Saturday, September 20, 2014

2014 Bilbao Masters - Round 6

Aronian breached Anand's defenses today, winning a nice game with White. If we use the traditional scoring (win = 1, draw = 0.5, loss = 0), then they tied for first place. But the tournament uses a different method that has gained some traction over the last few years. With wins yielding 3 points and draws 1 point, Anand is the clear winner. In this case, it functions the same way as the tiebreak system that awards first place according to the most wins. But when two players are tied, then giving the prize to the one with the most wins is the same as giving it to the one with the most losses - rather nonsensical. Even worse, in the 3-1-0 system, it is possible for someone who is trailing according in the traditional score to win the tournament. It does have the advantage of discouraging quick draws, but there are better ways to do this. A while ago I wrote an essay on this, but it was never published.

I've been making tournament forecasts for about a year by now, so sometime soon would be a good time to review the predictions and see how well they matched up with reality. Also of interest would be the effect of the new draw rate model on the forecasts. It should lead to marginally better results, but the differences will probably be imperceptible. Unfortunately my ambition for new projects greatly exceeds my spare time; I don't know when I'll get around to testing if 1.e4 or 1.d4 has a higher draw rate.

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