Quote:
Originally Posted by TomCowley
What odds can I get on Hikaru trying to murder or hit-man Carlsen before 2020?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rei Ayanami
What do you say BJJ?
Hmm, how to gather data on this...
Let's look at the winter Olympics going back to 1992 (somewhat arbitrary cutoff to define "modern" era). There have been approximately 200 female figure skaters competing in those seven Olympics, and each of those competitions has roughly a two year window where it's somewhat clear who the primary opponents are. So that's approximately 400 "competitor-years" and a sample size of Tanya Harding. That puts the odds in any given year of any given competitor going the hit-man route at roughly 0.25%. Since women's figure skating is basically the same thing as chess [1] we can assume these odds transfer.
You asked about a five year window for Hikaru, and if we treat each year as an independent event then his odds of NOT hiring a hit-man within the span are .9975 ^ 5 = 98.76% (with numbers this large it's almost exactly the same result as if we just took .25% * 5). So that's about a 1.25% chance that he will hire someone. I'd say odds of 80:1 seem about fair.
[1] Citation needed