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Aronian leads the field by a full point, and finishes against Topalov and Anand (further back).

What odds can I get on Hikaru trying to murder or hit-man Carlsen before 2020?

What do you say BJJ?

I guess the purpose of Hikaru's 49... f4 was to troll Stockfish, so that it show +3 for a drawn position.

...f4 was an excellent move, maybe even necessary. It's a very favourable way to lose the a-pawn.

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

Enjoying the updates BJJ

Topalov vs Aronian today was an example of a game where both players were probably more willing than average to draw, and where the odds of a draw were probably far higher than the model assumes. I still suspect that draw rates increase in late rounds... although not necessarily in all games individually. Not sure if I'll ever be able to study it well enough for it to give me cause to change my model, but I think the effect is probably there.

Aronian with no defeats all tourney, Vishy with no wins.

Do you think this was a pre-arranged draw?

Do you think this exact move sequence was worked out beforehand?

No. I don't think this game had a 100% chance of ending in a draw before it started, or that it was prearranged.

I do think they both approached the positions content to avoid unclear complications, and content with a draw if that's where it went. I do think the odds of a draw in this game were higher than they would be in a "normal" game between the same two players (say a round 1 game). How much higher I have no quantitative opinion of.

I'm a patzer but I really don't see how that game is an obvious example of aronian playing for a draw.

He could have pressed advantages but instead was content to play clearer, safer moves. Both players talked about that after the game. That Aronian could have been much more ambitious, which generally also adds risk of losing.

Seirawan was the highlight of the live stream IMO:

Dat shirt doe

Apparently you have to register a FIDE account to look at things like rating progress graphs now. Uergh.

This never would have happened if Kasparov had won the election.

For anyone that missed it, I thought the "Ultimate Moves" match was quite an entertaining end to the Sinquefield Cup:

Grunching the thread.

Watched quite a bit of this event via the stream.

Is it me or magnus come across really badly. He is clearly unhappy with his performance but he is very abrupt as a person it's been the same every time I have seen him actually.

I wouldn't expect a warmer personality from a Norwegian genius.

Randy Sinquefield's 36... Nf4! fork in the last game of Ultimate Moves (made instead of a recapture on c5 that most humans would automatically make in blitz) was so brilliant for his skill level