Sunday, May 11, 2014

2014 US Chess Championship Round 4

Lenderman continues to impress. After defeating Robson, he leads with 3.5/4. Kamsky scored his first win, but his rivals Onischuk and Gareev also prevailed today.





The forecast is surprisingly pessimistic about Lenderman's chances. Last week I started a more thorough investigation of the draw percentage assumptions, and I suspect that this will influence the results. The first step was to build a database that purged all the rapid, blitz, exhibition, and computer chess games. Next I'll construct a statistical model that will estimate the draw percentage given the players' ratings. This could take a while; a similar project studying whether 1.e4 was better than 1.d4 took several weeks. Along the way we will also find out if 1.d4 really is safer than 1.e4 - all else equal, is there a higher draw rate for games beginning with 1.d4? Much work remains to be done, but there are a few preliminary results. The new draw rate assumption will probably cause the forecast to give Lenderman higher chances.

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