictions. So, I consider these games more of a formality, not a matter of boosting his Elo. Returning to what goes on in Chartres, I find it highly unethical versus his colleague Wesley So.
Alireza has had an active chess year, with access to all possible tournaments, resulting in his live Elo 2750 by 1st December (after St. Louis). That leave him 7 points behind Wesley So, with Elo 2757. In an honest last-minute attempt to improve his rating, Alireza should have followed Leinier Dominguez example, and signed up for SunwaySitges or some other open tournament with a mixed, motivated and strong field.
Hopefully FIDE will take action and disregard the staged single-purpose games in Chartres. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | fabelhaft: <I don’t find anything wrong with Ding Lirens qualification to the June 2022 Candidates. Ding didn’t need rating points, he needed games, which was more of a formality. At the time FIDE activated the rating spot, after banning Karjakin, Ding (2799) had a clear 27 rating point lead on Aronian (2772). Aronian made an effort, but ultimately dropped down to 2765> Ding needed games and the right results in them, and got those through an event organised only to get that, against other Chinese players that knew they were not supposed to win games. If he had lost three of the 28 he could have been behind Aronian without the latter having to play against similarly cooperative opponents handpicked by his own federation. I think several of the games Ding played look interesting, as Kramnik would say, if you play through them. Opponents spending all their time early to blunder with seconds on the clock, etc. The reason there were few complaints was that Ding Liren was considered to "deserve" being in the Candidates, in the way most Reddit threads on the subject state that since he beat Nepo it was obviously correct that he got a place in the Candidates. But I still wonder if many do not suspect that it was a fake event with fake games that got him there in the end. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | whiteshark: <Leinier Dominguez> has dropped out of #SunwaySitges and the Candidates race, saying <"I'm simply risking too much">...
https://twitter.com/chess24com/stat... |
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| Dec-19-23 | | nok: <Hopefully FIDE will take action and disregard the staged single-purpose games in Chartres.> Don't blame the players blame the game. Rating by design counts all games. If you don't want rating races, announce a number of qualifying events in advance. |
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Dec-19-23
| | Williebob: <perfidious>, <Sally>, thanks for the helpful reminders of past 'Elo crimes'.
Lends weight to the notion that the rating qualifier for Candidates is a bit shambolic.
The CB article is remarkable for at least one statement that I do not believe I've seen before in such a mainstream chess publication: <The fact that many grandmasters around the 2500-2650 rating band are underrated was shown in the Qatar Masters..>
It also acknowledges the two distinct worlds of pro chess. Some great players skirt by the FIDE system and do fine with a working class approach (maybe Shabalov is a prime example). Makes you wonder how some outsiders might perform in a serious match! |
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| Dec-19-23 | | stone free or die: <<Williebob> quoting <CB>: <The fact that many grandmasters around the 2500-2650 rating band are underrated was shown in the Qatar Masters..>> They only gave two examples to motivate this, one a tournament without top-seeds on the leaderboard, and the other a couple of Carlsen loses to non-elites. I'd like to see better motivation for this assertion though. I especially think Carlsen's loses aren't really reflective. . |
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| Dec-19-23 | | stone free or die: Also, from reading the discussions I wonder why an average over some duration isn't used for the ratings cut, rather than a snapshot at a fixed time. The averaging would hopefully at least cut down on these last-minute ratings scramble tournaments. . |
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| Dec-19-23 | | fabelhaft: <They only gave two examples to motivate this, one a tournament without top-seeds on the leaderboard, and the other a couple of Carlsen loses to non-elites> Yes, it’s easy to pick an event with 100 players rated 2500-2600 and claim that they are underrated because Player X and Player Y scored great results. But if you look at the next event Player X and Player Y didn’t score great results. There will always be a bunch of lower rated players that overperform, but try guessing which in advance, and try supporting the idea that they are underrated because they did well in one event but badly in three others, which is why their rating actually reflects their playing level rather than show that they are underrated. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | EvanTheTerrible: Just get rid of the rating spot. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | EvanTheTerrible: Qualification Spot #1: World Cup 1st
Qualification Spot #2: World Cup 2nd
Qualification Spot #3: Grand Swiss #1 1st
Qualification Spot #4: Grand Swiss #1 2nd
Run a second Grand Swiss tournament.
Qualification Spot #5: Grand Swiss #2 1st
Qualification Spot #6: Grand Swiss #2 2nd
Create a Round Robin from the top 12 finishers (not otherwise qualified) based on performance in the above 3 events. Qualification Spot #7: Round Robin #1
Qualification Spot #8: FIDE Circuit (Qualifying events must be scheduled 3 months in advance). |
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| Dec-19-23 | | Bobby Fiske: Firouzjas rating-stunt in Chartres has caused a storm in social media, commentators describing it as a farse. Here is an example from the second game:
Firouzjas just played 22.. Bg5, threatening the Rook on f4. GM Alexandre Dgebuadze responded with 23. Nab3?? -Giving up the exchange without compensation. Seems he just wanted to finish his 2 game mini match as quick as possible, collect the money and go home. 
click for larger view |
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| Dec-19-23 | | EvanTheTerrible: I think there are legitimate complaints about organizing such an event without giving into conspiracy theories and believing the games are fixed. I would be unbelievably surprised if there was anything nefarious going on, as much as I dislike the fact that such an event exists. |
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Dec-19-23
| | Sally Simpson: Hi Bobby,
Yes. It is not just a bunch of fishwives gossiping on a chess forum anymore (that will be us lot). Everyone is hinting/demanding the rating spot be dropped and FIDE are, apparently, keeping an eye on events. Hopefully they will come up with a new method of filling the last board in the candidates. A method based on merit rather than a system that is, as we are witnessing, open to abuse. But do not hold your breath. Changes were meant to be afoot when Giri squeezed into the 2020 candidates on rating after pulling out of the Isle of Man tournament fearing one poor game could knacker his rating. At the time that caused quite a row amongst the fishwives; 'Anish Giri and the "39 Steps" to the Candidates.' https://www.chess.com/forum/view/ge.... Covid overshadowed the 2020 candidates and the rating fiddle was forgotten. I've no beef with the players concerned, they are not breaking rules, just exploiting and bending them. Hopefully this time beyond breaking point and the rating qualification spot is finally abolished. |
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Dec-19-23
 | | beatgiant: <stone free or die><I wonder why an average over some duration isn't used for the ratings cut, rather than a snapshot at a fixed time.> The average over a year used to be the criterion. Some criticized it because it incentivized the top player to coast to qualification by playing the minimum required number of games, with an early lead practically insurmountable halfway through the year. They could have addressed that by tinkering with the minimum activity requirements and the subset of months used in the averaging, but instead they tried this quick fix. |
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| Dec-19-23 | | goodevans: Simple fact is that it's easier to manipulate ratings than win tournaments against opponents equally eager to qualify. The answer is obvious, isn't it? |
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| Dec-19-23 | | nok: Qualification spots #1-9: Interzonal
Qualification spot #10: world champion |
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Dec-20-23
| | Williebob: Bring back Candidate matches!
Of course, we all know that the money simply isn't there for such events. But I really do like the idea of top players testing each other in match format.
The players themselves don't seem at all interested in match play apart from the Big One, unfortunately. |
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