Candidates Catch-Up
Friday, April 1, 2022 at 11:07PM I had all sorts of technical difficulties with the blog in early February that did not quickly resolve themselves, and other matters took up a good deal of my time afterwards. So while it would be slightly ridiculous to try to catch up in any sort of detailed way on what has happened over the last two months or so, it is worth a quick summary of where things stand with this year's forthcoming Candidates tournament, scheduled for June 16 to July 5 of this year in Madrid, Spain.
When we left off, six of the eight slots had been taken:
1. Ian Nepomniachtchi, by virtue of being a finalist in the last world championship.
2. Teimour Radjabov, selected by FIDE as compensation for his missing out on the previous Candidates due to his concerns about COVID, concerns which proved fully justified.
3. Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the winner of the 2021 Chess World Cup.
4. Sergey Karjakin, the runner-up of the 2021 Chess World Cup.
5. Alireza Firouzja, the winner of the 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss.
6. Fabiano Caruana, the runner-up of the 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss.
Two spots remained, for the top two finishers of the FIDE Grand Prix. This was a series of three tournaments held from February 4 through April 4. 24 players qualified, and each would play in two of the three tournaments (set up so that each event would have 16 players). Alert readers will notice that it's not yet April 4. This is true, but although the third event is still ongoing the top two players have already clinched their spots:
7. Hikaru Nakamura, the winner of the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix, and
8. Richard Rapport, the runner-up of the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix.
As most if not all of you probably know by now, however, Sergey Karjakin has received a six-month suspension from FIDE for his inflammatory remarks in support of Putin's war on Ukraine, and is thus ineligible for the Candidates. This decision is being appealed, but unless it is overturned FIDE must choose another Candidate. I don't know if they considered selecting another player from the World Cup, but because of various aspects of its format that would be a complicated procedure, to put it mildly*.
What FIDE decided instead is to reinstate a criterion used for previous Candidates; namely, to invite the player with the highest rating on the May 2022 list, provided that he has played at least 30 games rated in the period from June of 2021 through this May. That player is almost certainly going to be Ding Liren, though this too has an element of farce to it. Ding had played a grand total of four, count 'em, four rated games from June '21 through (almost) the end of March. Once FIDE's decision came down, however, China hastily arranged an event against the Washington Generals three other Chinese GMs who have so far managed a total of two draws between them out of nine games. If, by some miracle, Ding doesn't get to a total of 30 games, or if his opponents somehow get on a hot streak and lower his rating by 30 points, Levon Aronian would be the qualifier. That's unlikely, but perhaps USCF and/or Rex Sinquefield can find a group of retired, or unambitious, or cognitively impaired American GMs who would be willing to participate in similar tournaments with Aronian. Depending on how patriotic Chinese and American players decide to be, someone might beat Magnus Carlsen to 2900.
Semi-jokes aside, then, and assuming Karjakin is out and Ding gets his games in, we'll have Nepo, Rajdabov, Duda, Ding, Firouzja, Caruana, Nakamura, and Rapport in the Candidates. And then the next controversy will be figuring out what happens if Carlsen decides he's not interested in playing the world championship match if Firouzja isn't the winner. But one controversy at a time...
*For one thing, the third place finisher was Magnus Carlsen, thanks to the monumentally stupid and unjust FIDE policy of allowing the world champion to play. It is difficult to understand the asininity of allowing the world champion to play in an event whose primary function is to select players for the Candidates, but that's a rant for another time. Another difficulty is that because it's a knockout event, is it really clear which of Karjakin's defeated opponents - assuming we select on that basis - is most deserving? The player he defeated in the semi-final was Vladimir Fedoseev, 1.5-.5, but is more deserving than his quarterfinal opponent, Sam Shankland, who lost in a rapid playoff by a 4-2 score? Or eighth-final opponent Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who only lost 3.5-2.5? I think problems like this are a good reason to only choose *one* qualifier from this event, period (not just in this special circumstance), and to NOT permit the world champion - or any other already-qualified Candidate - to participate.
Reader Comments (6)
The pandemic is the main reason why Ding Liren had not played more OTB games in the past year.
Given China's strict lockdown policies, it was much harder for Ding Liren to travel abroad for chess events.
Some people have blamed him for not relocating to Europe, but why should he be penalized for not leaving his homeland and family?
I believe that there should be more understanding of the conditions that Ding Liren has experienced.
Ding Liren and Wang Hao were the only players compelled to be quarantined before the start of the last Candidates tournament.
That seems to have contributed to Ding Liren's unusually poor start in that tournament.
When FIDE has compensated Radjabov for boycotting that tournament, why should it not offer something to Ding Liren?
Ding Liren has been one of the world's top players for a long time.
He's clearly strong enough to be a deserving Candidate.
[DM: I have nothing against Ding Liren, who is a great player whose chess I enjoy and who seems to be a decent fellow. And it's obviously not his fault that China chose the stringent anti-COVID policies they did. Further, I preferred having one or two players invited by rating to the semi-lottery of the FIDE Grand Swiss. But I don't like these farcical Potemkin "tournaments" set up for Ding at the last moment, especially since I have my doubts about how free his opponents are to play their best against him. Maybe there are no such pressures in China, but there certainly were in the USSR. So I wouldn't mind if Aronian found some GMs to play who are every bit as motivated to play well as Ding's opponents.
To put it another way: I don't believe that Ding is entitled to play in the 2022 Candidates because of his fine chess before 2021. Everyone else had to earn it. Yes, it was bad luck for Ding that he fell prey to his country's anti-COVID policies, though he did have the option of spending the year outside of China - a tough thing to do, but an option: playing in the Candidates is NOT a right. But other players had bad luck as well, like the players who were eliminated by Karjakin and Carlsen in the World Cup. Or had Aronian known in advance that there would be a ratings slot available, maybe he could have looked for events that would inflate his rating. We don't know that Ding would have maintained his rating had he been competing against his peers over the course of the last year - Caruana didn't, and excepting Carlsen (and now Firouzja, who is new to the 2800 club) none of the other players who have been rated over 2800 at some point in their careers were unable to maintain it, including Aronian, Mamedyarov, So, Anand, MVL, Nakamura, Grischuk, and Giri.
Post script: FIDE has had no trouble understanding this point when it comes to IM and GM norm events. When it comes to round-robin events designed exclusively for achieving norms, there must be players from two or three other federations (I think three, but I might be mistaken). That doesn't guarantee that there won't be collusion, but it lessens the likelihood to some degree. We don't have to assume dishonesty to recognize that incentives matter.]
Ding Liren's rated more than 200 points higher than every other player in the Hangzhou tournament.
(It's not like Botvinnik and Keres in 1948.) I have not noticed anyone throwing games to him.
Some people (not including you) like to believe that Chinese players can succeed only through cheating.
In the last Candidates' tournament, Ding Liren was defeated by Wang Hao (who clearly was not the favorite son).
Why did China's chess authorities not order Wang Hao to lose all his games to Ding Liren?
https://www.chess.com/news/view/ding-liren-world-number-two-candidates
"The Chinese Chess Association can hardly be blamed for supporting their top player. Other chess federations probably would
have done the same.
Ding actually reaching those 30 rated games in time can be seen as some kind of poetic justice. He missed out on the FIDE Grand Prix
due to visa issues and, also in 2021, he could not play much over-the-board chess, presumably because of travel restrictions as well.
And indeed, from a pure chess perspective, having a Candidates Tournament without the world's number-three player (now the
number-two player again!), who recently beat Carlsen in the Charity Cup's preliminaries, would be a shame.
Carlsen's second GM Peter Heine Nielsen felt that way as he tweeted the following, when Ding's visa issues became apparent:
"Ding Liren so obviously belongs in the candidates tournament. That he does not even get a chance to qualify, is saddening."
The world champion himself also feels that way, as he said in an interview three days ago: "I think he's clearly the best player who is not
in the Candidates at the moment—except for me, maybe—but whether that means that he deserves it, that's a lot harder to say, really.""
[DM: All well and good, but it ignores the arguments I made in my response to your last comment.]
From early 2020 onward, Chinese people (even if not coming directly from China) have routinely encountered strict travel restrictions,
which have been imposed by many other governments in addition to their own. Chinese students have been prevented from
attending universities abroad that had given them admission before the pandemic.
I don't know if a European country would have been ready to let Ding Liren stay there for one year or more during the pandemic.
I don't know if Ding Liren would have the financial resources to do so even if the host country had been willing.
If I recall correctly, Wang Hao traveled from outside China (where he had been staying) directly to the last Candidates' tournament.
But he was ordered into quarantine anyway because he's Chinese, whereas no non-Chinese were put into quarantine.
[DM: I doubt that Ding is/was so pressed for cash that he couldn't have done it, or that those officials in charge of chess wouldn't have subsidized it. But I don't know one way or another, though other Chinese players have lived outside of China for extended periods. (It didn't need to be for a year, though: he could have participated in the qualifying events that the other Candidates aspirants played in.)]
I concur that FIDE's methods of selecting the participants in the Candidates' tournament seem not consistently fair.
That said, I don't see why Ding Liren's participation would be a particular injustice.
Almost everyone, including Magnus Carlsen, believes that Ding Liren is strong enough to be a deserving participant.
It's true that the Chinese chess authorities have organized events for Ding Liren so that he can meet a minimum games played
requirement. I know of no evidence that his opponents have thrown their games to him. Even if he were playing against
only foreign opponents, it seems unlikely that Ding Liren would suddenly lose about 30 rating points, which would be needed for
Aronian to overtake him on the FIDE ratings list.
I don't recall top Chinese players (perhaps Wang Hao) living for long periods of time outside China while they were still
actively representing China in international chess. Zhang Zhong represented Singapore, not China, for many years.
As a Rhodes Scholar, Hou Yifan lived in the UK, but she then was not active in international chess.
Chinese have been widely blamed personally for allegedly being the primary sources of Covid-19 infection in the the world.
Since early 2020, Chinese visitors have been unwelcome in many countries in the world.
Would a government make an exception for Ding Liren because he's an important person in the world of chess?
How many governments would know or be impressed by the fact that Ding Liren's a top chess player?
[DM: In the U.S., we have plenty of Chinese here on student and other visas, and this was true during the Trump era as well as during the Obama and now the Biden administrations. But I don't think that what was required was Ding's taking residence in a European country or the U.S. (I was thinking of Wang Hao as a precedent, but maybe I'm misremembering), but taking a few extra weeks to comply with quarantine requirements. Is it unfortunate that he would have to do so? Sure. But pretty much the entire world was inconvenienced or worse by COVID; join the club.
There are two difference senses in which one might mean that Ding Liren is a "deserving participant". One sense is that he's a great player fully qualified in terms of his chess strength. The event would be less interesting without him, and he is one of the very few players (really just him, Caruana, and maybe Firouzja) with a non-trivial chance against Carlsen in a match. The second sense is that he earned his participation according to the rules of qualification for the event.
We and everyone else are in agreement about the first sense, but being deserving in this sense is not sufficient for being deserving in the second sense. The second sense requires going through what ought to be a fair qualification procedure. My contention here is that these artificial Chinese events are of at least questionable fairness: NOT because his opponents are explicitly throwing games, but because the incentive structure of such an event is so obviously inappropriate that FIDE has forbidden it since the days of Noah's flood when it comes to norm events. (That's why the number of titleholders from Russia and the former Soviet republics exploded when the USSR broke up. Until then, there were relatively few Soviet GMs and IMs because only the cream of the cream of the cream could play in events with foreign players to get their norms. [The only other way was to get into a Soviet Championship, which back then was only slightly easier than getting into the A group of Wijk aan Zee.])
Do you think that while norm aspirants and their federations shouldn't be trusted, players become incorruptible saints when it comes to qualifying for the Candidates? (Speaking of which: FIDE doesn't trust candidates, either. When there are multiple candidates from a single country, they must face off in the first rounds of each cycle, before one player's incentives become disproportionately greater than his opponent's.)
Penultimate point: Ding didn't have to lose 30 points, but 20. He has gained 12 points from this tournament, which may so far be the event of his life. He has scored 10.5/12, going 3.5/4 against his three opponents and achieving a 2916 TPR. For that matter, he didn't have to lose 20 points in an absolute sense, but only in a relative sense. If he lost 10 points and Aronian gained 10, that would have the same effect.
Last point: If you read accounts of chess in the USSR, there are endless stories of chicanery. Thrown games, pressure put on those who were out of favor, pressure put on those who were playing those who were in favor, pressure put on players to achieve for the sake of the "glory" of the Soviet Union, etc., were a commonplace. In some respects China is freer than the old USSR, and in other senses less free (ask the Uyghurs if you're not sure about this). I don't know how "hands-on" the CCP is when it comes to chess in China, but given the way it worked in the USSR I trust them less, not more, than I would a non-communist country - and I don't think that any country should be trusted in this way, given the points above.]
I know that the USA has many students from China. I would submit, however, that almost all of them arrived before the pandemic.
For the past two years, it has been extremely difficult for Chinese to get permission to move from China and live abroad.
That's not to say, of course, that non-Chinese have encountered no restrictions in international travel.
My point is that, during the pandemic, it has been far from easy for an ordinary Chinese to move from China and live abroad.
Would have it been easier for Ding Liren? I don't know. I do know that Chinese and other people who simply appear Chinese have
encountered enough additional racism (including violence) that even the mainstream US media has begun to concede its existence.
Many Chinese students in the USA are receiving advice from their families to be careful or consider returning to China
(where it's safer) as soon as practicable.
Comparisons between China and the USSR tend to be inaccurate or misleading at best. The societies are very different.
While China's ruled by a Communist Party, its economic system is far from even aiming to be socialist except perhaps in name.
With a few exceptions, Chinese citizens can travel to and live abroad in any country that will accept them.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have studied abroad in the West, whereas few Soviets were allowed to study in the West.
China's government does make an effort to censor the internet, but that can be bypassed by everyone with a VPN.
In general, people in China have more access than people in the USSR had to information from or about the outside world.
More relevantly, chess is much less important to the government and public of China than it was in the USSR.
The Soviet state supported chess on a scale far beyond that in China.
The top Chinese players are not paid employees of the state but independent contractors, who are free to choose which chess
events to enter. Wang Yue and Li Chao apparently retired 'prematurely' from playing in order to focus upon coaching, which
seems to be a more stable source of income. Would the Soviet chess authorities have accepted the equivalent of a Hou Yifan
stepping away in her prime from chess in order to study in the West?
My point is that the Chinese in general simply don't care nearly as much about a Chinese player becoming world champion
as the Soviets cared about a Soviet player becoming or remaining world champion. I can recall someone (likely a Soviet GM) saying
that Spassky's loss to Fischer in 1972 meant that many ordinary Soviet people felt that something was wrong with their culture.
I cannot imagine Chinese people feeling that way if a Chinese player were to become world champion and then lose the title.
So I don't believe that there's the same amount of pressure in China as there was in the USSR to produce chess champions at all costs.
Late addition - I kept checking whether the blog returns and missed the moment:
"FIDE decided instead is to reinstate a criterion used for previous Candidates" seems a bit misleading - it wasn't done after Karjakin was disqualified, but had always been part of the regulations. This clause was probably meant if a player declines his candidates spot after all qualifying events, as was the case for Radjabov in the previous cycle (irrelevant whether his reason is considered valid). Then Vachier-Lagrave benefitted - officially based on rating while he had also been third in the GP series. And much earlier, there had been rumors and demands that Anand would or should refrain from playing the candidates after losing his first match against Carlsen.
IF FIDE had anticipated the turn of events (could they?), they could have included further clauses than "minimum 30 rated games" such as opponents from different federations or minimum level of average opposition. Easy to say so in hindsight. Or make it a third spot from the GP series. But rule changes during the cycle are always problematic, and should have been announced before the Berlin event, not afterwards (Wesley So would benefit).
If Ding Liren didn't get this chance (he now plays a match against Wei Yi and has a third event lined up, so he will reach 30 games), the alternative would also be rather funny: It would have been - situation before the Berlin Grand Prix - a race between Aronian, So, Mamedyarov and Giri. At this stage I thought that the Berlin GP is also some kind of rating qualifier. This wouldn't have been bad, but there would have been another twist: Aronian, Giri and Mamedyarov (but not So) could have played in the German Bundesliga - underway as I type. Mamedyarov does actually play and got Santos Latasa (2648) and Maghsoodloo (2701), Aronian and Giri would have gotten the opponents of Vachier-Lagrave and Adams, all rated ~2500 - unclear what constitutes a random advantage, disadvantage for So that he doesn't play in the German Bundesliga.
Strange times (pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict) have strange consequences. For me the situation now is (borderline) OK as Ding merely needs to keep his rating with some leeway - it would be a different story if he needed to improve his rating.
P.S.: Also a mystery that Yu Yangyi could and did play all qualifying events (World Cup and Grand Swiss and GP series) while Ding Liren played none of them.
[DM: Excellent points.]