Anish Giri's 14 Draws

If Nobody can say they beat you....

Who can say they are better than you?

They guy that beat your rivals, when you only drew them I guess :p

Yeah I agree, it's pretty unlikely Karjakin will win 3 games. I do think X can be roughly interpreted as the game score over 12 games - it's not perfect, but I would expect the truth not to be so far from this that it becomes ridiculous.

As you point out, Elo itself ignores draws, so it may not make sense to look for draw probabilities. If anyone knows of a way to approximate reasonable probabilities based on Elo for win, loss AND draw, then we can use a trinomial model. All I can think to use though is a suitable selection of empirical data (ie. recent high-level game results) - and then fitting a logistic regression.

I think the think that set me off with Giri's play this tournament was his 12. BxNf6 in his first game against Anand. I don't think I'm alone in that. He had some interesting games, but that one just seems very wrong.

It's as much the other player's fault as his own. They may seek a draw for replenishing reasons and he gets the reputation....

And on 12.Bxf6 ?....maybe he just needed a scored sheet....I mean he was playing Anand. It was a long tournament and it was his game one.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending him and draw after draw seems weird, but he's young and he's gaining experience and I'm good w/ that.

So if you wanna go there, then he's kissing prince after prince and they all have all slept w/ so many a veiled duchess. There may be certain Archibald Cunningham's that he's afraid to follow n2 a closing door.

Karjakin's chances of dethroning Magnus are wafer thin... but being delusionary doesn't harm much.

....you should know........

You can be assured that as of this moment, SK is being touted by the most powerful Russian Chessbrokers to wrest the crown back to where they believe it belongs. But why do you ask ?....'cuz they invented modern chess ! (not to mention Nimzowitsch Hypermodern....) 

And they will have his brain so powerpacked w/ the latest & greatest theory that he won't even have a place up there to store a fond personal memory. Anf BTW, you can be guaranteed that they will have him eating, sleeping, and pooping chess pieces from now until November.

IDK when some of you people are gonna finally realize that chess is owned by Russia....they just lend it out once & awhile to keep things interesting for the naive....kinda like w/ BF.

Could you make some attempt to not talk down to other people? You seem to think you have it all figured it out so we'll just see it play out in November. No use arguing about who will win and talking to us all like we're ignorant children.

Agreed. Magnus is solid. Not to mention Karjakin is the older of the two and he's still playing catchup.

He did seem pretty adament that this was it for him. He also mentioned that he doesn't work anywhere near as hard as his opponents (and it showed in the Candidates). He will be missed.

I'm sorry Trex. I just get upset sometimes 'cuz I've gone O & O w/ alotta these names here. They are adept at condescension & I've found the only way to get them to ease up on me is to take it right back to them.

And BTW, it's MC who's probably still playing w/ his ketchup.

As a Dutchman I'm proud of Giri's performance at the candisatea. When I was his age I was falling asleep in toilets dead drunk, haha.

I honestly think Topalov played the most interesting chess in the tournament. Aggressive lines, unpredictable moves hiding a lot of venom, big risk taking...

But alas, he was far from his best form: He was blundering virtually in every game, although his opponents did not always exploit his blunders.

The exchange sacrifice he played against Caruana was really stunning- white's compensation was not apparent at all, one had to analyse the position in great depth to reveal it.

Very likely.

Carlsen knows less opening theory than most, maybe all, of the other top players.  This sounds like a major weakness.  But theory does not help much against Carlsen.

He avoids critical lines like the plague for the most part and often avoids theory altogether.  He is quite happy to attempt to outplay opponents in what other top players would consider a drawish position.  And often does, and when he fails almost always draws.

Anand is a superbly prepared player and it didn't help him much.

@TRextastic- I concur.

But most interesting is that Karjarkin was ahead at age 12 and still holds the record for the youngest GM.  But Magnus overtook him before long and has always been ahead since.  

What makes some hugely talented players continue to develop while others do so less is interesting and mysterious.

I agree.  Giri has taken this drawing business to a whole new level.  14 draws in a row!  Definitely a world record for a candidates event.

Yes, but in some of his games he could have won or lost. 

In honor of this amazing achievement, I propose a change to the candidates format.

From now on, 9 players will be allowed into the candidates as opposed to 8 like before.

However, only 8 of these will play against each other for the positions 1-4 and 6-9.

Anish Giri will automatically be counted as having played a draw against everyone, placing him on the fith place automatically without the need of actually playing a single game.

This wonderful change will allow one additional player to participate in the candidates tournament without putting any additional stress on the organizers or the others players, because no additional games will need to be played.

Obviously Im a nobody in the chess world but IMO thats how the Candidates should be played. Every game, every round.