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What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

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Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#31
post #22
post #7

I still can't understand how chess ratings work --even after 'RTFM' and having people try and explain it to me. Far far below the lofty heights of Carlsen &co., I play a fair bit on Lichess. Sometimes I'll play someone with a similar ranking to myself and beat them and will earn 3 or 4 points. Then we'll have a re-match which I lose and they'll gain 12 or 15 points. I just can't fathom how them beating me earns them…

About the manner of victory, I make an example from the game of go, which being points based makes this case more straightforward to evaluate. In go it's either win or loss, there is no draw. You can win by one point or by one hundred and you still score only one point in the tournament table. Why is that? Because if you count to be losing by five points you could either resign (I'm assuming a game between strong pla…

In Baduk gambling in Korea, you pay for points, so you might expect people to just minimize differences to pay out less, but they end up fighting all game instead. This is because it's capped for resignation, it might be cheaper to resign if you're too far behind (why count and pay more?)

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#32
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible to go to a tournament and have it not affect your rank? Or is every tournament ranked all the time?

It is. If the tournament is not organized by FIDE, or a national chess federation, it won't affect your FIDE rating. It will also not affect your FIDE rating if the tournament is not organised to the required standard (which is basically nonexistent for under-1800 rated players, and going all the way to the required presence of International Arbiters, metal detectors and blood tests for top level play)

> metal detectors and blood tests

What are they looking for? Communicators and ... Adderall? Xanzolam?

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#34

I think one major piece is consistently missed in those articles. Yes, the chances of him hitting 2900 do not depend only on his performance against other players, but from their elo as well. If the following 25 players in the world where all 2800+ Carlsen would already be 2900+. Thus, Carlsen's best chances largely depend on elo inflation to widen the elo distribution itself. One example of this: Louis de Bourdonnai…

The Elo system didn't exist until 100 years after Labourdonnais. There are several attempts to extend it backwards, but they're not well defined. It doesn't make sense to say Labourdonnais went "from 2600 to 2650" without changing his playing strength: it's an artifact of some particular guy's methodology to estimate historical ratings.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. If the tournament is not organized by FIDE, or a national chess federation, it won't affect your FIDE rating. It will also not affect your FIDE rating if the tournament is not organised to the required standard (which is basically nonexistent for under-1800 rated players, and going all the way to the required presence of International Arbiters, metal detectors and blood tests for top level play)

> metal detectors and blood tests What are they looking for? Communicators and ... Adderall? Xanzolam?

> What are they looking for? Communicators and ... Adderall? Xanzolam?

Probably not Xanzolam, because there's no way it'd enhance your performance, but yeah, you get the idea.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#36
post #29

Knowing very little about chess, what is the current state of the best chess AI compared to human players like Magnus Carlsen?

Magnus Carlsen: 2864 Elo

Stockfish: 3585 Elo

"Elo suggested scaling ratings so that a difference of 200 rating points in chess would mean that the stronger player has an expected score (which basically is an expected average score) of approximately 0.75, and the USCF initially aimed for an average club player to have a rating of 1500."

I guess that means that Magnus has expected score of roughly 0.25^((3585 - 2864)/200) = 0.00675 against Stockfish 15, which is basically 1 in 200 games?

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#37
The whole 2900 thing is so strange. ELO is a relative scale. The number only makes sense in relation to the ratings of other. You could shift everyone or scale it differently and it wouldn’t change anything. What a poor goal.

I view the whole thing more as a criticism of the sorry state of FIDE and the world championship that an actual serious goal.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#38
post #7

I still can't understand how chess ratings work --even after 'RTFM' and having people try and explain it to me. Far far below the lofty heights of Carlsen &co., I play a fair bit on Lichess. Sometimes I'll play someone with a similar ranking to myself and beat them and will earn 3 or 4 points. Then we'll have a re-match which I lose and they'll gain 12 or 15 points. I just can't fathom how them beating me earns them…

> Sometimes I'll play someone with a similar ranking to myself and beat them and > will earn 3 or 4 points. Then we'll have a re-match which I lose and they'll > gain 12 or 15 points.

It's probably a sign that they have a new account. If a player has played very few games, then his rating is only approximate. It's likely his true rating is far from his current rating. The rating added or subtracted due to a win/loss is on purpose made large, so he quickly can get to his true rating. When he gets to his true rating, he will presumably win and lose the same amount of games and stay at the rating.

Lichess and Chess.com both use (variants of) Glicko (instead of ELO). The first step is to calculate the rating deviance. A high deviance means that the player hasn't settled on a given rating. This factors into the calculation of the new rating.

The sites have chosen this system so that higher (or lower) rated players that make a new account quickly get close to their "true" rating.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#39
post #23

How much would get gain for a win vs a say 1800 rated player? Could he game the system by doing 1000 rated matches against poor players until he hits 2900?

No, because he wouldn't get any points for beating opponents that much lower than him. There is no such thing as a fractional rating point, so if the points gain gets below 0.5 it just rounds down to zero.

This is wrong. The FIDE rating system calculates in tenths of a rating point, but rounds to the nearest 1 every month.

Re: What are Magnus Carlsen's chances of reaching 2900?

#40
post #29

Knowing very little about chess, what is the current state of the best chess AI compared to human players like Magnus Carlsen?

Magnus Carlsen: 2864 Elo Stockfish: 3585 Elo "Elo suggested scaling ratings so that a difference of 200 rating points in chess would mean that the stronger player has an expected score (which basically is an expected average score) of approximately 0.75, and the USCF initially aimed for an average club player to have a rating of 1500." I guess that means that Magnus has expected score of roughly 0.25^((3585 - 2864)/2…

Machine and human ELO ratings are decorrelated. No games are played between a full strength engine and a human anymore. Even Magnus can’t win against a top engine. He might draw if he is lucky.
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