This makes little sense no? With 200 ELO diff Hans should beat Magnus ~1/4 games.
Btw. the 24% chance of "winning" against a 200 Elo higher rated opponent refers to "winning a point" - it includes draws as well.
Restated, are sports specific ELO scores real? Alternatively phrased, does an X ELO score in one competitive endeavor represent the same relative strength as the same ELO in another subject?
I'm not sure about your Elo question but I think a 200 points difference should meant the same thing regardless of sport.
Yes and No.
Yes but in the long term. ELO is a self-fulfilling prophecy so if your ELO states you should win say 30% of the games vs a different ELO but you win 50% your ELO rises until you have an ELO that states you should win 50% of the games vs that ELO (at which point you lose the same amount of points in a loss as your wins so it stops rising. Previously you gained more points for a win than a loss so you gradually increased in rating).
No because not every sport starts ELO at the same baseline and not every sport league (i.e. Chess website) starts the base ELO at the same (i.e. Lichess starts everybody with 1500, Chess.com starts everybody with 1000). It's also a relative metrics amoungst active players (who indirectly/directly play each other) so if a GM 500 years ago reached an ELO of 2100 that doesn't mean they're the same strength of a current player with an ELO of 2100.
It's not just where they start - they actually use different rating systems, and neither of them is the actual Elo rating system. Chess.com uses Glicko and Lichess uses Glicko-2. This is also a big part of what makes comparing players from different player pools a bit meaningless.
What I think OP is asking is "If you used the same rating system in two different sports, would a 200 point difference mean the same thing?", for which I think the answer is "yes".
Well, I agree with your points but I'm not sure that is what OP is trying to do.
There is also the reverse side of the coin that top players peak at a rating and then decline as they age. Not saying Magnus is, but it is not a possibility that can be ruled out.
The reason a lot of older players are overrated is because they stop playing as often and their rating doesn’t catch up to their decline. Magnus plays a ton so that isn’t a concern.
For elite younger players, no matter how much they play, they are getting better so quickly that the rating can’t catch up.
Younger players also get better much much faster than older players decline. It might take a decade for a GM past their prime to drop 100 ELO, whereas a young player can easily add 100 ELO in a year on their way to super GM status.
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeJrItfQqw
I don't get it. HN seems to be always on the skeptical side when accusing anyone, here we're seeing people pile up on Hans without any evidence whatsoever.
The fact of the matter is, no one knows why Magnus quit.
It was, but for reasons having nothing to do with his analysis of the game. Stronger players like Hikaru have dismantled Hans' last two interviews pretty convincingly[1]. Those interviews and his history of being banned from chess.com seem to be driving the current speculation more than Hans' actual play.
The interview after Magnus was great because Hans was saying things like "He's just so demoralized because he's losing to an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me." People were excited to have a "Conor McGregor of chess", so to speak. That's it.
1. See short clips at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETzdxK7QUmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTs-eFgLqc for example.
All I suggest is to stop this speculation, let's wait for evidence and if it is true, then fuck Hans. But at this point, I am just seeing a giant mob coming after him including on HN which is kind of appalling.
We need to be better including Hikaru Nakamura, he seems to be also doing it for the views. Hikaru's accusation or speculations have also been mocked on Twitter.
This just got posted by Gotham, absolutely level headed and facts based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUmS_MJceU
Who by? Other 2750+ players? If not, then who cares? Hikaru's analysis of the chess is correct. You can analyze the positions with an engine to confirm. I checked, since they had the engine off after the Alireza game.
For example Hans (with white) said: "I did not believe in this position for black. I just don't see any universe where this is holdable. ... Instinctively I'm like OK, what is this? There's just no way. There's zero chance." But Hikaru saw immediately that this was wrong and black was actually winning. Even Alejandro wasn't having it. Sure enough, Stockfish has black at better than +3.
This kind of thing happens over and over in the last two interviews. Hans' take on a position is wrong, or he rattles off a line that just loses. It's not proof of cheating, it's just, to go back to squidbeak's post, proof that he isn't "able to speak accurately and in depth in his post game interviews".
You need real evidence of cheating. What concerns me is that we won't know the truth as GothamChess said. I am onboard with condemning Hans in the strongest terms if he was caught cheating in OTB game, this just seems like the Boston Bombers vigilante mob doing pscyhoanalysis on reddit and twitter. Terrible.
Hans' interviews have been off. This isn't speculation. The positions are right there in the interviews, analyze them and see. Hans says zig and the analysis shows zag.
That's it. That's the whole conversation. Someone said the interviews were bad, you disagreed citing Levy and King, I explained what they (and I!) liked about the interviews and pointed out that the actual chess analysis was, in fact, bad.
Anyway, one small but important logical issue. When you say "the guy is just a few points below 2700", that's begging the question. Other people are arguing, in effect, that "Niemann's play can't be that good, his analysis is too bad", and your counter is "Niemann's analysis can't be that bad, his play is too good".
1. Example I gave elsewhere, now timestamped: https://youtu.be/ETzdxK7QUmg?t=145. Black is better than +3 here and Hans is saying it's completely lost.
Hikaru could have followed the game with an automatic engine evaluation, that would make it 'slightly' easier for him to '~immediately' evaluate the position with better precision.
You are comparing a tired guy answering the questions on the spot to a person who could have had all the computer help in the world (and they do when they are following live matches).
Like compare hans to alireza in their interviews. Hans clearly just has a worse understanding of the position he chose to go into.
I mean to me it feels less like cheating and more like just absolutely wild prep, hans played like a 3200 up to the midgame and then couldn't convert a winning position, but it's suspicious to have such completely insane prep, especially without clear compensation
The interviewer (Alejandro Ramirez, also a GM) asks Hans what happens if black takes the knight on c4, which didn't happen in the game but is the engine's best move. Hans says Bh6, starts down one line with g6, Bg5 (good moves) but backtracks the latter and blunders with f4, and says "At this point my pieces are literally perfect, his pieces are terrible" (Hans is -2). The position in the video is two moves later. By then white is completely lost, but Hans says black has no chance.
As for his 'blundering' in a live Q&A talk, that's not indicative at all, I have posted my reasoning in a sibling comment.
Specifically on this, I agree with you. Who knows if he's just nervous at giving interviews.
There are two answers to this question. One is obvious and is the subject of the article we're all responding to: Cheating. Some people think he's cheating.
The other is that nobody actually thinks Hans is terrible. Even if he cheated he's still at least a 2500-level player and perfectly capable of taking the odd game off of super GMs. Being very good and cheating aren't mutually exclusive possibilities.
> that's not indicative at all
The word you want is conclusive. The interviews are certainly indicative, but they're very far from conclusive.
No. The word I want is indicative, as in "Serving to indicate; Pointing out; bringing to notice; giving intimation or knowledge of something not visible or obvious".
Giving "imprecise" analysis at the Q&A session does not mean anything at all, and of course it can't be used as an evidence of any kind that a cheating took place.
I'm aware of an Indian player, Arjun Erigaisi [1], who made headlines for quickly climbing from 2600 to 2700+ over the last year (18-19 years of age), but he was a grandmaster before he turned 15, whereas Hans achieved everything (including the grandmaster title), in the past 2 years.
I don't see a cheater, I see someone who's been grinding for a while and finally popped off. Dunno if he can keep it up though, might be one of those miracle performances that he never recovers from (ex. Linsanity). He comes across as arrogant and a little affected (the hand flourishes, stylistic pauses), but I like him a lot better than Hikaru. Hoping he continues to see success and smooths out his interview performance over time.
If anything, I'm suspicious it's was a throw from Magnus, or at least subconsciously choosing when to relinquish the throne. This is the guy you want to see in the spotlight. He's interesting, confident, and puts his heart into the game.
Hans, playing back, crushed Magnus in their first game. Then afterwards when an interviewer tried to interview him about the game he just said "The chess speaks for itself" and walked away.
A lot of commentators interpreted that as a bit of trash talk about Magnus, who convincingly won the remaining 3 games.
If Hans were to score 1 point off Magnus in a 4 game match it would be far more likely to be be by drawing twice than by winning once.