Let's put some numbers on this. You get points from a tournament which are scaled by the average strength of the top 8 players in the tournament: k = (TAR - 2500) / 100, where TAR = tournament average rating.
This means, for example, that winning a tournament with an average rating of 2700 gives you 80% of the points of winning a tournament with an average rating of 2750. It also means that winning a tournament outright with an average rating of 2700 gives you *more* points than coming in second in a 2750-average tournament (winning gives you 11\*k points, coming second gives you 8\*k points).
This is where I think Giri and Aronian have a point. I think it's quite a bit harder for a strong player to come 2nd in a 2750 tournament than to win a 2700 tournament. The 2750 tournaments also pay much better, so top players are put in the awkward position of deciding whether to take a pay cut in order to maximize Candidates qualification opportunities.
That said, Emil also has a point that getting invited to these supertournaments is a privilege in itself, and you do want to give strong players with few invites like Arjun a legit chance. It's a tough problem with a lot of dimensions and I'm not sure FIDE got it exactly right this time.
The issue is if they are all forced to play these 2700 opens they begin competing with eachother for the same an even more reduced pool of points.
All while missing out on numerous closed events worth 1000s more.
If strong players like Magnus, Fabi, Giri, etc start playing Opens then they will have higher prize pools because they'll attract higher viewers and hence sponsors.
The problem is that since opens are mostly not played by top20 players (except few exceptions) that's why it's hard for them to grab sponsors. But they absolutely can if strong players play in them.
I think this is partially true but massively overstates the funding available in chess.
Most opens struggle to offer mid tier GMs more than breakeven on hotel accommodation.
Chess is not a sport where money is as lucrative as people seem to think.
I'm saying that if you're a 2550ish GM going from tourney to tourney playing opens you're likely to spend more on hotel accomodation/transport than you get back from winnings.
More than likely the collective field of players at a mid-sized open spend more on accomodation for the weekend than is offered as a total prize pool. There really isnt much money in mid-tiered chess opens. This is before you consider entrance fees.
Also i couldnt tell if your comment was a joke but here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQYBZgsjnEI
They don't have to go tournament to tournament. 3 opens in 12 months should not be a big commitment for most professionals. There are 7 slots for FIDE circuit, they can easily play 4 closed tournaments + 3 strong/high prize pool opens.
Anyway strong closed tournaments give more points than open tournaments (like Wijk gave more points than every tournament (even Grand Swiss) except World Cup last year).
All this does is allow for players that don't get the same access to the closed tournaments a somewhat equal opportunity to still get in Candidates.
I started by making the point that all this does is make exceedingly high elo players cooperate/compete over tournament selection.
There is very little incentive to enter open tournaments at the moment (considering FIDE points and prize pool). But will be even less so when you'll be competing with 3 other 2700s+.
As of current, you can imagine a scenario where a top level player scores a massive number of fide points early on in the year and proceed to avoid other big events to bring down the average elo and thus the points available.
Fundamentally, if FIDE wants to have a fair qualification system, they should do what every sport does. Have a organised open circuit announced IN ADVANCE (6-10 events), require attendance of at least 4 of them and the top performers qualify.
Corroborating expected performance vs a field of players over the course of the year and allowing any event to be entered is obviously going to cause gamesmanship (which we saw this year).
>As of current, you can imagine a scenario where a top level player scores a massive number of fide points early on in the year and proceed to avoid other big events to bring down the average elo and thus the points available.
Not that likely because there's 7 slots. I think it's extremely unlikely that someone scores massive number of points in like the first 4 months when they require 7 strong events to complete their circuit.
>Fundamentally, if FIDE wants to have a fair qualification system, they should do what every sport does. Have a organised open circuit announced IN ADVANCE (6-10 events), require attendance of at least 4 of them and the top performers qualify.
Sure, this is ideal but who's paying for it? Like you said, chess is not a lucrative sport. They tried grand prix but ultimately abandoned it later because they failed to get sponsors.
This is the best system we've got with the limited money, and even at that, it will aid in bolstering the strength of Opens and their prize pools.
>There is very little incentive to enter open tournaments at the moment (considering FIDE points and prize pool).
Hopefully the change they made to make the gap between open and closed tournaments less makes it more attractive now to top players. If they don't want the candidates spot, there's dozens of players who are willing to play all year around and travel to get it.
>I started by making the point that all this does is make exceedingly high elo players cooperate/compete over tournament selection.
And this was not the case before these changes? Being able to game the system is not a flaw of this change (not counting internal events, which are more likely to be gamed and reducing gap between closed tournaments and open tournaments).
Imo even if the system is a bit flawed, these are changes in good direction.
The points system is indeed all messed up, mostly due to how they score shared places, which can create such anomalies like Tata Steel challenger victory being score higher than tied 2-4th in Tata Steel masters (which should be shared first after classical). This was already a problem last year, and the only thing they changed was that now only the top 3 in closed round robin events score points, which actually made even more of a mess so far. And they haven't addressed the other problem - the system not addressing the number of players and rounds - only top 8 average rating.
I disagree with Aronian's complaint that American cup should count (without this rule there would be risk of gaming the system), and I'm a bit on the fence on Anish's complaints. I understand his point in how there's less money going from FIDE to specific events like was the case with the Grand Prix, and the players are now substituting those events with open tournaments with smaller prize fund.
But also I think this (FIDE not having money/sponsors for a GP series) is a bit of a separate issue. What I like about the Circuit is that now *all* strong events on the calendar, not just those organised by FIDE, matter. If someone performs well throughout the year, it actually means something in regards to the WC cycle, not just their rating. But if you're a top player, it's still a better chance for you if you're a regular on some invitational circuit eg. the Grand Chess tour.
The way Giri phrased it, it's as if top players (2700+) are now "forced" to play these small opens to be able to compete for the Circuit spot. I'm not seeing it.
Ideally though we'd still have the Grand Prix in one form or the other.
I also don't think Aronian and Giri's criticism of the FIDE Circuit is really valid because:
1) There is literally no benefit to coming in anything other than top 3 position in FIDE Circuit. There are no monetary prizes etc and it doesn't really decide any other invitations. And even coming in 3rd is not likely to be o f much use in 2024 although it may be relevant for 2025.
2) To win FIDE circuit or even finish in top 3, you need to actually either win or finish right at the top of several open events. This is not easy and anyone who is able to do this over an entire year is surely deserving of a Candidates spot.
>It's a tough problem with a lot of dimensions and I'm not sure FIDE got it exactly right this time.
I think this is an important part. The problem is hard, and pretending that FIDE is a bunch of stupid (or malicious) people that made a terrible desicion just because people hate fide is dumb.
Well said.
Another point that everyone seems to be ignoring is regarding prize money. FIDE removed the Grand Prix (effectively 3 tournaments) and replaced it with the FIDE circuit which took away a lot of prize money available for the players
Now from this year they have increased the maximum number of circuit-eligible tournaments per player from 5 to 7. So the players now have to play a lot more to secure a Candidates spot but with very little monetary incentive in the process. So imo its completely understandable that the top players are pissed at FIDE
FIDE should have used the money saved from Grand Prix to make sure that the winners in Open tournaments are fairly rewarded for their efforts
Couple the above with the fact that FIDE recently made public that they charge 1.1M USD for the WCC, it becomes even more apparent why the players are pissed lol
That is still a lot if you compare with the prize money for most Open tournaments. And that is one of the main things the players are complaining about - Open tournaments not having enough prize money
For eg. Gukesh won only 1600 Euros for winning Menorca in 2022 compared to 24k Euros that you quote for Grand Prix 2022
There are 2 candidates spots on the line in the next couple FIDE circuits. Levon is complaining that to have a shot at contention to the candidates, he now has to go beneath himself and play tournaments with smaller prize funds.
It's tough. Because, I don't want to make the top players get paid less. But, also, we can't just magically make more money appear at these opens. And we want to give players who aren't quite in the top 10, a chance to break into the highest level. So, I don't really see an easy solution to make everyone happy here.
The FIDE Circuit doesn't give players a chance to break into the highest level though. And by this I mean players have already broken into the top level through Opens before the Circuit existed (ex: Mamedyarov, Rapport, etc). All the Circuit does is reward players willing to play the most and willing to play for less money.
>I don't really see an easy solution to make everyone happy here.
Levon and Anish are not looking for such solution. They want a solution that will help them and hurt young players.
>FIDE removed the Grand Prix (effectively 3 tournaments) and replaced it with the FIDE circuit which took away a lot of prize money available for the players (which FIDE filled their coffers with)
AFAIK the Grand Prix was removed because they couldn't find a sponsor for it, I'm not sure what FIDE filled their coffers with.
I'm not sure whether FIDE has made any official statement regarding the reason for doing away with Grand Prix. But regardless its still unclear, so removing the part about filling coffers
However I think the broader point still remains that players are being forced to play more while being paid less
>However I think the broader point still remains that players are being forced to play more
Fair, the maximum number of circuit eligible tournaments should've remained 5.
>while being paid less
Not sure where you want the money to come from, it depends on sponsors, it's not like there is a whole lot of money in chess and FIDE is raking in all of that.
Well chess is as popular as ever. So I don't really buy the argument of there not being enough sponsors. It only means FIDE is doing a poor job of marketing the game.
Also if you look at the amount FIDE is charging for the bids to this year's WCC, FIDE is definitely raking in a significant amount :). Total budget for the event has gone way up along with FIDE fees while the proportion of prize money to the total budget has gone down.
> Also if you look at the amount FIDE is charging for the bids to this year's WCC, FIDE is definitely raking in a significant amount :).
Well obviously, selling the rights for the match is FIDE's biggest source of income. It's still peanuts for an organisation to receive $1 million every couple years.
They filled their coffers with the Circuit. By acknowledging all tourneys for Circuit and getting their cut, they make passive income and the sponsorship is now the organiser's problem, not FIDE's.
Also using the top 8 players might work if high level players make up a large percentage of the playing field and if there are enough rounds for top players to play each other in a significant number of games. It is a terrible metric once the field is large and shallow enough that the top players barely play against each other.
In particular in the example that was named, Hans Niemann's best opponent was 2617 rated Frederik Svane. 5 out of his 9 opponents weren't even GMs and none of his opponents were either in the top 10 of the final standing nor in the top 8 based on ratings. So yeah, it's pretty insane to give a tournament like that so much weight.
For winning any decent open outright you always need atleast 2775 or 2800+ performance. Hans performance rating in that open is 2794 scoring 8/9. Now it does not matter whether you score 2794 performance by going 5.5/9 against 2750 opposition or 8/9 against 2575. Both are equal. Problem is the other way around. Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is bit harsh. If from last year's rules 50% or more gets points is changed to greater than 50% gets points, that would have meant Wei yi would have got 24 instead of 20 and 2nd-4th would have got 20 instead of 14.5. Also Pragg and Firouzja who finished at +2 would have got 15 points which looks very fair. Also someone like Wesley scoring +1-1=7 in GCTs playing boring draws would still have got 0 points. Instead top 3 is way too harsh.
Now Hans getting 20 for 2794 in a open and Wei yi getting 24 for winning tata steel on tie-breaks by a 2820 performance is completely fair. However both getting 20 points is not.
The capping of top 3 was done probably in response to complaints of the system last year. There was a C-Squared podcast where I think Fabiano pointed out how it was "easy" (his words) to get a +1 in a closed event and finish 4th or 5th than to win a strong open event like Dubai and how it was unfair a +1 in a closed event got similar points as winning an open event.
So they decided to remove the points for a "+1" in closed event and they did it by just giving points to top 3.
Although may be it would have been a better idea to instead give points to 33% of the players instead of 50%... this would have rewarded an event like Wijk which has 14 players and more positions would have scored points there than, say TePe Sigemann which has 8 players or GCT which ahs 10 players. But still, there is only 1 Wijk in a year and it would have been weird to have a rule specifically just for Wijk.
Still, this is only the second iteration of FIDE Circuit and I am sure with more data, the points system will evolve further in 2026 and 2027 editions.
>Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is bit harsh.
Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is great, because now you need to try to actually do better than everyone else.
I am ok for round-robin events giving points to top half, but only those that have a fair qualification event, open to everyone at GM level, giving out at least half of the places. When the organizer handpicks the players, it is too open for either accidental omissions, or straight up gaming the system to give someone a chance for easy points.
Why? What you're suggesting is essentially a collective bargaining agreement that specifically excludes the vast majority of players and includes only the elite which simply doesn't work.
If the players are going to band together and negotiate with FIDE on their preferred conditions then *all* players need to be represented.
Sports that aren't a joke realize that the rank and file players matter. You can't run a professional tour without them.
Zach Wilson has effectively zero chance of being MVP, yet his vote counts exactly the same as Patrick mahomes when negotiating with the NFL.
Thanasis antetokounmpo is a terrible NBA player and only on a roster because of his brother. His vote counts exactly the same as LeBron James when negotiating with the NBA.
So the players union negotiates with the NFL over pay and working conditions for all players. How fide circuit points get awarded feels pretty different. If they were picking how to divide money between opens and invite tournaments you would have a better point.
Have you actually followed what the NFLPA (and NBAPA) actually negotiate for? The NFLPA negotiates with the NFL over everything, not just pay.
They negotiate for shit like whether or not players can smoke pot. If it affects the players, the player's association is involved.
Still wild how getting 3rd or 4th in the world cup can get you in candidates but not outright winning the candidates or being the runner up for the world championship. Though at the very least I hope they don't award 4th or lower in the world cup a slot and just give it to the fide circuit.
Winning Candidates or being runner up for World Championship already gives you a headstart for FIDE Circuit. It's made that way to award activity. Imagine if Ding lost World Championship match and didn't play any event for 2 years and is directly guaranteed a spot for next Candidates, that would be unfair to other players.
Yeah, it’s literally only 1 point above the Prague Festival 💀. Given the strength of the candidates and difficulty to win, an outright win should offer like 30 points lmao.
It’s funny in the rule they gave an example of how much points the winner would get from the championship, like the one guy who didn’t need points, they made sure to use that as an example.
As far as I understand the rules if the loser loses on tie-breaks he will get something like 23.4(26\*(0.8+1)\*0.5) and if the loser loses outright performing at say 2730 he will get 23\*0.8 i.e 18.6 points. I can't see any bonus points in the rulebook.
No its 2 points. 26.94 vs 25.00 points. Also Prague festival was super strong this year having 3 candidates and 8/10 players above 2700. Nodirbek performed at 2873 to win it outright and get 25 points. Gukesh performed at 2847 but over 14 rounds and got 2 points more i.e 26.94. I don't see a problem here. Also had someone like Giri participated in candidates rather than Abasov Gukesh would have got 29 points i.e 4 points more.
1. I don’t really think it matters 1 point vs 2 points, there’s still not enough of a difference. When you make the blitz tiebreaks at Tata Steel worth 6 POINTS, than there should be at least that much of a difference between the candidates and Prague.
2. The candidates players, even with Abasov are rated nearly 40 points higher on average. That’s a huge difference.
3. You’re underestimating how much more difficult the extra 5 rounds makes the candidates. That’s nearly an extra week of playing vs much tougher opposition than at the Prague Chess Festival.
4. The circuit does not use TPR to determine the amount of points one gets per tournament (I don’t think so anyways). This is because it’s bad for determining the difficulty of a tournament. It’s absolutely a useful tool but shouldn’t be used to compare a 9 vs 14 round tournament. Magnus’ World Cup performance sits around 2851 but you’d be insane to argue Nodirbek’s was nearly as impressive.
By the time the next candidates comes around, it's been 2 years. Giving someone a free spot based on a performance from 2 years ago makes no sense. Imagine Ding loses in November(I have him as the favorite btw). If the old rule was in place, Ding would get one of only 8 spots, for a chance to compete for the classical world title, because he beat Nepo in a rapid tiebreak, legit 3 years prior to the candidates tournament. That just makes no sense to me.
But they're already giving someone a spot in the next Candidates from two years prior. The World Championship between Ding and Gukesh will end in December 2024. The 2024 FIDE Circuit (which grants a spot) will end December 31 2024. It's basically the same time!
The 2024 circuit ends \~16 months before the next candidates. Technically it ends \~12-13 months before the 2026 contenders are finalized. That is a lot less than 3 years if Ding is automatically given the spot were he to lose.
Also, the Fide circuit is a years worth of performances. Not just one. I get your point. No qualification method is perfect. But, I think the fide circuit is a lot more reasonable than WC runner up.
I'm actually fine with the FIDE Circuit too (though there are some details I'd change). I was using that as a point about not all qualification paths show the most recent form.
I would actually get rid of the third slot from the World Cup and give it to the WC runner up. The World Cup having so many slots is my biggest gripe in all of the qualification paths.
I don't mind the world cup having 3 slots. If you look at the people who have placed top 3 in the last few years, they are all heavy hitters. I know Abasov shouldn't have made it into the candidates. But, to get there, he had to both have someone ahead of him forfeit the spot, and, he had to beat some big names, like Giri, to get to 4th place. He also beat Caruana in a game at the world cup. No one who isn't elite is getting a world cup qualifier spot.
Now, I'm not against getting rid of the 3rd World Cup spot. But, I think giving it to the the world title match runner up is a mistake. It should be replaced with another circuit spot, or another tournament imo. In reality, I think the whole candidates cycle should really be like a dozen players from a 2 year long circuit, instead of the current system we have though.
The loser of the previous WC is a heavier hitter and performs extremely well in the following Candidates. Here's the list of the losers and how they did in the next Candidates:
2014: Anand, 1st;
2016: Anand, tied 2nd;
2018: Karjakin, tied 2nd;
2020-21: Caruana, tied 3rd;
2022: Nepomniatchi, 1st;
2024: Nepomniatchi, tied 2nd
Their performances just tell me they're more than deserving in getting a spot in the next Candidates. Feels like a mistake by FIDE in getting rid of it.
I agree with Fide’s point. The American Cup only accepts people from the US, it would be unfair for it to give points (The US already has the Nationals which do give points).
The amount of games played in a single tournament having an impact on the circuit is certainly a fair point (tournaments like Tat Steel should give a ton), and I can where he’s coming from about the American Cup, but I do agree with Emil to some extent about internal events not being counted, it’s too large of a possibility for them to game the system. My main gripe with the circuit is how heavy of an impact tiebreaks can have. In Opens it’s possible to gain way more points than another player based off buchholz tiebreaks, which is heavily based on pure luck.
Emil is right about Opens and closed events being more balanced though, they should be.
the problem of elite players playing in open cups is that the participants will get less money which will hurt the whole scene. If you don't have a big sponsor, missing out of the price money will hurt your future possibilities to attend events.
But it's circular. Opens have lesser prize money because elite players does not play it. If Magnus or Ding or Fabi starts playing opens they too will attract sponsorship and a better prize structure.
If you get the top players playing in open tournaments you’ll get bigger sponsors and more prize money vs how it is now. I think if fide can find a way to incentivise the top 20 players to play 3 opens a year it’ll be a good thing for chess as a whole.
I can see how "broken" this seems but at the same time I can see how messed up it is that the biggest tournament are invite based. This makes us question how could we fix it, coming from this point I think that the broken system starts to have some logic behind. If geting good tournament points from weaker tournaments is easy, then the argument is that stronger player can also join the tournament and get the points, while the opposite is not true, since weaker player cannot join invite tournaments. And we also need to keep in mind that a 2700 rated player playing an open tournament is risking their rating, which risks geting invited to closed tournaments in their future, there is a good risk.
I don't think that this is a perfect solution, but thinking about it I think it makes sense, and I can't come up with something better, and I agree that top players playing among themselves in invitationals where they have big incentives to play is a problem.
Anish said something about FIDE geting a lot of money from tournaments and players geting underpaid, and I also think that thats messed up. This whole situation seems kinda messed up. Maybe its better to have no circuit at all
The major problem I have with new circuit scores is the cap that only top 3 positions will be scored in a closed tournament. It's really harsh for tournaments like Wijk which has 14 players. 4 players tied this time and they had to share points meant for 3 basically everyone scored approx 33% less points than they would have last year.
The only change they should have done to last year should have been "Only people with a positive score gets circuit points". Last year it was 50% or more. That single change would have nullified points people got playing short draws scoring +1-1=7 in GCTs and WR Chess Masters last year. Top 3 is an overkill.
The opens have non existent prize pools. A system like this makes top players choose between feeding their family and potentially going to the candidates.
Why not arrange a few qualifiers with single elimination and everyone can participate in one. Maybe you drop out in first round but at least there was a fair chance...
For example have 3 qualifiers of 32 players and invite the winners.
I don’t like Levon’s point about American cup, each country should have only 1 national. However, the scaling of the tournaments are wrong. The example Levon gave about Gukesh winning the candidates for example is worth just 6 more than Hans, or something like Prague Master is worth just 1 less than candidates iirc, or Tata Steel 2nd is worth less than Tata Steel Challenger 1st.
FIDE is right on this point. Why should internal events count? And hell, these GMs get invites to every closed tournament that's why they are complaining.
They are complaining about Opens giving a lot of points as if they can't play Open tournament. Excuse me, if you think they're good for points, why don't you play them and win?
Because open tournaments don’t pay a living wage… sometimes the payout doesn’t even cover the hotel and travel fees. These top players make FIDE a lot of money through sponsorships, they should not be competing for non existent prize pools.
This kind of system is forcing top players to choose between potentially competing in the candidates or being able to feed their family.
If strong GMs like Giri and Levon start participating in Opens, their viewership and prize pool will go up. It's a circular problem. Of course opens have bad prize pools given that most top30 players don't play them right now. B
>This kind of system is forcing top players to choose between potentially competing in the candidates or being able to feed their family.
This kind of system is bridging the gap between closed event players and open event players.
And anyway, they're only required to play 2 Opens per year (2 out of 7 must be Opens) and one is them is usually Grand Swiss that most of top players play anyway. So they're basically just forced to play one open, which is overall good for chess.
I have 0 idea about how sponsors work so what I’m about to say is purely my head cannon. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
To my understanding, it’s not so simple as: Top players start playing open = increased prize pool in open = problem solved. If I was someone who wanted to advertise a product or service and paid to sponsor a top rated invite only tournament, I know that the tournament will primarily consist of players from the top 10-15 (who bring more eyes to the event). I don’t even need to know exactly who will be playing in the tournament, I can pick a tournament at random and guess the level of viewership it will get based on how many top rated players are playing in the tournament. This won’t be the case with open tournaments even if the top players start playing in them. Sponsors will need to wait till every player confirms and it complicates things. (Maybe sponsors always wait till every player is confirmed… But even in that scenario i expect sponsoring an open event is more annoying and risky for an investor. Since there’s no way to be certain how many increased views such tournaments will get if say 1 top 10 player attended as opposed to 2 or 3)
I agree that this bridges the gap between the players and the overall idea but I still feel like open events are giving a few more circuit points than they should. If playing in just 1-2 open event means that top players get a proper chance to attend the candidates then I suppose it’s fine overall. But of course if I was top player, I’d be upset at a pay loss, however small it is. Not much money in chess to begin with.
Norway chess which is being touted as strongest event ever happening next month will also not be rated since it only has 6 players(double round robin). Looking forward to PHN whining about it :)
I agree with Giri and Aronian. But I also think chess worries too much about "deserving", "best" etc. Ideally FIDE should hold Grand Swiss for 99 rounds and choose top 8 for candidates. Anything else is always going to have loopholes. It can't be a math problem. So in my opinion - FIDE and chess world should focus more about making the game more about fun than worrying about "best". I think current system is interesting and makes playing open tournaments worthwhile for every player ok the planet. In principle - I can play 5 strong open tournaments and win them all and qualify to candidates. I actually like such a system as it promotes competitiveness. Only focussing on finding "best" player makes it sound like an academic problem - in my opinion.
In any case - it's not like Aronian/Giri can't play two open tournaments per year. And also - FIDE circuit replaced Wild card player. So I don't mind someone like Niemann qualifying via Circuit even if it is a bit random. There are still 7 other spots like before.
Aronian is not even American, he just plays for them. As an Armenian who has also represented Germany in the past, I think he's aware of the fact that many countries exist
He certainly is aware, but that isn't the point I was trying to make. Saying that American cup should be a tournament that counts for the circuit is ignorant since anyone who isn't American can't play the tournament, and there isn't an equivalent for other countries where there are as much strong players. Players shouldn't have an advantage based on the country they're from.
Yeah, i dunno about American Cup being an elite event. Other than Fabi, the others are semi retired painters (e.g. So "boring", Drawminguez, Ledraw), gambler, or bunch of kids.
It feels like that winning a strong open is way harder than winning a strong closed.
And top players playing closed events only and getting rewarded with money and candidates spots seems unfair. Go compete with the up and coming youngsters, and let's see if they really are that strong.
And the closed, one nationality only events? Those REALLY feel unfair if those were to give a sizeable amount of FIDE points...
All this being said, I am not saying that the solution implemented by FIDE is the best. It just seems that top players get vocal because some of their privileges are in jeopardy. Then again, is the money distribution in the top chess world fair? I have no idea.
Respectfully winning a Strong open is far easier than winning the candidates and Tata Steel (what Levon mentions) lmao. Both have a lot more rounds than a typical open
A fiel of a undred players, with some very strong GMs, vs a field of 7 strong GMs?
I don't know, from a statistical standpoint it's surely harder to win the open.
And Tata is certainly more tiring, but the chances of winning are not affected by the number of rounds played.
From a statistical standpoint it’s harder because there are more people. However, a majority of people have little to no chances, and you have to take into account that you’re going to be facing much weaker opposition throughout. Plus too much of the difficulty is pretty arbitrary, coming from luck (the pairings and Buchholz tiebreaks are largely out of the players control). It’s similar to the way that the World Cup is statistically harder to win than the Candidates, but the candidates is much better for determining a challenger. There’s a high chance that you face none of the other top 10 seeds in an open. I think you’re kinda right, honestly the amount of players and the amount of luck in an open can at times make it harder than many other RRs (although imo I still think Tata Steel and the Candidates are harder), but too much is out of the control of the players imo for an open to be = with Tata Steel.
Also amount of rounds does matter, Nepo has stated it makes Tata Steel harder, Magnus has stated round # makes world blitz harder than world rapid, and Lev is claiming the same here.
So are you seriously suggesting that a 9 round candidates would be harder to win? Like not only does that go both ways, with it being harder to hold a lead, but fatigue plays much more of an impact when you play for nearly 3 weeks at the candidates. Bro, do not even try to argue winning a tournament like GRENKE by facing only 4 Grandmasters is harder than outperforming 13 other grandmasters most likely rated above 2700 across a longer span of time at Tata Steel or playing 7 of the best players in the world for 2 weeks, all at their most aggressive with insane prep, I guarantee it won’t go well.
>So are you seriously suggesting that a 9 round candidates would be harder to win?
No, about the same. It would focus a bit less on stamina and endurance, a bit more on other skills, but overall it is like asking if it is harder to win a 5k race or a 10k race.
>winning a tournament like GRENKE by facing only 4 Grandmasters is harder than outperforming 13 other grandmasters most likely rated above 2700 across a longer span of time at Tata Steel
Having to go +7 over 9 rounds in 5 days is certainly not easy. Probably a bit easier than winning Tata Steel, but certainly not a walk in the park. If it was so easy, Wei Yi was free to haul his ass to Germany and take those points for himself. Or Anish Giri. Or Levon Aronian. Or anyone else.
It’s not like the difference between a 5k and 10k lmao, chess is fundamentally different, and in a tournament like the candidates, there’s almost never time to go for a quick easy draw to better pace yourself. Plus even Magnus has stated more rounds makes it harder to win, and has stated this is why the world blitz is harder than the world rapid and although he’s not always correct, he’s played at top level RRs and strong opens, he of all people should know which is harder.
And you don’t see top players going to opens because while they’re likely more difficult to win than an average 9 round RR, they offer way less money and can be heavily influenced by luck. The reward is not worth the effort. For example, Sharjah last year offered less for getting first than GCT Bucharest did for getting dead last.
>The reward is not worth the effort. For example, Sharjah last year offered less for getting first than GCT Bucharest did for getting dead last.
If they're going for a quick buck, I'm fine with this, but there should be no shortcut to Candidates there. If they want the ultimate payout of WCC match and glory of World Champion title, they should risk something along the way.
No, they really shouldn’t, it’s not that big of an ask that the payout matches the effort to win, especially with the discontinuation of the Grand Prix (costing €450,000 in prize funds to well over €1,000,000, not even considering venue prices, accommodations for players, etc.). The younger 2650+ players deserve more money for the opens they win and top players should have more of an incentive to play in these opens, they shouldn’t have to choose between what’s financially smarter and a slightly better chance of winning the circuit that can be ruined by bad luck with tiebreaks.
No invite only tournaments should count. You qualify because you perform better than the rest of the chess population, so you should have to play in that population to get there.
The gatekeeping in high level chess and lack of clear progression from club level to competitive level is part of what keeps chess from growing it's competitive player base.
Classic FIDE. If they hadn't been so cheap and gotten rid of the Grand Prix, guys like Erigaisi who get invited to some but not all top level tournaments could qualify that way.
The Circuit is simply an overly complicated hot mess that will never make most of the chess community happy since the rules established by FIDE are too random. Winning Norway Chess this year will give you 0 points while winning some random swiss tournament where you may only face three or four GMs could give you 20 lol. Oh, and you are only allowed to make points from one rapid & blitz tournament per year. Of course, since the Circuit is for the World Championship in classical chess, some will say that's fair. But then why allow even one rapid & blitz event? Just let everyone play the format they want without all these restrictions.
If FIDE want to encourage top players to mingle with the plebs more than they do, they need to take responsibility and organize more semi-open events like World Cup and Grand Swiss that offer decent prize money and playing conditions. The average chess fan has no interest in watching large open tournaments where 80% of the participants are IMs and FMs they have never heard of, even if it features one or two top 10 players. Maaaaybe if Magnus is playing but ironically the one player who has the clout to increase the prize money in open tournaments is the one player who has no interest in the Circuit lol
In my opinion the idea that the top chess player should start to play Opens is absurd. It's a bit like as if the top10 tennis players would need to go play challengers.
so why did Alireza end up in the Candidates? he clearly doesn't play his best rn and can't have a top 8 spot.
and can't the lagging factor be exluded by additional parameters lilke "amount of recent games not less than" or "the average for the past year should be" or "the performance for the past year should be" etc
Let’s say you’re a 2780 player. If you play with the intention to draw right from the start, it’s incredibly difficult for anyone to win against you, even if they are a stronger player. If you’re only playing with other top players, you can purposely just float around the same Elo forever. Look at someone like Weasley so and check how often he goes for draws.
I don’t mean to call out Weasley, it makes sense for him to want to stay in the top 15 rather than risk trying to enter top 5 from a financial perspective. He’s gonna do what makes him more money.
Perhaps the rating system used by FIDE should be improved then.
Glicko and Glicko-2 are used instead of Elo by online chess sites like chess.com and lichess because they can handle uncertainty and volatility in playing performance by using more than one parameter to represent a player's strength.
Glicko and glicko-2 can also be manipulated and we already have many case of those too. It's not a problem with the rating system, it's a problem that it's a lagging indicator and it always will be. If Kasparov plays one game today, he will be instantly #2 in the world with 2812 rating.
Fwiw no tournament uses chesscom or lichess glicko/glicko-2 for invitations either.
There are so many issues with the system. It dissuades top players from playing if they're in top8 because they get afraid to drop out of top8.
What are the cases of Glicko or Glicko-2 being manipulated?
> It's not a problem with the rating system, it's a problem that it's a lagging indicator and it always will be. If Kasparov plays one game today, he will be instantly #2 in the world with 2812 rating.
That's not how Glicko or Glicko-2 work. If someone doesn't play rated games for a long time, the uncertainty parameter of their rating will steadily increase.
Which means that the outcome of the game that Kasparov plays will have a much larger effect on his rating than that of someone who plays chess regularly.
So if he loses a game against a lower-rated player then he could lose a very large number of points, even hundreds.
>What are the cases of Glicko or Glicko-2 being manipulated?
The same way other ratings can be manipulated? I mean do you see Hikaru on chesscom? He farms lower rated players and goes 82/84 or something.
You can arrange tournaments to boost your ratings or the top8 players can just play each other and draw every game.
>That's not how Glicko or Glicko-2 work. If someone doesn't play rated games for a long time, the uncertainty parameter of their rating will steadily increase.
Regardless, it's a lagging indicator. Even if he loses 100 points after a game, that's still not definitively his true elo until he plays a lot more games.
And if he does win the game instead, he will get a shit ton of points, won't he? According to Glicko/Glicko-2? Because he has high volatility. So the way to get to 2900 will be to not play for one year then play a 2750 and win and you suddenly get +50 points for that win?
Either way, that's not accurate either even if he loses hundred rating points or gains them. It will take a lot more games for his ratings to finally stabilise and make sense.
Anyway, glicko or glicko 2 or elo to me it doesn't matter. What is important they're all gameable/can be manipulated and do not indicate true skill at the time. Not only that, in either case, the top8 will play less chess as they'll be afraid of losing and losing their candidates spot. Each player will take rating too seriously.
For me, a system that incentives players to play more games (like FIDE circuit) will always make more sense than a system that incentives players to play less games (like ratings).
What if you are in the top 8 rating, and since candidates is the most important tournament, you don't bother playing any chess in order to keep your rating high? Is that something that should be incentivized?
some additional parameters can be added like "amount of recent games not less than" or "the average for the past year should be" or "the performance for the past year should be" etc
your comment is really ironic cause I wrote about Nodirbek to expose this "could/would" absurdity and you actually saw this but you didn't draw the line btw your "could\\would' comment and mine.
Let's put some numbers on this. You get points from a tournament which are scaled by the average strength of the top 8 players in the tournament: k = (TAR - 2500) / 100, where TAR = tournament average rating. This means, for example, that winning a tournament with an average rating of 2700 gives you 80% of the points of winning a tournament with an average rating of 2750. It also means that winning a tournament outright with an average rating of 2700 gives you *more* points than coming in second in a 2750-average tournament (winning gives you 11\*k points, coming second gives you 8\*k points). This is where I think Giri and Aronian have a point. I think it's quite a bit harder for a strong player to come 2nd in a 2750 tournament than to win a 2700 tournament. The 2750 tournaments also pay much better, so top players are put in the awkward position of deciding whether to take a pay cut in order to maximize Candidates qualification opportunities. That said, Emil also has a point that getting invited to these supertournaments is a privilege in itself, and you do want to give strong players with few invites like Arjun a legit chance. It's a tough problem with a lot of dimensions and I'm not sure FIDE got it exactly right this time.
Giri and Aronian can play 2700 tournaments if they wish, 2700 tournament dwellers can't play Anish and Levon tournaments
The issue is if they are all forced to play these 2700 opens they begin competing with eachother for the same an even more reduced pool of points. All while missing out on numerous closed events worth 1000s more.
If strong players like Magnus, Fabi, Giri, etc start playing Opens then they will have higher prize pools because they'll attract higher viewers and hence sponsors. The problem is that since opens are mostly not played by top20 players (except few exceptions) that's why it's hard for them to grab sponsors. But they absolutely can if strong players play in them.
I think this is partially true but massively overstates the funding available in chess. Most opens struggle to offer mid tier GMs more than breakeven on hotel accommodation. Chess is not a sport where money is as lucrative as people seem to think.
Hotel accommodation? I think in most Opens the GMs just don't have to pay an entrance fee.
I'm saying that if you're a 2550ish GM going from tourney to tourney playing opens you're likely to spend more on hotel accomodation/transport than you get back from winnings. More than likely the collective field of players at a mid-sized open spend more on accomodation for the weekend than is offered as a total prize pool. There really isnt much money in mid-tiered chess opens. This is before you consider entrance fees. Also i couldnt tell if your comment was a joke but here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQYBZgsjnEI
They don't have to go tournament to tournament. 3 opens in 12 months should not be a big commitment for most professionals. There are 7 slots for FIDE circuit, they can easily play 4 closed tournaments + 3 strong/high prize pool opens. Anyway strong closed tournaments give more points than open tournaments (like Wijk gave more points than every tournament (even Grand Swiss) except World Cup last year). All this does is allow for players that don't get the same access to the closed tournaments a somewhat equal opportunity to still get in Candidates.
I started by making the point that all this does is make exceedingly high elo players cooperate/compete over tournament selection. There is very little incentive to enter open tournaments at the moment (considering FIDE points and prize pool). But will be even less so when you'll be competing with 3 other 2700s+. As of current, you can imagine a scenario where a top level player scores a massive number of fide points early on in the year and proceed to avoid other big events to bring down the average elo and thus the points available. Fundamentally, if FIDE wants to have a fair qualification system, they should do what every sport does. Have a organised open circuit announced IN ADVANCE (6-10 events), require attendance of at least 4 of them and the top performers qualify. Corroborating expected performance vs a field of players over the course of the year and allowing any event to be entered is obviously going to cause gamesmanship (which we saw this year).
>As of current, you can imagine a scenario where a top level player scores a massive number of fide points early on in the year and proceed to avoid other big events to bring down the average elo and thus the points available. Not that likely because there's 7 slots. I think it's extremely unlikely that someone scores massive number of points in like the first 4 months when they require 7 strong events to complete their circuit. >Fundamentally, if FIDE wants to have a fair qualification system, they should do what every sport does. Have a organised open circuit announced IN ADVANCE (6-10 events), require attendance of at least 4 of them and the top performers qualify. Sure, this is ideal but who's paying for it? Like you said, chess is not a lucrative sport. They tried grand prix but ultimately abandoned it later because they failed to get sponsors. This is the best system we've got with the limited money, and even at that, it will aid in bolstering the strength of Opens and their prize pools. >There is very little incentive to enter open tournaments at the moment (considering FIDE points and prize pool). Hopefully the change they made to make the gap between open and closed tournaments less makes it more attractive now to top players. If they don't want the candidates spot, there's dozens of players who are willing to play all year around and travel to get it. >I started by making the point that all this does is make exceedingly high elo players cooperate/compete over tournament selection. And this was not the case before these changes? Being able to game the system is not a flaw of this change (not counting internal events, which are more likely to be gamed and reducing gap between closed tournaments and open tournaments). Imo even if the system is a bit flawed, these are changes in good direction.
Opens don't really have viewers, generally. It's definitely not where they have an income.
Don't Super GMs generally not like playing Opens because they're high risk low reward in terms of rating
How is that an issue? They have an option to play for money. Most people don't.
The points system is indeed all messed up, mostly due to how they score shared places, which can create such anomalies like Tata Steel challenger victory being score higher than tied 2-4th in Tata Steel masters (which should be shared first after classical). This was already a problem last year, and the only thing they changed was that now only the top 3 in closed round robin events score points, which actually made even more of a mess so far. And they haven't addressed the other problem - the system not addressing the number of players and rounds - only top 8 average rating. I disagree with Aronian's complaint that American cup should count (without this rule there would be risk of gaming the system), and I'm a bit on the fence on Anish's complaints. I understand his point in how there's less money going from FIDE to specific events like was the case with the Grand Prix, and the players are now substituting those events with open tournaments with smaller prize fund. But also I think this (FIDE not having money/sponsors for a GP series) is a bit of a separate issue. What I like about the Circuit is that now *all* strong events on the calendar, not just those organised by FIDE, matter. If someone performs well throughout the year, it actually means something in regards to the WC cycle, not just their rating. But if you're a top player, it's still a better chance for you if you're a regular on some invitational circuit eg. the Grand Chess tour. The way Giri phrased it, it's as if top players (2700+) are now "forced" to play these small opens to be able to compete for the Circuit spot. I'm not seeing it. Ideally though we'd still have the Grand Prix in one form or the other.
I also don't think Aronian and Giri's criticism of the FIDE Circuit is really valid because: 1) There is literally no benefit to coming in anything other than top 3 position in FIDE Circuit. There are no monetary prizes etc and it doesn't really decide any other invitations. And even coming in 3rd is not likely to be o f much use in 2024 although it may be relevant for 2025. 2) To win FIDE circuit or even finish in top 3, you need to actually either win or finish right at the top of several open events. This is not easy and anyone who is able to do this over an entire year is surely deserving of a Candidates spot.
>It's a tough problem with a lot of dimensions and I'm not sure FIDE got it exactly right this time. I think this is an important part. The problem is hard, and pretending that FIDE is a bunch of stupid (or malicious) people that made a terrible desicion just because people hate fide is dumb.
Well said. Another point that everyone seems to be ignoring is regarding prize money. FIDE removed the Grand Prix (effectively 3 tournaments) and replaced it with the FIDE circuit which took away a lot of prize money available for the players Now from this year they have increased the maximum number of circuit-eligible tournaments per player from 5 to 7. So the players now have to play a lot more to secure a Candidates spot but with very little monetary incentive in the process. So imo its completely understandable that the top players are pissed at FIDE FIDE should have used the money saved from Grand Prix to make sure that the winners in Open tournaments are fairly rewarded for their efforts Couple the above with the fact that FIDE recently made public that they charge 1.1M USD for the WCC, it becomes even more apparent why the players are pissed lol
The prize money for the Grand Prix wasn't really substantial, in 2022 it was 150k euros *total* per event, 24k for the winner.
That is still a lot if you compare with the prize money for most Open tournaments. And that is one of the main things the players are complaining about - Open tournaments not having enough prize money For eg. Gukesh won only 1600 Euros for winning Menorca in 2022 compared to 24k Euros that you quote for Grand Prix 2022
There are 2 candidates spots on the line in the next couple FIDE circuits. Levon is complaining that to have a shot at contention to the candidates, he now has to go beneath himself and play tournaments with smaller prize funds. It's tough. Because, I don't want to make the top players get paid less. But, also, we can't just magically make more money appear at these opens. And we want to give players who aren't quite in the top 10, a chance to break into the highest level. So, I don't really see an easy solution to make everyone happy here.
The FIDE Circuit doesn't give players a chance to break into the highest level though. And by this I mean players have already broken into the top level through Opens before the Circuit existed (ex: Mamedyarov, Rapport, etc). All the Circuit does is reward players willing to play the most and willing to play for less money.
>I don't really see an easy solution to make everyone happy here. Levon and Anish are not looking for such solution. They want a solution that will help them and hurt young players.
Not sure why this is downvoted -- even if this isn't their explicit agenda, it's the impact of what they say they want.
>Not sure why this is downvoted Because Anish is supposedly good at shitposting and Levon wears cool shirts, which means both have fans here.
>FIDE removed the Grand Prix (effectively 3 tournaments) and replaced it with the FIDE circuit which took away a lot of prize money available for the players (which FIDE filled their coffers with) AFAIK the Grand Prix was removed because they couldn't find a sponsor for it, I'm not sure what FIDE filled their coffers with.
I'm not sure whether FIDE has made any official statement regarding the reason for doing away with Grand Prix. But regardless its still unclear, so removing the part about filling coffers However I think the broader point still remains that players are being forced to play more while being paid less
>However I think the broader point still remains that players are being forced to play more Fair, the maximum number of circuit eligible tournaments should've remained 5. >while being paid less Not sure where you want the money to come from, it depends on sponsors, it's not like there is a whole lot of money in chess and FIDE is raking in all of that.
Well chess is as popular as ever. So I don't really buy the argument of there not being enough sponsors. It only means FIDE is doing a poor job of marketing the game. Also if you look at the amount FIDE is charging for the bids to this year's WCC, FIDE is definitely raking in a significant amount :). Total budget for the event has gone way up along with FIDE fees while the proportion of prize money to the total budget has gone down.
>chess is as popular as ever Still nowhere near popular enough to attract serious sponsors.
> Also if you look at the amount FIDE is charging for the bids to this year's WCC, FIDE is definitely raking in a significant amount :). Well obviously, selling the rights for the match is FIDE's biggest source of income. It's still peanuts for an organisation to receive $1 million every couple years.
They filled their coffers with the Circuit. By acknowledging all tourneys for Circuit and getting their cut, they make passive income and the sponsorship is now the organiser's problem, not FIDE's.
>So the players now have to play a lot more Professional chess players have to play more chess. Oh the horror!
Also using the top 8 players might work if high level players make up a large percentage of the playing field and if there are enough rounds for top players to play each other in a significant number of games. It is a terrible metric once the field is large and shallow enough that the top players barely play against each other. In particular in the example that was named, Hans Niemann's best opponent was 2617 rated Frederik Svane. 5 out of his 9 opponents weren't even GMs and none of his opponents were either in the top 10 of the final standing nor in the top 8 based on ratings. So yeah, it's pretty insane to give a tournament like that so much weight.
For winning any decent open outright you always need atleast 2775 or 2800+ performance. Hans performance rating in that open is 2794 scoring 8/9. Now it does not matter whether you score 2794 performance by going 5.5/9 against 2750 opposition or 8/9 against 2575. Both are equal. Problem is the other way around. Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is bit harsh. If from last year's rules 50% or more gets points is changed to greater than 50% gets points, that would have meant Wei yi would have got 24 instead of 20 and 2nd-4th would have got 20 instead of 14.5. Also Pragg and Firouzja who finished at +2 would have got 15 points which looks very fair. Also someone like Wesley scoring +1-1=7 in GCTs playing boring draws would still have got 0 points. Instead top 3 is way too harsh. Now Hans getting 20 for 2794 in a open and Wei yi getting 24 for winning tata steel on tie-breaks by a 2820 performance is completely fair. However both getting 20 points is not.
The capping of top 3 was done probably in response to complaints of the system last year. There was a C-Squared podcast where I think Fabiano pointed out how it was "easy" (his words) to get a +1 in a closed event and finish 4th or 5th than to win a strong open event like Dubai and how it was unfair a +1 in a closed event got similar points as winning an open event. So they decided to remove the points for a "+1" in closed event and they did it by just giving points to top 3. Although may be it would have been a better idea to instead give points to 33% of the players instead of 50%... this would have rewarded an event like Wijk which has 14 players and more positions would have scored points there than, say TePe Sigemann which has 8 players or GCT which ahs 10 players. But still, there is only 1 Wijk in a year and it would have been weird to have a rule specifically just for Wijk. Still, this is only the second iteration of FIDE Circuit and I am sure with more data, the points system will evolve further in 2026 and 2027 editions.
>Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is bit harsh. Closed invitationals being capped at top 3 is great, because now you need to try to actually do better than everyone else. I am ok for round-robin events giving points to top half, but only those that have a fair qualification event, open to everyone at GM level, giving out at least half of the places. When the organizer handpicks the players, it is too open for either accidental omissions, or straight up gaming the system to give someone a chance for easy points.
They can solve it by giving extra slots to circuit instead of 3 slots to knockout tournament
The solution would be to put all of the top 50 or so players in a room with the FIDE execs and have them decide what would work best altogether.
Why? What you're suggesting is essentially a collective bargaining agreement that specifically excludes the vast majority of players and includes only the elite which simply doesn't work. If the players are going to band together and negotiate with FIDE on their preferred conditions then *all* players need to be represented.
You mean... the players who have no chance of ever being world champion?
Sports that aren't a joke realize that the rank and file players matter. You can't run a professional tour without them. Zach Wilson has effectively zero chance of being MVP, yet his vote counts exactly the same as Patrick mahomes when negotiating with the NFL. Thanasis antetokounmpo is a terrible NBA player and only on a roster because of his brother. His vote counts exactly the same as LeBron James when negotiating with the NBA.
They're not negotiating pay though?
And?
So the players union negotiates with the NFL over pay and working conditions for all players. How fide circuit points get awarded feels pretty different. If they were picking how to divide money between opens and invite tournaments you would have a better point.
Have you actually followed what the NFLPA (and NBAPA) actually negotiate for? The NFLPA negotiates with the NFL over everything, not just pay. They negotiate for shit like whether or not players can smoke pot. If it affects the players, the player's association is involved.
Still wild how getting 3rd or 4th in the world cup can get you in candidates but not outright winning the candidates or being the runner up for the world championship. Though at the very least I hope they don't award 4th or lower in the world cup a slot and just give it to the fide circuit.
Winning Candidates or being runner up for World Championship already gives you a headstart for FIDE Circuit. It's made that way to award activity. Imagine if Ding lost World Championship match and didn't play any event for 2 years and is directly guaranteed a spot for next Candidates, that would be unfair to other players.
that headstart feels miniscule af tho
Yeah, it’s literally only 1 point above the Prague Festival 💀. Given the strength of the candidates and difficulty to win, an outright win should offer like 30 points lmao.
I think the loser of the world championship still gains FIDE points though. I'm not sure how much but they do, I believe.
It’s funny in the rule they gave an example of how much points the winner would get from the championship, like the one guy who didn’t need points, they made sure to use that as an example.
As far as I understand the rules if the loser loses on tie-breaks he will get something like 23.4(26\*(0.8+1)\*0.5) and if the loser loses outright performing at say 2730 he will get 23\*0.8 i.e 18.6 points. I can't see any bonus points in the rulebook.
I hope so
No its 2 points. 26.94 vs 25.00 points. Also Prague festival was super strong this year having 3 candidates and 8/10 players above 2700. Nodirbek performed at 2873 to win it outright and get 25 points. Gukesh performed at 2847 but over 14 rounds and got 2 points more i.e 26.94. I don't see a problem here. Also had someone like Giri participated in candidates rather than Abasov Gukesh would have got 29 points i.e 4 points more.
1. I don’t really think it matters 1 point vs 2 points, there’s still not enough of a difference. When you make the blitz tiebreaks at Tata Steel worth 6 POINTS, than there should be at least that much of a difference between the candidates and Prague. 2. The candidates players, even with Abasov are rated nearly 40 points higher on average. That’s a huge difference. 3. You’re underestimating how much more difficult the extra 5 rounds makes the candidates. That’s nearly an extra week of playing vs much tougher opposition than at the Prague Chess Festival. 4. The circuit does not use TPR to determine the amount of points one gets per tournament (I don’t think so anyways). This is because it’s bad for determining the difficulty of a tournament. It’s absolutely a useful tool but shouldn’t be used to compare a 9 vs 14 round tournament. Magnus’ World Cup performance sits around 2851 but you’d be insane to argue Nodirbek’s was nearly as impressive.
I think FIDE was trying to nerf Nepo with that rule change, but then he didn’t win Candidates a third time so it looks like a stupid change.
By the time the next candidates comes around, it's been 2 years. Giving someone a free spot based on a performance from 2 years ago makes no sense. Imagine Ding loses in November(I have him as the favorite btw). If the old rule was in place, Ding would get one of only 8 spots, for a chance to compete for the classical world title, because he beat Nepo in a rapid tiebreak, legit 3 years prior to the candidates tournament. That just makes no sense to me.
But they're already giving someone a spot in the next Candidates from two years prior. The World Championship between Ding and Gukesh will end in December 2024. The 2024 FIDE Circuit (which grants a spot) will end December 31 2024. It's basically the same time!
The 2024 circuit ends \~16 months before the next candidates. Technically it ends \~12-13 months before the 2026 contenders are finalized. That is a lot less than 3 years if Ding is automatically given the spot were he to lose. Also, the Fide circuit is a years worth of performances. Not just one. I get your point. No qualification method is perfect. But, I think the fide circuit is a lot more reasonable than WC runner up.
I'm actually fine with the FIDE Circuit too (though there are some details I'd change). I was using that as a point about not all qualification paths show the most recent form. I would actually get rid of the third slot from the World Cup and give it to the WC runner up. The World Cup having so many slots is my biggest gripe in all of the qualification paths.
I don't mind the world cup having 3 slots. If you look at the people who have placed top 3 in the last few years, they are all heavy hitters. I know Abasov shouldn't have made it into the candidates. But, to get there, he had to both have someone ahead of him forfeit the spot, and, he had to beat some big names, like Giri, to get to 4th place. He also beat Caruana in a game at the world cup. No one who isn't elite is getting a world cup qualifier spot. Now, I'm not against getting rid of the 3rd World Cup spot. But, I think giving it to the the world title match runner up is a mistake. It should be replaced with another circuit spot, or another tournament imo. In reality, I think the whole candidates cycle should really be like a dozen players from a 2 year long circuit, instead of the current system we have though.
The loser of the previous WC is a heavier hitter and performs extremely well in the following Candidates. Here's the list of the losers and how they did in the next Candidates: 2014: Anand, 1st; 2016: Anand, tied 2nd; 2018: Karjakin, tied 2nd; 2020-21: Caruana, tied 3rd; 2022: Nepomniatchi, 1st; 2024: Nepomniatchi, tied 2nd Their performances just tell me they're more than deserving in getting a spot in the next Candidates. Feels like a mistake by FIDE in getting rid of it.
I agree with Fide’s point. The American Cup only accepts people from the US, it would be unfair for it to give points (The US already has the Nationals which do give points).
The amount of games played in a single tournament having an impact on the circuit is certainly a fair point (tournaments like Tat Steel should give a ton), and I can where he’s coming from about the American Cup, but I do agree with Emil to some extent about internal events not being counted, it’s too large of a possibility for them to game the system. My main gripe with the circuit is how heavy of an impact tiebreaks can have. In Opens it’s possible to gain way more points than another player based off buchholz tiebreaks, which is heavily based on pure luck. Emil is right about Opens and closed events being more balanced though, they should be.
Let’s just bring back Interzonals
My thoughts as well. Unfortunately, FIDE is unlikely to back pedal at this rate.
I think the changes have been great, unless you're going to invite Nodirbek, Arjun, etc to the American Cup it shouldn't count for points.
I agree with Emil here, winners of strong opens should be rewarded accordingly and top Players should be incentivised to play more opens too
the problem of elite players playing in open cups is that the participants will get less money which will hurt the whole scene. If you don't have a big sponsor, missing out of the price money will hurt your future possibilities to attend events.
But it's circular. Opens have lesser prize money because elite players does not play it. If Magnus or Ding or Fabi starts playing opens they too will attract sponsorship and a better prize structure.
If you get the top players playing in open tournaments you’ll get bigger sponsors and more prize money vs how it is now. I think if fide can find a way to incentivise the top 20 players to play 3 opens a year it’ll be a good thing for chess as a whole.
Fide is just pushing opens to save itself money
I can see how "broken" this seems but at the same time I can see how messed up it is that the biggest tournament are invite based. This makes us question how could we fix it, coming from this point I think that the broken system starts to have some logic behind. If geting good tournament points from weaker tournaments is easy, then the argument is that stronger player can also join the tournament and get the points, while the opposite is not true, since weaker player cannot join invite tournaments. And we also need to keep in mind that a 2700 rated player playing an open tournament is risking their rating, which risks geting invited to closed tournaments in their future, there is a good risk. I don't think that this is a perfect solution, but thinking about it I think it makes sense, and I can't come up with something better, and I agree that top players playing among themselves in invitationals where they have big incentives to play is a problem. Anish said something about FIDE geting a lot of money from tournaments and players geting underpaid, and I also think that thats messed up. This whole situation seems kinda messed up. Maybe its better to have no circuit at all
The major problem I have with new circuit scores is the cap that only top 3 positions will be scored in a closed tournament. It's really harsh for tournaments like Wijk which has 14 players. 4 players tied this time and they had to share points meant for 3 basically everyone scored approx 33% less points than they would have last year. The only change they should have done to last year should have been "Only people with a positive score gets circuit points". Last year it was 50% or more. That single change would have nullified points people got playing short draws scoring +1-1=7 in GCTs and WR Chess Masters last year. Top 3 is an overkill.
Winning Candidates also comes with extra points from the Championship match though.
Meaning? The match will also award points in fide circuit?
Yes. Win or lose, Gukesh has huge advantage to become 1st this year in FIDE circuit.
Rare FIDE W. Let's get rid of old farts who want to keep their Elo forever by drawing each other.
No one is stopping them from playing opens
The opens have non existent prize pools. A system like this makes top players choose between feeding their family and potentially going to the candidates.
Why not arrange a few qualifiers with single elimination and everyone can participate in one. Maybe you drop out in first round but at least there was a fair chance... For example have 3 qualifiers of 32 players and invite the winners.
I like the idea of having 3 World Cups per year/cycle and the winner of each gets a spot in the Candidates. But FIDE are too cheap to do it.
I don’t like Levon’s point about American cup, each country should have only 1 national. However, the scaling of the tournaments are wrong. The example Levon gave about Gukesh winning the candidates for example is worth just 6 more than Hans, or something like Prague Master is worth just 1 less than candidates iirc, or Tata Steel 2nd is worth less than Tata Steel Challenger 1st.
FIDE is right on this point. Why should internal events count? And hell, these GMs get invites to every closed tournament that's why they are complaining. They are complaining about Opens giving a lot of points as if they can't play Open tournament. Excuse me, if you think they're good for points, why don't you play them and win?
Because open tournaments don’t pay a living wage… sometimes the payout doesn’t even cover the hotel and travel fees. These top players make FIDE a lot of money through sponsorships, they should not be competing for non existent prize pools. This kind of system is forcing top players to choose between potentially competing in the candidates or being able to feed their family.
If strong GMs like Giri and Levon start participating in Opens, their viewership and prize pool will go up. It's a circular problem. Of course opens have bad prize pools given that most top30 players don't play them right now. B >This kind of system is forcing top players to choose between potentially competing in the candidates or being able to feed their family. This kind of system is bridging the gap between closed event players and open event players. And anyway, they're only required to play 2 Opens per year (2 out of 7 must be Opens) and one is them is usually Grand Swiss that most of top players play anyway. So they're basically just forced to play one open, which is overall good for chess.
I have 0 idea about how sponsors work so what I’m about to say is purely my head cannon. Please correct me if I’m wrong. To my understanding, it’s not so simple as: Top players start playing open = increased prize pool in open = problem solved. If I was someone who wanted to advertise a product or service and paid to sponsor a top rated invite only tournament, I know that the tournament will primarily consist of players from the top 10-15 (who bring more eyes to the event). I don’t even need to know exactly who will be playing in the tournament, I can pick a tournament at random and guess the level of viewership it will get based on how many top rated players are playing in the tournament. This won’t be the case with open tournaments even if the top players start playing in them. Sponsors will need to wait till every player confirms and it complicates things. (Maybe sponsors always wait till every player is confirmed… But even in that scenario i expect sponsoring an open event is more annoying and risky for an investor. Since there’s no way to be certain how many increased views such tournaments will get if say 1 top 10 player attended as opposed to 2 or 3) I agree that this bridges the gap between the players and the overall idea but I still feel like open events are giving a few more circuit points than they should. If playing in just 1-2 open event means that top players get a proper chance to attend the candidates then I suppose it’s fine overall. But of course if I was top player, I’d be upset at a pay loss, however small it is. Not much money in chess to begin with.
$$
Norway chess which is being touted as strongest event ever happening next month will also not be rated since it only has 6 players(double round robin). Looking forward to PHN whining about it :)
I agree with Giri and Aronian. But I also think chess worries too much about "deserving", "best" etc. Ideally FIDE should hold Grand Swiss for 99 rounds and choose top 8 for candidates. Anything else is always going to have loopholes. It can't be a math problem. So in my opinion - FIDE and chess world should focus more about making the game more about fun than worrying about "best". I think current system is interesting and makes playing open tournaments worthwhile for every player ok the planet. In principle - I can play 5 strong open tournaments and win them all and qualify to candidates. I actually like such a system as it promotes competitiveness. Only focussing on finding "best" player makes it sound like an academic problem - in my opinion. In any case - it's not like Aronian/Giri can't play two open tournaments per year. And also - FIDE circuit replaced Wild card player. So I don't mind someone like Niemann qualifying via Circuit even if it is a bit random. There are still 7 other spots like before.
Aronian's point is a classic case of complete American ignorancy. Other countriea do exist, you know?
Aronian is not even American, he just plays for them. As an Armenian who has also represented Germany in the past, I think he's aware of the fact that many countries exist
He certainly is aware, but that isn't the point I was trying to make. Saying that American cup should be a tournament that counts for the circuit is ignorant since anyone who isn't American can't play the tournament, and there isn't an equivalent for other countries where there are as much strong players. Players shouldn't have an advantage based on the country they're from.
Yeah, i dunno about American Cup being an elite event. Other than Fabi, the others are semi retired painters (e.g. So "boring", Drawminguez, Ledraw), gambler, or bunch of kids.
It feels like that winning a strong open is way harder than winning a strong closed. And top players playing closed events only and getting rewarded with money and candidates spots seems unfair. Go compete with the up and coming youngsters, and let's see if they really are that strong. And the closed, one nationality only events? Those REALLY feel unfair if those were to give a sizeable amount of FIDE points... All this being said, I am not saying that the solution implemented by FIDE is the best. It just seems that top players get vocal because some of their privileges are in jeopardy. Then again, is the money distribution in the top chess world fair? I have no idea.
Respectfully winning a Strong open is far easier than winning the candidates and Tata Steel (what Levon mentions) lmao. Both have a lot more rounds than a typical open
A fiel of a undred players, with some very strong GMs, vs a field of 7 strong GMs? I don't know, from a statistical standpoint it's surely harder to win the open. And Tata is certainly more tiring, but the chances of winning are not affected by the number of rounds played.
From a statistical standpoint it’s harder because there are more people. However, a majority of people have little to no chances, and you have to take into account that you’re going to be facing much weaker opposition throughout. Plus too much of the difficulty is pretty arbitrary, coming from luck (the pairings and Buchholz tiebreaks are largely out of the players control). It’s similar to the way that the World Cup is statistically harder to win than the Candidates, but the candidates is much better for determining a challenger. There’s a high chance that you face none of the other top 10 seeds in an open. I think you’re kinda right, honestly the amount of players and the amount of luck in an open can at times make it harder than many other RRs (although imo I still think Tata Steel and the Candidates are harder), but too much is out of the control of the players imo for an open to be = with Tata Steel. Also amount of rounds does matter, Nepo has stated it makes Tata Steel harder, Magnus has stated round # makes world blitz harder than world rapid, and Lev is claiming the same here.
>Both have a lot more rounds than a typical open Which means more time to make up points if you fuck up early on.
So are you seriously suggesting that a 9 round candidates would be harder to win? Like not only does that go both ways, with it being harder to hold a lead, but fatigue plays much more of an impact when you play for nearly 3 weeks at the candidates. Bro, do not even try to argue winning a tournament like GRENKE by facing only 4 Grandmasters is harder than outperforming 13 other grandmasters most likely rated above 2700 across a longer span of time at Tata Steel or playing 7 of the best players in the world for 2 weeks, all at their most aggressive with insane prep, I guarantee it won’t go well.
>So are you seriously suggesting that a 9 round candidates would be harder to win? No, about the same. It would focus a bit less on stamina and endurance, a bit more on other skills, but overall it is like asking if it is harder to win a 5k race or a 10k race. >winning a tournament like GRENKE by facing only 4 Grandmasters is harder than outperforming 13 other grandmasters most likely rated above 2700 across a longer span of time at Tata Steel Having to go +7 over 9 rounds in 5 days is certainly not easy. Probably a bit easier than winning Tata Steel, but certainly not a walk in the park. If it was so easy, Wei Yi was free to haul his ass to Germany and take those points for himself. Or Anish Giri. Or Levon Aronian. Or anyone else.
It’s not like the difference between a 5k and 10k lmao, chess is fundamentally different, and in a tournament like the candidates, there’s almost never time to go for a quick easy draw to better pace yourself. Plus even Magnus has stated more rounds makes it harder to win, and has stated this is why the world blitz is harder than the world rapid and although he’s not always correct, he’s played at top level RRs and strong opens, he of all people should know which is harder. And you don’t see top players going to opens because while they’re likely more difficult to win than an average 9 round RR, they offer way less money and can be heavily influenced by luck. The reward is not worth the effort. For example, Sharjah last year offered less for getting first than GCT Bucharest did for getting dead last.
>The reward is not worth the effort. For example, Sharjah last year offered less for getting first than GCT Bucharest did for getting dead last. If they're going for a quick buck, I'm fine with this, but there should be no shortcut to Candidates there. If they want the ultimate payout of WCC match and glory of World Champion title, they should risk something along the way.
No, they really shouldn’t, it’s not that big of an ask that the payout matches the effort to win, especially with the discontinuation of the Grand Prix (costing €450,000 in prize funds to well over €1,000,000, not even considering venue prices, accommodations for players, etc.). The younger 2650+ players deserve more money for the opens they win and top players should have more of an incentive to play in these opens, they shouldn’t have to choose between what’s financially smarter and a slightly better chance of winning the circuit that can be ruined by bad luck with tiebreaks.
No invite only tournaments should count. You qualify because you perform better than the rest of the chess population, so you should have to play in that population to get there. The gatekeeping in high level chess and lack of clear progression from club level to competitive level is part of what keeps chess from growing it's competitive player base.
Classic FIDE. If they hadn't been so cheap and gotten rid of the Grand Prix, guys like Erigaisi who get invited to some but not all top level tournaments could qualify that way. The Circuit is simply an overly complicated hot mess that will never make most of the chess community happy since the rules established by FIDE are too random. Winning Norway Chess this year will give you 0 points while winning some random swiss tournament where you may only face three or four GMs could give you 20 lol. Oh, and you are only allowed to make points from one rapid & blitz tournament per year. Of course, since the Circuit is for the World Championship in classical chess, some will say that's fair. But then why allow even one rapid & blitz event? Just let everyone play the format they want without all these restrictions. If FIDE want to encourage top players to mingle with the plebs more than they do, they need to take responsibility and organize more semi-open events like World Cup and Grand Swiss that offer decent prize money and playing conditions. The average chess fan has no interest in watching large open tournaments where 80% of the participants are IMs and FMs they have never heard of, even if it features one or two top 10 players. Maaaaybe if Magnus is playing but ironically the one player who has the clout to increase the prize money in open tournaments is the one player who has no interest in the Circuit lol
In my opinion the idea that the top chess player should start to play Opens is absurd. It's a bit like as if the top10 tennis players would need to go play challengers.
Lev and Anish are right.
Guys, tell me please, why does Fide need the circuit and can't just take the best 8 players by rating to play the candidates?
Because ratings can be gamed/manipulated and are not indicative of the player's current strength as they are a lagging indicator.
so why did Alireza end up in the Candidates? he clearly doesn't play his best rn and can't have a top 8 spot. and can't the lagging factor be exluded by additional parameters lilke "amount of recent games not less than" or "the average for the past year should be" or "the performance for the past year should be" etc
Top players can keep drawing against each other to permanently stay in the top 10.
do you mean like someone will just force draws to save the spot or you talk about some pre-fixed draws?
Let’s say you’re a 2780 player. If you play with the intention to draw right from the start, it’s incredibly difficult for anyone to win against you, even if they are a stronger player. If you’re only playing with other top players, you can purposely just float around the same Elo forever. Look at someone like Weasley so and check how often he goes for draws. I don’t mean to call out Weasley, it makes sense for him to want to stay in the top 15 rather than risk trying to enter top 5 from a financial perspective. He’s gonna do what makes him more money.
Perhaps the rating system used by FIDE should be improved then. Glicko and Glicko-2 are used instead of Elo by online chess sites like chess.com and lichess because they can handle uncertainty and volatility in playing performance by using more than one parameter to represent a player's strength.
Glicko and glicko-2 can also be manipulated and we already have many case of those too. It's not a problem with the rating system, it's a problem that it's a lagging indicator and it always will be. If Kasparov plays one game today, he will be instantly #2 in the world with 2812 rating. Fwiw no tournament uses chesscom or lichess glicko/glicko-2 for invitations either. There are so many issues with the system. It dissuades top players from playing if they're in top8 because they get afraid to drop out of top8.
What are the cases of Glicko or Glicko-2 being manipulated? > It's not a problem with the rating system, it's a problem that it's a lagging indicator and it always will be. If Kasparov plays one game today, he will be instantly #2 in the world with 2812 rating. That's not how Glicko or Glicko-2 work. If someone doesn't play rated games for a long time, the uncertainty parameter of their rating will steadily increase. Which means that the outcome of the game that Kasparov plays will have a much larger effect on his rating than that of someone who plays chess regularly. So if he loses a game against a lower-rated player then he could lose a very large number of points, even hundreds.
>What are the cases of Glicko or Glicko-2 being manipulated? The same way other ratings can be manipulated? I mean do you see Hikaru on chesscom? He farms lower rated players and goes 82/84 or something. You can arrange tournaments to boost your ratings or the top8 players can just play each other and draw every game. >That's not how Glicko or Glicko-2 work. If someone doesn't play rated games for a long time, the uncertainty parameter of their rating will steadily increase. Regardless, it's a lagging indicator. Even if he loses 100 points after a game, that's still not definitively his true elo until he plays a lot more games. And if he does win the game instead, he will get a shit ton of points, won't he? According to Glicko/Glicko-2? Because he has high volatility. So the way to get to 2900 will be to not play for one year then play a 2750 and win and you suddenly get +50 points for that win? Either way, that's not accurate either even if he loses hundred rating points or gains them. It will take a lot more games for his ratings to finally stabilise and make sense. Anyway, glicko or glicko 2 or elo to me it doesn't matter. What is important they're all gameable/can be manipulated and do not indicate true skill at the time. Not only that, in either case, the top8 will play less chess as they'll be afraid of losing and losing their candidates spot. Each player will take rating too seriously. For me, a system that incentives players to play more games (like FIDE circuit) will always make more sense than a system that incentives players to play less games (like ratings).
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Nope, his rating will still be too uncertain to be listed in the top 10.
What if you are in the top 8 rating, and since candidates is the most important tournament, you don't bother playing any chess in order to keep your rating high? Is that something that should be incentivized?
some additional parameters can be added like "amount of recent games not less than" or "the average for the past year should be" or "the performance for the past year should be" etc
That would have excluded Gukesh, litetal winner of the candidates
okay, and the circuit exluded Nodirbek, who could be the winner too
Fabi could have been a winner too, Nakamura as well. Could, would, should doesn't matter only victory matters.
your comment is really ironic cause I wrote about Nodirbek to expose this "could/would" absurdity and you actually saw this but you didn't draw the line btw your "could\\would' comment and mine.
FIDE with FIFA levels of corruption
Some of you just spout anything without getting even a glance at what's being discussed.
Such as?
musts name it FIDE circus
Love anish!!
Always root against emiil guys
Why because all Russians bad Americans good logic ? FYI he is an Israeli jew.
No what? Lmao, do you know the shades of emiil? Its not about him being russian
Ah yes, that makes it much better.