Chess

[Federberg]

wow.. so the final rounds, Sindarov has:

• black against Fabi
• white against Nakamura
• black against Giri

If he gets to face Gukesh he would have earned it and then some!

 

[Federberg]

It's over. Sindarov draws with Giri with the black pieces in the penultimate round. A clear two points ahead.

Looking forward to Sindarov taking on Gukesh. Well done young fella!

 

[DarthFed]

Hopefully Gukesh gets his form back and is able to at least make it interesting. Either way it should be exciting given their playing styles, will be a lot of fire on the board!

All in all that was one disappointing tournament. I’d give the following grades:

Sindarov: A+ no explanation needed

Giri: A- and close to an A. Giri played really well after the opening loss and had chances in a couple other games, really blowing a good opportunity vs Wei in particular. But still, 4 wins and +3 is good and at the start of the tournament I figured one winner at +4 or 2 players tied at +3. So normally he’d have been in serious contention, you just don’t expect even +5 let alone +6

Caruana: C- he played pretty piss poor after a nice opening win against Naka. Definitely wouldn’t peg him to lose 3 games.

Wei: C- this may be harsh since he finished with an even score and coming in figured to be 4th or 5th best odds, but his play was rather uninspiring and his only wins were on the bottom feeding Esipenko. It felt like he wasn’t even close to winning any other games and could have easily lost another couple.

Nakamura : D and this is close to an F. Only win was against Caruana who he lost to right out of the gates. He just seemed unprepared and his play lacked any aggression aside from his kamikaze game vs Sindarov. I seriously question how motivated he is to ever be WC. Or maybe he just can’t handle pressure in candidate tournaments.

Pragg: D After starting with a nice win over Giri he didn’t win anymore games and went -3 the rest of the way. He got rolled up easily by Sindarov in both games as soon as he was out of book. Didn’t even really put much pressure on the weaker players either.

Bluebaum: B- I think -2 was realistically as good as he could expect. He took no risks and didn’t win a single game, but at least was solid enough to not lose a ton of games like Esipenko.l did.

Esipenko: C I expected him to take last and he didn’t disappoint, finishing at -5 and 1.5 points worse than the next 2 players. Interestingly enough the only truly good position I remember him having was as black against Sindarov in round 1 and he then coughed that up and got rolled.

 

[DarthFed]

Erdogmus has now hit 2700 as a 14 year old, insanity! It was going to happen soon anyways, but a nice gift to get a 6 game match against Topalov who is closer to 2500 strength than 2717. If you put Oro or any upcoming 2500+ player against Topalov they’d gain a ton of points too even if they didn’t win by as lofty a score.

The rating system is really flawed and I feel like they should start deducting points from old players that barely if ever play. Could even just be a matter of “players must have 10+ FIDE games a year or they lose 50 points”

 

[Federberg]

Erdogmus has now hit 2700 as a 14 year old, insanity! It was going to happen soon anyways, but a nice gift to get a 6 game match against Topalov who is closer to 2500 strength than 2717. If you put Oro or any upcoming 2500+ player against Topalov they’d gain a ton of points too even if they didn’t win by as lofty a score.

The rating system is really flawed and I feel like they should start deducting points from old players that barely if ever play. Could even just be a matter of “players must have 10+ FIDE games a year or they lose 50 points”

I completely agree. It's never made sense to me that legacy ratings just stay there. Doesn't exist in any other sport