London Chess Classic: Winners and Losers in the Drawing of Lots
As was noted in the comments to the post on the pairings, not everyone made out equally. The big loser in the pairings - at least on paper - is Nakamura. He gets Black against the top three, and as if to rub it in he gets them in the first four rounds: Black vs. Anand in round 1, Black vs. Kramnik in round 2, and after White against Howell he gets Black against Carlsen in round 4. Yikes. ("Thank you sir, may I have another?" from "Animal House" comes to mind.) Of course, if he makes it through those rounds with a plus score, he's in like Flynn the rest of the way.
Kramnik gets black four times in the event, but has White against Nakamura and his "customer" Carlsen to help ease the pain before facing Anand with Black in the last round. Carlsen gets White against Nakamura but Black against the champ and the ex-champ, while the big winner in all of this is Anand, the world champion, who gets White against all three of his main rivals (by rating). If he's in good form and manages to get anything with his white prep, he really should win the event with those pairings.
Reader Comments (4)
In my opinion it is very unfortunate to have such a drawing of lots. I think only a double-round-robin can give equal chances to every player. Top class chess needs equal chances for everyone. But nevertheless I am looking forward to this tournament. I would like to see four German player in a tournament like Dortmund for example. (Because i am german and I think german players are underrated). May the best man win.
A year or so ago, Kasparov mentioned that it is better to have black against the top half and white against the bottom half because basic tournament strategy is to win against the bottom and hold against the top. Since it is easier to draw against the top with black than to win against the bottom with black, Nakamura's lot is pretty good.
To test Kasparov's hypothesis, I performed logistic regressions on a large database of GM games with long time controls to estimate the probability of winning, losing, or drawing as white and as black as a function of rating. With Nakamura's lot, his expected score 3.65. However, if the colors were reversed for all his games except still had black for McShane, the expected score drops to 3.59. It's not a huge difference, but it does confirm Kasparov's idea. That being said, although he largely has the right colors against the right opponents, he does have an extra black.
The same holds for Anand's lot. As it stands, he plays white against the top and black against the bottom. His expected score is 4.23. Reversing the colors of the top and bottom (while keeping him on white against McShane) increases his expected score to 4.35. So Anand has the wrong colors against the top, but he does have an extra white to compensate.
According to some brief potted interviews with the younger players in today's Times, Carlsen says his main rival is... Kramnik. Not Anand, it seems.
I was thinking the same thing as Uff Da. Of course he would have better chances against the top 3 with white instead of black, but there's also a very good chance he would not be able to win these games with white, thus "wasting" the white pieces. If he can hold as black in those 3 games he will have great chances beating the bottom half of the field with white.