Interesting
2015 Chess World Cup
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Nice list! Some observations:
- You're probably right in assuming that Carlsen and Anand won't play. In this case the first two reserve players (Wang Hao and Harikrishna) would be invited instead.
- According to the Wikipedia page, 8 qualifiers have not yet been found, some of whom might also be 2650+ players. That's 5 from the Asian Continental Championship, 1 from the Canadian Championship, 1 FIDE president nominee and 1 organizer nominee. The latter could be Radjabov, who is the highest rated Azerbaijani not yet qualified.
According to FIDE's Mastrokoukos not only Caruana and Nakamura, but also Aronian, have all agreed to play the World Cup. A bit surprising since Nakamura and Caruana both have qualified for the Candidates already, while Aronian at several previous occasions have refused to play in Azerbaijan.
@fabelhaft: Interesting, is that online somewhere? Nakamura and Caruana both said, somewhat hesitantly, that they expected to play the World Cup when they were asked about this in live interviews right after the last Grand Prix tournament in Khanty. It seemed like they were both taken by surprise by the question, and I haven't seen them confirm anything since then. Aronian, if I recall correctly, has confirmed his participation on more than one occasion. I'd like to know what Mastrokoukos' source is.
The official deadline for qualified players to confirm their participation was July 10th (http://www.bakuworldcup2015.com/news/8/9), but the official homepage doesn't have a list of confirmed players yet, only a page with profiles of 86 of the players: http://www.bakuworldcup2015.com/content/24. Carlsen, Anand, Caruana and Nakamura can't be found there.
"@fabelhaft: Interesting, is that online somewhere?"
Only on Mastrokoukos Twitter, he claims that they have confirmed that they will participate.
Thanks, I found it. he even links to an updated version of the list of participants:
https://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS_2015/FIDE_News/World_Cup/World_Cup_Qualifiers_initial.pdf
I suppose it must be official then, since it is on FIDE's website. Only six players still to be announced.
The blog Chess by the Numbers has published an article on players' chances to win the World Cup. See below:
https://chessnumbers.wordpress.com/world-championship-cycle-2014-2016/2015-world-cup/
I don't agree about Topalov being the favourite, he has never done well in knockouts since he probably is the weakest rapid/blitz player of all top players of the last decades, and apart from that he is already qualified by rating. My pick would be Grischuk, who is great with shorter time controls.
I agree, fabelhaft, that Topalov probably isn't actually the favorite. My model (chessnumbers author here) looks solely at ratings (and not at rapid or blitz ratings), so Topalov comes out highest because he's rated highest, however he's made it pretty clear that he doesn't care about the World Cup. He's publically discussed maybe not even playing at all, even though he must play in order to qualify for the Candidates Tournament on ratings. I'm assuming he probably will show up in the end, and compete, but unless everything he's said is part of a long con to throw his opponents off guard, it seems likely he won't put as much effort into his preparation as other top seeds will, or play with the same urgency.
Completely ignoring historical results in knockout events, or rapid/blitz skills (which shouldn't actually be ignored, but just aren't necessary to make the case here), this lack of motivation makes me doubt he'll perform as well (relative to his rating) as other players will perform (relative to their own ratings). So yeah, he's probably not the real favorite.
First-round pairings for the World Cup are now available.
http://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS_2015/FIDE_News/World_Cup/World_Cup_2015_Pairings.pdf
Hoping Wesley So and Ding Liren get the two qualifying spots.
The 2015 Chess World Cup is scheduled to begin in six days, so I have decided to publish updated "average ratings" of the top seeds. I used the same procedure as the one described in the post that opens this thread, with one exception: only players with an Elo of 2680+ (classical, FIDE) as of September 2015 are included in the updated list. Here it is:
Nakamura: 2844.2
Grischuk: 2815.7
Aronian: 2806.2
Caruana: 2794.7
Ivanchuk: 2791
Kramnik: 2785.2
Karjakin: 2783
Nepomniachtchi: 2769.5
Vachier-Lagrave: 2768.3
Topalov: 2765.8
Mamedyarov: 2762.2
Giri: 2756.5
Andreikin: 2754.2
Radjabov: 2751.2
Lê: 2750.5
Adams: 2749.2
Gelfand: 2746.3
Svidler: 2741.3
Domínguez: 2738
Wang: 2735.8
Tomashevsky: 2733.8
Lékó: 2731.8
Ding: 2729.3
Kamsky: 2717.5
Yu: 2717.5
Jakovenko: 2717.3
Wojtaszek: 2716.2
Navara: 2713.5
Eljanov: 2709.3
Harikrishna: 2706
Matlakov: 2700.5
Fressinet: 2700
So: 2696.2
Cheparinov: 2691.2
Kovalenko: 2690.5
Vitiugov: 2686.8
Korobov: 2682.8
Moiseenko: 2670.3
Ni Hua: 2660.5
Kasimdzhanov: 2651
Wei: 2645.7
Robson: 2632.2
Chessdom is reporting that over 20 players supposed to take part in the World Cup are stranded at airports and may miss game 1. Their problems are the result of a Lufthansa strike in Germany.
http://www.chessdom.com/trouble-for-world-cup-players-a-few-days-before-the-start-in-baku/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lufthansa-pilot-strike-cancelled-flights-1.3220389
http://fortune.com/2015/09/09/german-court-orders-striking-lufthansa-pilots-back-to-work/
As part of the World Cup's anti-cheating measures, players are not allowed to wear watches.
http://www.chessdom.com/2015-chess-world-cup-opening-ceremony-and-day-1-live/
I have just renamed this thread from "Predictions for the 2015 Chess World Cup" to "2015 Chess World Cup". I will be posting no further predictions here, but others are free to use this thread to discuss this tournament in general, the current World Chess Championship cycle, and related topics.
During the technical meeting one of the players asked if draw offers are allowed. Try to guess who without looking here!
Adhiban–Fedoseev, a 15-move draw, becomes the first game in this tournament to finish.
As some of you may know, Martin Bennedik has been monitoring the "race to FIDE candidates 2016" at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11U_0gAderuRhKuD2hr7GO_Ks9D3tX_v87ftKk2XN4zQ/pubhtml. Just like the blog https://chessnumbers.wordpress.com/, he chose to focus on qualification by rating and via the recently ended FIDE Grand Prix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_Grand_Prix_2014%E2%80%9315). However, to the best of my knowledge, neither they nor anyone else has tried to make detailed predictions regarding the 2015 Chess World Cup, whose finalists will qualify for the 2016 Candidates Tournament (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2016).
Since FIDE now publishes ratings for rapid and blitz, we can predict the finalists of the World Cup by looking at players' ratings in classical, rapid, and blitz. The World Cup matches (with one exception) have the following format:
* Two classical games (90 minutes for the first 40 moves, 30 minutes for the rest of the game, 30-second increment from move 1)
* Two rapid games (25+10)
* Two rapid games (10+10)
* Two blitz games (5+3)
* One Armageddon game (White has 5 minutes, Black has 4, and from move 61 the players get three seconds for every move)
The final consists of four games, but that is not relevant to this analysis, given that both finalists will qualify for the next Candidates Tournament. It's important to note that blitz and Armageddon games are not that common in knockout tournaments. In the last five rounds of the 2013 World Cup (where players were more closely matched, and thus more likely to play tiebreak games), few matches were decided in blitz and none by an Armageddon game. On the other hand, rapid games played a big role throughout the tournament. All players who made the quarterfinals played at least two rapid games on their way there. Thus I'm inclined to use the following equation to calculate players' chances of winning the tournament:
((2 x classical rating) + (3 x rapid rating) + blitz rating) / 6 = "average rating"
I will present the "average ratings" of players given in the Wikipedia article for the 2015 World Cup as being rated 2650 or higher in classical chess. Big upsets are rare even in knockouts; for instance, Khalifman and Andreikin have both won the Russian Chess Championship. The following list does not include Carlsen and Anand, who have been invited to the tournament but will probably skip it, just as they did in 2013. Caruana and Nakamura may not play there either, since they have already qualified for Candidates 2016, while Aronian might skip the World Cup for political reasons. I used FIDE ratings for June 2015 here. If a player has no rapid/blitz rating, his rating in classical will be used as a substitute. The list is sorted in descending order of "average rating".
Nakamura: 2839.5 (may not play)
Grischuk: 2823.2
Aronian: 2811 (may not play)
Caruana: 2796 (may not play)
Ivanchuk: 2793.3
Kramnik: 2787.2
Karjakin: 2780
Nepomniachtchi: 2774.5
Mamedyarov: 2761.8
Topalov: 2758.8
Vachier-Lagrave: 2756.7
Lê: 2754.5
Svidler: 2751.3
Gelfand: 2749.7
Andreikin: 2749.5
Adams: 2748.5
Giri: 2746.2
Domínguez: 2742.7
Lékó: 2734.2
Tomashevsky: 2729.5
Navara: 2721.2
Jakovenko: 2721
Wojtaszek: 2718.8
Ding: 2718.3
Fedoseev: 2716.2
Kamsky: 2711.7
Yu: 2710.5
Matlakov: 2709.8
Eljanov: 2709.7
Fressinet: 2706
Nguyen: 2701.8
Vitiugov: 2698.3
So: 2697.8
Cheparinov: 2691.2
Sjugirov: 2691.2
Bruzón: 2683.3
Sargissian: 2682.2
Korobov: 2682.2
Najer: 2679.7
Artemiev: 2677.7
Moiseenko: 2675.3
Zhigalko: 2668.8
Láznička: 2664.2
Onischuk: 2662 (not rated in rapid nor blitz)
Ni: 2659.5
Balogh: 2658.2 (2659 in classical, 2654 in blitz, not rated in rapid)
Volokitin: 2657.2
Smirin: 2653.8
Granda Zuniga: 2653.2
Nisipeanu: 2652.2
Grachev: 2651.8
Kasimdzhanov: 2651
Areshchenko: 2646.8
Rodshtein: 2643
Wei: 2638.3
Shankland: 2634.2
Robson: 2630.2
Lysyj: 2628.8
It goes without saying that these numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt, since some players have played few or no (recent) FIDE-rated rapid/blitz games.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_World_Cup_2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_World_Cup_2013
http://ratings.fide.com/