I mean the new hobby is actually politics (not arguing about it online, but like actually on-the-ground going to way more meetings than my wife would like), not stamp collecting. But I see where for you all in this forum that's functionally the same thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scvmr0kV5QM

Jobava the GOAT - "tvaju mat, odin xod, suka blyat"

What does that mean?

And yeah, this last round sucked since I was rooting against Jobava. Which was not a super good look I have to admit. Good news is I don't care too much about Fedoseev!

That Google-Translate is... interesting.



2p2, you can't possibly be serious. b*tch is censored? lolwtf?

Well, the literal translation would be something along the lines of: "f*ck your mom, one move, b*tch f*ck".

Tvaju mat is a shortened version of jobtvaju mat, which would mean "f*ck your mom", but it is generally used in Russia as "f*cking sh*t" or something along these lines. One move refers to the fact that Jobava was super close to winning, but one move too slow (or there was a single move that saved his opponent). And suka means "b*itch" while "blyat" means "f*ck", but when used in combination it is basically a higher level of f*uck ,when a simple f*ck doesn't quite cut it.

So, the translation would be something like "f*cking sh*t, a single move, SUPER F*UCK"

Lots and lots of red.

Hot take: The world top 10~ isn't that good compared to those who are 2700+. They just have mostly protected ratings bc they often just play against each other.

I remember seeing Caruana for instance not doing that well (as well as his rating says he should) when he plays vs someone lower rated.

Alternate theory - the top players play a little more passive v. 2700s since they think they have a bigger edge in rapid/blitz.

I don't think it's due to bigger edge in rapid/blitz, I think it's the knockout nature of the tournament. It highly favors rating loss. Anyone who wins their first game should auto-accept a draw in the second. And if they draw the first, then the higher rated player probably does think they have a larger edge in two rapid games vs one classical.

Almost none of the big guys are trying to push too hard. Which is probably correct when you are a large rating favorite, minimize the chance of losing and wait for your opponent to make mistakes anyway.

Yeah, this. One obvious extreme case was Kramnik taking a 12 move draw with black in one of his earlier-round second games -- it isn't going to help his rating, but if it means he advances and gets a rest day, why would he defend the rating points?

And plenty of more "natural" examples of this.

http://www.fide.com/component/conten...of-canada.html

LOL

Although I belive FIDE deserves some respect here for not even trying to sugar-coat it.

Good response from FIDE imo

It's good that they excuse unethical employees by citing their ability to raise money?

As well as the "psychological pressure" he was under.

OTOH, I wasn't impressed by this young player throwing a tantrum when he was instructed to follow the rules, especially since his excuses included:

"Dude, I've been doing this all along. You're going to come at me now?"
"Someone else already gave me permission to dress like this."
"I don't actually have any pants here because I gained weight."

If Kovalyov were older and more mature he might have been more likely to say "I'm sorry, but it was not mentioned until now, and I actually don't have a pair of pants. Please allow me to play today and I will make sure to have pants for tomorrow's game."

Certainly he could have been notified well in advance of the round, but nittery around procedure ignores the obvious point that Azmaiparashvili shouldn't go on racist tirades.

Regarding the rating losses, I think that in addition to the format encouraging strong players to play for rating-losing draws sometimes, the other issue is that the ELO rating system doesn't perfectly capture the odds of results at all rating discrepancies. I don't have a link at hand, but I'm pretty sure Sonas showed this a long time ago. So underrated players (especially at about -100 to -200 ELO) score slightly higher in all circumstances than they're "supposed to" so put top players in a position of playing a lot of games in that range and they'll probably lose rating points over time. You see it in the big open events when top players show up too, they lose rating points more often than not (I think... anecdotally this feels true at least, I haven't done a comprehensive study...)

That doesn't mean that if you set the rating aside and just look at *ranking* instead, though, that the top players aren't actually the best players (for the most part, there's some variance in short-term results of course, and the "true" top ten "best" players on a theoretical level might not be EXACTLY the ten highest rated players... but it's probably pretty close). The idea that they're isolated in a pool of just playing against themselves doesn't quite hold up. Ratings are zero-sum for any individual game, so how would a pool like that inflate them as a group?

It is a tough group to crack, and most of the invitational tournaments have similar sets of familiar names, but these guys do play other opponents from time to time too. World Cup, team events, big opens now and then, etc... If just *one* of the players viewed as elite were actually a fraud, he'd get exposed in the invitationals over time and stop getting invited. If they all were fraudulent as a group, it just wouldn't hold up because enough of them are playing people outside the elite often enough that those rating points would go away eventually. And if there's some 2700 that feels he's just as good as the elites, he's welcome to go post consistent 2800 performance ratings and prove it. Do that and he'll get a shot. It's not *that* exclusionary. Or do you doubt Mamedyarov is gonna' start getting invitations after what he's done in the Grand Prix?

I reread it, idk what happened with the dude being insulting and whatever. All I know about the incident is that someone got turfed for violating the dress code.

Edit: I looked it up, apparently he called this guy a "gypsy", which allegedly is a racial slur? I've never heard that one before so I can't comment on that, Azmaiparashvili does look like a scumbag though from googling him.

Yeah, I think this had its moment a few years ago where tons of improvements where shown to ELO, but inertia makes that hard and probably people don't want to lose the ease of calculation interpretability either.

Not all of this is just better calibration at the extreme ranges and such; one factor that should be incorporated is whether you played the game with the white pieces...

Bob,

I wasn't referring to rating inflation but instead rating preservation.

Albeit *some* rating preservation probably still exists, this is not a great time to talk about it, because we are at a point where top guys are playing much much more outside of their "pool" than ever before in history.

You have Olympiad, European team champ (and World team champ to a lesser extent, but still), European Club cup, National leagues (Bundesliga, Turkish league, Spanish league, etc.), European individual championship, World Cup, Grand Prix to some extent, and then several massive opens, like Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the ones in UAE, etc., where multiple 2750+ are playing, and then a bunch of smaller opens that have 2700+ participants.

That is quite a lot, don't you think?

That's essentially the point of my second and third paragraphs. I'm saying that although some rating inflation might exist, and get exposed when lots of top players face lots of lower rated players, rating preservation is nevertheless not a meaningful concern.

Man, these Aronian/MVL blitz games are ridiculous. Surprised Aronian chose White (at least that's what they are saying). But I guess for his style and mental makeup it may be necessary even if Black is slightly favored in Armageddon (which I believe it is but haven't seen anything concrete on it).

Although, he just failed to win the last two games. Hopefully he uses that extra minute at the crucial time to finish the win this time!

Ahhh, looks like MVL won the toss and picked Black. That makes more sense.

Let's go Levon!

(Although I really like MVL, too. )

Wait what, there's increment from move 60 onward? That makes it even more in black's favour, no?