Cunningham Prop bet to get to 2100 - Chess and Board Game Strategy

AffleckKGB · 03-15-2010, 05:04 PM

Just saw Allen Cunningham at the Western Class tournament this weekend. Supposedly, he has a prop bet with Howard Lederer that he has to get to 2100 within a year.

I'd say his chances are roughly 0%.

YouKnowWho · 03-15-2010, 05:10 PM

any details on this? 2100 USCF or FIDE? Does he have any background in chess etc.?

just by the way, 2100 USCF in a year is achievable even if he doesn't have any background in chess if he puts a required effort in - that is he will have to pretty much forget poker..

swingdoc · 03-15-2010, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

any details on this? 2100 USCF or FIDE? Does he have any background in chess etc.?

just by the way, 2100 USCF in a year is achievable even if he doesn't have any background in chess if he puts a required effort in - that is he will have to pretty much forget poker..

2100 USCF and FIDE are almost identical right now. Maybe 30 points difference on average. Also, we discussed this in McLovin's 'Chess Master' thread and while I claimed a true beginner could get to 2000 USCF in 1 year, I was largely disagreed with.

It looks like Allen tied for 3rd in the Western Class, Class D section and his current provisional rating (p9) is 1239. He also won a solid $225!! Do we know when the year ends?

holla · 03-15-2010, 05:31 PM

I think it is impossible. Even Carlsen could not get that high in one year.

**Dynasty** · 03-15-2010, 05:35 PM

I'm certain it would be 2100 USCF.

It appears he has no ratings history prior to this year. You can look up player ratings and history here.

Allen did well in the Class D Western Class Championships. He won four games out of five, finishing tied for 3rd out of 30 players.

His lone loss was in the first round to an opponent with a rating of 1308. He won games against opponents rated 1358, 1297, 1306, and 1348.

Allen's provisional rating was 875(p4) before the tournament and 1239(p9) aftewards.

I hope Allen got great odds. It's difficult to go from relative beginner to 2100. Doing it in just a year is extremely rare.

YouKnowWho · 03-15-2010, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swingdoc

2100 USCF and FIDE are almost identical right now. Maybe 30 points difference on average. Also, we discussed this in McLovin's 'Chess Master' thread and while I claimed a true beginner could get to 2000 USCF in 1 year, I was largely disagreed with.

It looks like Allen tied for 3rd in the Western Class, Class D section and his current provisional rating (p9) is 1239. He also won a solid $225!! Do we know when the year ends?

I agree about the playing strength, but my point was that it is much easier to log in a LOT of USCF rated games while in U.S, while it is quite hard to play a lot of FIDE rated games.

For example, the chess club in my area has tournaments like 4 or 5 nights a week, they are all rapid, but it still counts towards your USCF. While it only has one or two tournaments a month that are FIDE rated.

swingdoc · 03-15-2010, 05:48 PM

Oooh, gotcha. I completely missed your point. After thinking about it, a FIDE rating would be kinda easy to angle shoot because of the way initial FIDE ratings are calculated. You could just set up 3 round RR tournaments where all your opponents were at least 2150 so any time you luckbox a win you get a performance rating of at least 2100 and all the 0-3 and 0-2-1 get thrown out.

Allen C · 03-15-2010, 09:37 PM

Well I just tuned into the 2+2 chess forum due to my bet and look what pops up on the front page! Allow me to set the record strait to get the discussion along the right lines.

My bet is to beat Howard in a single chess game in one year and his maximum rating was over 2100 uscf. However, he hasn't played seriously in over a decade (maybe way over) and intends to spend 0.00 hours on chess over the next year. I plan to play and study about 6 hours a day.

How do you like my chances now? How rusty do you think one's game gets with that kind of lay off? I'd say my current strength is to beat those class D kids about 7/8.

btw/btw: its not even a huge bet, i'm just doing it for the same reason you climb a mountain

holla · 03-15-2010, 09:42 PM

I am still betting you will lose.

**Dynasty** · 03-15-2010, 10:35 PM

Howard's peak rating may have been over 2100, but it was 1951 at the end of his playing days (USCF says Howard's membership expired on 3/31/87).

I say we give Howard credit for a playing strength of 1900 right now. It's not much below his last official rating but still 200+ below his peak. To prepare Allen well, I don't think we should assume Howard's playing strength is much lower. We want to be cautious here.

Given where Allen is right now, I think reaching a USCF rating of 1700 is very reasonable. And, if he actually spends six hours a day, all year, practicing and studying chess, he could certainly go higher.

Based on the ELO system, a player with a rating 200 points higher than his opponent is expected to achieve a score of 0.75.

So, Allen's chances would seem to be about 25% to beat Howard.

swingdoc · 03-15-2010, 10:35 PM

Okay, this bet is more interesting. 2100 who hasn't played in a decade is probably ... 1700? I only know a couple people who took that kind of time off and were over 2000 before the layoff. They both instantly hit their floors but it seems like they were 400-500 points weaker when they started back. Terrible sample size. Anybody have a better guess there?

Scoring 7/8 against 1200-1400 players would put Allen around mid-1500 strength. So he only needs 400 points to be a favorite to win. Seems reasonable if he can keep up a year of 30h/wk chess study. That's obv a big assumption about Howard's strength though.

Anyway, Good luck, Allen!

**Dynasty** · 03-15-2010, 10:41 PM

Allen,

The advice you're going to get from this forum now until at least the fall is 'Tactics, Tactics, Tactics'. Study tactics until you see massive improvement in your game.

I'll go a little further. Buy this book and solve all 1,154 problems in it.

swingdoc · 03-15-2010, 10:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dynasty

Based on the ELO system, a player with a rating 200 points higher than his opponent is expected to achieve a score of 0.75.

So, Allen's chances would seem to be about 25% to beat Howard.

1900 does seem like a safer estimate of Howard's strength. Just remember that an expected score of 25% probably doesn't mean he's 25% to beat his opponent. 1900 is close enough to being good that you're probably able to draw some of those games on the bad side of variance. So maybe 20% draws, 15% lower player wins, 65% higher rated player wins.

Actually, as I'm typing this it strikes me that a higher rated player attempting to keep the game drawish could make it really difficult. It never works the other way around because the higher rated player is normally so much better at endgames.

**Dynasty** · 03-15-2010, 10:49 PM

We could use a few more details on the rules of the bet.

Are you playing precisely one game against Howard? Or, will you play several and only have to win once?
Are you playing the white or black pieces? Or, will it be randomly chosen?
If the game is drawn, what does that mean to the bet?
What is the time control of the game?

mc4chess · 03-15-2010, 11:29 PM

He should have studied a lot harder before playing tournies, much easier to get a high rating provisionally

edit* Just now saw the actual bet and I like his chances better by a lot because who knows what howard's real strength is at the moment, and getting to 2100 in 1 yr is not easy