Senseis: bring a statistician in a dojo talk to explain why the rating change will not bring a rating inflation Also Senseis: unanimously agree that there will be an inflation next year
Very good predictions, I pretty much agree with these I think, even though it's really predicting essentially no change vs the current rankings! Outside of any big shocks I feel like we do have our top 10 there already, with just some possible shuffling around. I don't think David's guess with Anand is too outrageous due to how the ratings work, however I think it does rely on a bunch of lower rated players essentially farming someone in the current top 10 to make them drop below Anand, and given Ding is no longer top 10 I don't see anyone in the current list weak enough to have that happen! For the averages in future, it might be easier to assign scores rather than using their rankings, to prevent issues with people who only appear in one list e.g. Firouzja, Sarin etc. If you just give 10 for 1st, 9 for 2nd etc. and sum up all those it should be pretty accurate without needing to assign false rankings to check. At the end of the day it's a similar calculation, I quickly put it together and got the same list but with Nepo at 9 and So at 10! Not super relevant, I just work with spreadsheets (usually Excel but Google Sheets is the same thing) and love to optimise.
Pragg said in an interview that his focus is going to be on upping his rating this year. I am sure he is eyeing a top 5 spot and it will be very easy to make a case for his reaching there.
At the moment Nakamura has a 33.3-point lead over Abdusattorov and 38.6 points over Gukesh. Not saying it won't happen, but to go ahead of him they'd have to be +3 or +4 in a head-to-head competition against him or the equivalent. If his rating remains where it is, they'd have to gain those amounts of points over their current rating, and during the past year nobody whose rating started over 2733 gained that many points. Nakamura plays very few classical games--he may already have played his last one of the year--and in the 70 classical games he's played during the past two years, he's lost two. So--tall order.
All decent picks except Sarin. He is 2680 right now, and I am not sure he ever crossed 2700, though he was close a couple of times. At best I can see him at 2720-2730, since his rating hasn’t really improved in like last two years.
The cluster of players around 30 years old, a terrific cohort, are getting replaced by players about a dozen years younger, maybe eventually an even greater cohort. A dozen years is the difference in age between Karpov and Kasparov and between Kasparov and Kramnik.
Perhaps generations work in their own way in chess? The changes in resources and technology alone every dozen years or so for the past half-century or more have been staggering!
He has always been a "wildcard", even when he was a teen. Some very high highs and some very low lows. He even gave up chess for a while to, I think, play DOTA professionally. It is very hard to rank a player like that.
Vishy is actually gonna play around 2 to 3 tournaments before end of 2024. And considering the fact that he is former world champion he can very well be in top 10.
Nice list! Esipenko is kind of a wildcard as is Mishra at number 1, I believe he will need a bit more time, but I fully support it. Where would Abdussatorov be in your list?
1. Carlsen: the king stay the king 2. Nakamura: guy will only play closed tournaments and not drop much 3. Caruana: same as Nakamura. Will only play closed 4. Erigaisi: he’s chasing that Fide circuit 5. Gukesh; he will farm 30 points off Ding 6. Abdu : plays decisive chess 7. Ian: he’s in that MVL zone but I think he will shore up 8.Prag: he is rock solid and won’t lose many 9. Giri: he will make a comeback eventually 10. Karjakin/Anand: they will play limited games and maintain their rating
1) wei Yi 2) Firouzja 3) gukesh 4) abdusatorov 5) nihal sarin 6) Keymar Vincent 7 ) Magnus 8 ) Ding Liren 9) Richard rapport 10) Duda The top 10 in 2025 my prediction !!
