They should bring back the interzonal / bracket system. It's clearly the better system for selecting a strong challenger. Having things decided by a single tournament (rather than a bracket of individual matches between players) leaves too much to chance. Because of the current system, we're about to have a world championship match where the competitors are world #6 and world #7.
The deserving players will win no matter what system it is. And others will be filtered out like what happened to alireza and abasov. Today we have to see the world number 6 and 7 in the world championship match not because of fide or anyone else. It's simply because caruana made blunders in a game in which he had massive advantage. And if caruana was the challenger today, we wouldn't be saying this. Gukesh is the current world number 7 but has the potential to be in the top 3 in coming years. The same system made magnus world champion, the same system made fabiano challenger. But now that the system isn't favoring the old dogs anymore, it's bad. Classic coping. Hikaru isn't some savant of a classical player. Neither is nepo. Even though they're in the top 5 they're in no way better than the next 5 players on the top 10 list.
Its because European and American players farm ELO by inviting only 8 top players in any tournaments and people who finish mid get tonnes of ELO.Thats overrated frauds like Aronian and GIri are angry at these reforms.
Top players should play more Open tournaments, their ratings are inflated. That is the problem. All of these Caruana's are afraid of getting a draw against an IM and losing to a 2500 GM and their ratings taking a hit. Do we really need to see another game between Nepo and Giri, or Naka vs Caruana. Boring These guys have played each other a hundred times and then agree to a draw because it makes financial sense. We should ban invitationals, it is a form of rigging the rating pool.
A few years ago there was disagreement about whether top players' ratings were inflated or deflated compared to years before. Mark Glickman made a very good case that they were actually deflated. That would mean that Magnus's peak rating, for example, was lower than it should have been. Now it's pretty much universally agreed that top player ratings are deflated, mostly due to all the highly underrated young players eating up points.
@@bluefin.64 I do not think that applies to the super GMs because they do not tend to play those young players unless they are super stars like gukesh and pragg, which tend to become 2700+ very fast. The reality is that we saw what happened with Carlsen in the Olympiad were he drew an IM and his dreams of reaching 2900 were dashed, If super GMs were to play more open tournaments their ratings would drop, because that is where they should be. People can say well the IM was underrated that is why he drew Carlsen, I would argue that Carlsen is overrated. Still the strongest, but these top players play only each other so when they lose or draw they lose very few points. Finegold has a very good video explaining the dynamic
@@ChessSniper I am going to start my answer with a question: how many elo points to you think a rook is worth? If Carlsen were to play without his rook against which rating would he score 50% in let's say 100 games? Hold that thought. You can look at every open a top GM has played over the last decade. That's not a figure of speech, you can literally do that by using chessresults. What you might find will surprise you: the overwhelming majority of times, super-GMs GAIN rating points in open tournaments. But let's say that is not the case. Let's say that almost always lost rating points because of draws Vs IMs or a loss against a lower rated GM. Does that mean they are overrated? Let's go back to the rook question: in order to win at chess you need an advantage at least as big as having a whole extra rook at the end of a game. If you have anything else it is not enough for a win. Winning a pawn does not guarantee you are going to win the game. If you win a piece, the extra piece itself doesn't guarantee winning: you cannot just trade everything and win with that piece, you have to use it to extract a higher advantage from the position (win a pawn you can turn into a Queen, attack etc). This means that chess is, by its own rules, a drawish game. The sum of the lower players mistakes have to add up to something equal or greater than a rook. With modern computers and opening theory a player can effectively play 15-20 moves without thinking and then have a position which he has analyzed even further and deeper. Do you realize how hard it is to beat someone at that level? Don't project your or my rating on these people. I don't care what your elo difference with Carlsen says, if you played a thousand game match you or me wouldn't win or draw a single game if he actually tried. This difference in ability and skill is extremely obvious in chess960. Everyone was using engines to understand what was going on in the top games in the chess960 event in Germany with Carlsen. Everyone, not just me and you. Top player commentating from all over the world had no idea what was going on. That is the difference between those guys and mere mortals. The next time a lower rated IM draws a super-GM and you say "look, he is overrated" ask yourself this: would the IM have ANY chance of drawing if they played chess960 where only pure ability matters?
@@odysseas573 I do not consider the rook odds question relevant since that is not how classical chess is played to qualify for the WC. Second, I do think that 960 is a better metric to determine skill, It also proves my point about how rating can be inflated at top level. Nakamura is a lot more competitive against Carlsen in 960 than he is in classical. They are not that far off in skillset, but if you look at the ratings difference they are worlds apart in classical. Carlsen is +36 while crossing the 2800 mark, that is massive, but in my opinion not representative of the real spread. Third, IMs/ChumpGms drawing and beating SuperGMs in classical kind of also proves my point. Because of Opening theory IMs/ChumpGms are also playing 2700+ level chess temporarily. Then they may get positions with the SuperGms where the strength difference is not that significant. This is why these SuperGMs are overrated. When push comes to shove if they played mostly open tournaments their ratings will take a nosedive. Nepo and Naka agree to a draw in the candidates in a Berlin defense, they virtually do not lose any points. But if Nepo tries that same tactic against a 2550 GM, now there is a real cost, and he has to try and take some risk and outplay his opponent and in GM level chess Nepo could be severely punished and not recover, not to mention the psychological toll it may play in the rest of the tournament and how he may have to approach the tournament overall.
@@ChessSniper You're speculating that top players would lose rating if they played mostly in open tournaments, but odysseas made a factual claim that they usually gain points. What's really missing is a baseline based on history, but there is nothing certain that can tell us if ratings are inflated, deflated, or neither. However, the world's two most notable experts when it comes to chess rating systems, Mark Glickman and Jeff Sonas, say ratings all around are deflated, including at the top. There doesn't appear to be disagreement with them. BTW, top players don't have to play vastly underrated young players for their ratings to become deflated. Each level takes takes points from higher up, so points at the top work their way down.
@@loulasherThe funny thing is that going back to older formats would be an improvement in more ways than one. Make the title match longer, 24 games again. That would reduce the preparation factor, because it's simply not possible to prepare extensively for 24 games. Give the champion draw odds again. In other words, if a challenger wants to become world champion, he has to beat the title holder, which seems very reasonable. Get rid of any rapid and blitz, and also of increments.
@@fundhund62I agree big time about the longer WCC matches, those gave us great games and great stories. I really can't stand using rapid or other time controls to decide THE chess champion. It should be classiscal time controls. If chess wants an over-all champ like triathelon then do that. But we have a blitz champ & a rapid champ, do leave that out of a classical chess championship.
Kind of crazy that the loser of the WC match dont get a spot. Ding had no chance to earn points in the candidates. He now he has to prepare and play the WC match without much time to earn point. Restitute after the match, and then begin trying to catch up to the other players that are way ahead.
Just as an observation, FIDE does a lot for developing federations and junior players. For example, the Chessable junior academy, and the funding of development tournaments. Our federation (Cayman Islands) received $10k to help us put on a ratings development tournament 2 years ago (when we had only 2 rated players) and now we have loads and just put on our own international open (80+ players including GMs, IMs and juniors) without any FIDE funding
The world cup is more random than the grand swiss because it’s so dependent on which round you get paired with Magnus. That’s why I don’t like giving three spots to it.
It seems like some large percentage of new players online are only interested in faster time controls. Some even resent the traditional emphasis on classical ratings as the true measure of strength, and call it snobbery. So a huge increase in online chess dc membership and membership on other sites might not mean nearly that many new spectators for classical events like the world championship.
Someone has to rethink the pointssytem. Nordibek got 25 points for winning the Prague chess festial, but gukesh only got 26.94 for winning the candidates. 7 countng tournament results also seams too much since its hard to play 7 long elite events and score well, whilst its much easier in open events. I think there will like be alot of 2650 to low 2700's who is going to play 7+ open events in hopes of getting a spot. This combined with the randomness of the world cup, might ruin what could possibly be a very exciiting candidates, with the old dogs getting there last shot and the new talents getting their first chance.
The reason is that Abasov was bringing the Avg rating down by a lot in the Candidates and it was an 8 player tournament with only the top 8 players counting towards the avg rating, while in Prague the two lowest rated players Nguyen and Bartel did not contribute, that's why the two events look very similar(ofc the candidates is much harder in reality). The Circuit is a very good idea but they should adjust the points, maybe count top 10/12 highest rated players in open events instead of just top 8 I don't know but it looks wrong to have Tata Steel challengers giving the same points as 3rd in the candidates.
On the World Cup spots, the winner is always a elite/candidates level player. They just need to make it one spot for this. The lowest ranked winner I can think of is Khalifmann back when it was the Fide World Championship. He would not have been an Abasov level outsider (closer to Vidit). I am pleased that FIDE Circuit will encourage participation in open tournaments. To Fabi's criticism, we do not care that it is hard to make 12 draws and a win in Wijk. No wants to watch it, take some risk. The main issue for me are the points given when 1st-3rd place are shared in a tournament. It seems a bit low.
A lot of very interesting stuff in this podcast. 2 comments: 1. Maybe Magnus could've pulled a Fischer and played the WC match for muuuuch more money... 2. I'm not surprised that the chess boom hasn't extended to OTB..most of those games are rapid, whereas otb generally classical. Otb is more expensive, less convenient (work, other obligations), more difficult (to play 1-3 serious classical games vs 15 blitz/rapid games). So I don't purely blame fide/uscf for not capitalizing on the boom...
35:00 I think from a money perspective it's not only sponsors, but chess also struggles to sell chess to spectators and customers. If you think about a single football team, people will pay for season tickets to reserve their seats, people will buy individual tickets, people will buy strips and various other merch, people will pay to attend official training clubs, or join a fan club, or a common one here is buying a brick in the stadium. There's so many options to get money in from spectators and fans as well as just the sponsors, I mean look how much top footballers get paid. In chess nobody is buying a FIDE t-shirt, or a brick in Wijk Aan Zee (Not that that'd go to FIDE anyway), and let's be honest not many people are buying a seat to watch an 8 hour tournament either. It's not necessarily impossible to be able to make this kind of money from fans too, but with FIDE outsourcing all their organisation to external people, they wouldn't see any money from spectators or merch or anything. It'd go to the organisers.
I'll use tennis as an analogy. Even without the same fanaticism, and missing some of the sources of revenue that team sports have, there's tons of money in it. Although marketing matters, I don't think it's the reason. Anyone can watch and enjoy tennis, but with chess you need to have a reasonable level of understanding it to really appreciate it. Most people don't, even the majority of those who have played it.
So, I disagree with Kostya on 1 point. The December scramble was extremely exciting with Gukesh and Lenier going to tournaments trying to get those last few points. What soured it was Alireza trying to game the rating system and Lenier dropping out to protect his rating instead of finishing the tournament despite the odds being against him (but not 0%). If Lenier Dominguez stayed in the tournament at Sunway, fighting for the spot, then the December scramble is an exciting fight to the finish. Lenier dropping out made it go from an exciting battle to a dissapointment surrounding Super GMs avoiding risk to their rating.
I totally welcome FIDE's move to not give previous match runner up spot. Chess is a sport and not a social security benefit to give things away, earnings should be based on results. Next up, get rid off the World champion 'privilege' to sit at the throne and just defend his title in the final match. We have Ding as world champion and it's a joke at this point. If Chess needs to be taken seriously as a professional sport, the system needs to modernize. We need the best players to actively compete. Each cycle should finish with the top 2 players from the final tournament (we call it candidates now but we can work on a new name) play a match to decide the champion, much like how it happens at Superbowl or Champions League in soccer or IPL in cricket. That way we have a system where the best players still have to qualify before they can play the finals. Imagine if MC had played in all the candidates since 2013, how fun it would have been!
Do some research please. Only top 3 are awarded points. However in tata steel there were 4 players tied for first , so after tiebreak wei yi didnt get full quota of points for first place. As for 2nd and third place the points had to be distributed among 3 people. Same is the case with candidates 3 people tied for second and had to divide 2 sets of points among themselves. This resulted in lesser points to being awarded than general. Closed top events will always have higher points than open, and even if he someone gains more points in open due to finshijg sole first , he would need to repeat that feat in 7 events. If he does that he is a deserving candidate. This fide circuit will also force players to try for clean first to get full quota of points rather than going for +1 and be tied for first.
You are wrong about candidates, there all 8 players got full points. 3.5 The following special cases apply: 3.5.1 All participants of FIDE Candidates 2024 score the basic points according to the calculation rules in Article 2.1. (aka no 3 places limit) 3.5.2 The winner of the FIDE World Championship Match 2024 scores the basic points for 1st place in accordance with Article 3.1, multiplied by the event score in Article 3.4. For the calculation of the event score, the TAR will not be calculated in accordance with Article 2.2.4. The TAR will instead be the player's performance rating. (so you get extra points for winning the match by more, and not just first vs second matters)
So to play the game, the best thing to do is play the lesser opens, get more points. And yes, as a fan, it is impossible to know where players stand for winning, for candidate qualification; that is a great point!
Abasov only got the World Cup spot because of Magnus refusing to play the Candidates. Otherwise the three spots would've gone to Carlsen, Caruana and Pragg, That would've hardly been ' random'. You could argue three spots from one tournament is a bit much, but if anyone's responsible for Abasov being in the Candidates (other than himself, of course), it's Carlsen...
As Jesse pointed out, the pairings made it random. Anyone who faced Magnus was likely to get knocked out even if they were worthy of a spot in the candidates. Pragg might have been one. Instead, it was Gukesh who lost to Magnus in round 6. Luckily there was another way in for him.
Frankly, chess should move to some social score similar to boxing where if you win enough tournaments or display a skillset enticing to the world champion, then the world champion could offer a match to an opponent of their choosing. I think Magnus could pick a better opponent for himself rather than FIDE and I'm sure that was the crux of why he lost interest in their cycle of how he was to defend his title
We really need Magnus Carlsen to come back to make it better for spectators. He seemed way ahead of gukesh this week at the most recent tournament. Untill he comes back people will always say it doesn't matter who is candidate/champion if he not playing in it.
