These articles from 2013 were my debut as a chess and statistics writer. "Are the Chess World Champions Just Lucky?" Part 1 and Part 2 in ChessBase examined the results of World Championship matches. When Fischer crushed Spassky 12.5 - 7.5, there wasn't any doubt that he was the superior player. On the other hand, players such as Khalifman and Kasimdzhanov were never considered legitimate world champions. How can we tell if the winner of a match really is the better player? Fortunately, statistics provide a way to answer that question.
The second part of the article proposed a new format for the World Championship and gave forecasts for the 2013 Anand - Carlsen match. Of course, everyone knew that Carlsen was the favorite, but most people also acknowledged that Anand had reasonable chances of keeping his crown. The model (refined further in Part 3) went out on a limb by placing the probability of a Carlsen victory between 86% and 93%. In retrospect, this confidence in Carlsen looks entirely justified, but it was a bit provocative back then.
The reader feedback in Part 3 raised some fascinating questions. My favorite was the one about Fischer's proposed format for the 1975 World Championship match with Karpov. How unfair would it have been to Karpov? He would need 10 wins - 8 wins to prevail, while Fischer only needed 9 wins - 9 wins to retain his title. I used statistics to measure the unfairness and then compared it to other formats where the champion had draw odds.
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