Chess

I played a perfect game, in bullet!

https://lichess.org/xwdCHgJz

#chess

World no. 1 Magnus Carlsen confessed he was "completely crushed" by 23-year-old Kazakh GM Alisher Suleymenov, but afterward attacked a lack of anti-cheating measures at the venue.

I've personally had a lot of fun playing spell chess and analyzing different openings. There are so many interesting traps and shenanigans in this variant, and I'm curious what others think about it. Have you tried it? Do you think it's fun? Is there a particular opening you like to play?

Next week will be the World Rapid Team Championchip in Düsseldorf, Germany. Anyone visiting?

https://worldrapidteams2023.fide.com

#chess

International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.

Recap of the games of Hikaru Nakamura, Magnus Carlsen, Gukesh D, Fabiano Caruana and Pragg

The 2023 FIDE World Cup is a 206-player knockout taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan from July 30 to August 24. The top 3 players qualify for the 2024 Candidates Tournament.

Format

Each match consists of two classical games of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with increment of 30 seconds per move. No draw offers are allowed until after move 30.

In case of a tie, a play-off is played the third day, consisting in two 25+10 rapid games, then two 10+10 games and then two 5+3 games. If still tied, individual 3+2 games until a player wins.

Players

206 players are participating in the open section, and 103 in the Women's section. The top 50 are seeded directly to round 2.

The list of players includes Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Ju Wenjun and many others.

Schedule

• Round 1: July 30-August 1
• Round 2: August 2-August 4
• Round 3: August 5-August 7
• Round 4: August 9-August 11
• Round 5: August 12-August 14
• Round 6: August 15-August 17
• Round 7: August 19-August 21
• Final & 3rd place match: August 22-August 24

Links

• Official site
• chess24 - Open Section
• chess24 - Women's Section
• lichess - Open Section
• lichess - Women's Section
• chess.com - Open Section
• chess.com - Women's Section
• FIDE YouTube channel
• FIDE Twitch channel
• chess24 Twitch channel
• chess24 YouTube channel
• Interactive bracket

🏆 The inaugural FIDE World Rapid Team Championship✔ World's top chess stars✔ Unique team composition format✔ 12 rounds of rapid chess📍Dusseldorf, Germany25...

Stockfish is a strong and open source chess engine.

Format

This tournament is a double round-robin between 6 teams of six players each, and the two best teams qualify to final phase. Each team is composed by one "icon" on board 1, two male players on boards 2 and 3, two female players on boards 4 and 5, and one junior on board 6.

Scoring

Each game is scored according to:

• Win with black: 4 Game Points (GPs)
• Win with white: 3 GPs
• Draw: 1 GP
• Loss: 0 GPs

The match is scored according to:

• Team that scores most GPs: 3 Match Points (MPs)
• Team that scores the same as rivals: 1 MPs
• Team that scores fewer: 0 MPs

After the double round-robin ends, the two teams with most MPs qualify to the final. The final is a best of two match, with a blitz game as tiebreaker.

Time Controls

Rapid 15+10. Players cannot agree to a draw before 30 moves each.

Teams

Triveni Continental Kings (Avg Elo: 2613)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/TCK-3.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/triveni-continental-1.jpg

1. GM Levon Aronian (USA, 2743)
2. GM Yangyi Yu (China, 2734)
3. GM Yi Wei (China, 2716)
4. GM Kateryna Lagno (Russia, 2494)
5. GM Nana Dzagnidze (Georgia, 2543)
6. GM Jonas Buhl Bjerre (Denmark, 2535)

Chingari Gulf Titans (Avg Elo: 2628)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/themes/twenty-twenty-one-child/assets/images/CGT.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/chingari-gulf-1.jpg

1. GM Jan-Krzystof Duda (Poland, 2794)
2. GM Shahriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan, 2694)
3. GM Daniil Dubov (Russia, 2727)
4. GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (FIDE, 2524)
5. IM Polina Shuvalova (Russia, 2357)
6. GM Sarin Nihal (India, 2672)

SG Alpine Warriors (Avg Elo: 2589)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SG-2.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/alpine-warriors-1-1.jpg

1. GM Magnus Carlsen (Norway, 2829)
2. GM Gukesh D (India, 2629)
3. GM Arjun Erigasi (India, 2714)
4. GM Irina Krush (USA, 2400)
5. GM Elisabeth Paehtz (Germany, 2373)
6. GM Praggnanandhaa R (India, 2587)

Balan Alaskan Knights (Avg Elo: 2600)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/themes/twenty-twenty-one-child/assets/images/BAK.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/balan-alaskan-2.jpg

1. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia, 2760)
2. GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan, 2703)
3. GM Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan, 2694)
4. GM Zhongyi Tan (China, 2517)
5. GM Nino Batsiashvili (Georgia, 2358)
6. Raunak Sadhwani (India, 2567)

Ganges Grandmasters (Avg Elo: 2639)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/themes/twenty-twenty-one-child/assets/images/GG.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/grandmaster-1.jpg

1. GM Viswanathan Anand (India, 2713)
2. GM Richard Rapport (Romania, 2761)
3. GM Leinier Domínguez Pérez (USA, 2706)
4. GM Yifan Hou (China, 2540)
5. GM Bela Khotenashvili (Georgia, 2414)
6. Andrey Esipenko (FIDE, 2682)

UpGrad Mumba Masters (Avg Elo: 2611)

https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MM-1-1.jpg https://globalchessleague.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/mumba-master-1.jpg

1. GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France, 2767)
2. GM Alexander Grischuk (Russia, 2716)
3. GM Santosh Gujrathi Vidit (India, 2665)
4. GM Humpy Koneru (India, 2469)
5. GM Dronavalli Harika (India, 2450)
6. GM Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan, 2596)

Today's Schedule

Match 17

27th June 2023, 13:30 UTC

Chingari Gulf Titans vs Ganges Grandmasters

Match 18

27th June 2023, 14:50 UTC

UpGrad Mumba Masters vs. Triveni Continental Kings

Standings

Team	MPs	GPs	W	L	D
Ganges Grandmasters	12	52	4	1	0
SG Alpine Warriors	12	51	4	2	0
UpGrad Mumba Masters	7	37	2	2	1
Balan Alaskan Knights	6	48	2	4	0
Triveni Continental Kings	6	34	2	3	0
Chingari Gulf Titans	4	38	1	3	1

Media

• Official site
• YouTube Live Stream
• Lichess
• Chess24
• chess.com
• chess-results.com

title

This is an analysis I did some time ago comparing FIDE ratings to lichess ratings. The biggest part of the work was finding a reliable way to get both ratings for the same set of players. A lot of players on lichess post their FIDE ratings, but unfortunately, some players will post joke ratings, or just outright lie.

In order to avoid "liar's bias" in the self-reported FIDE ratings, I used two different methods to independently look up FIDE ratings directly from FIDE. In the first method, I took advantage of the fact that many lichess users post their FIDE ID numbers to their lichess profiles, enabling direct lookup of their ratings. In the second method, I used lichess profile data to create a "key" consisting of name, title, and country. In cases where the key is unique, and is present in both the lichess and FIDE data sets, I can then look up the FIDE rating for that user. Finally, to ensure I have the correct player, I only keep the data point if the player's self-reported FIDE rating matches the one I looked up.

Out of 628,200 lichess profiles, I was able to harvest 5957 FIDE ratings. This is plenty of data for looking at the overall correlation between the two ratings.

It turns out, there is a large spread present in the ratings data. In other words, if you know someone's rating in one system, your estimate of their rating in the other system will be very imprecise. To give people a better feel for how (un)reliable the estimates are, each graph here shows scatter plots of FIDE standard ratings versus the various ratings for different lichess time controls. The red line in each plot is a robust linear regression of the data, while the blue lines show quantile regressions for the 97.5, 50 and 2.5 percentiles. In other words, 95% of players fall between the two dotted blue lines. For example, about 95% of players with a lichess blitz rating of 2500 will have a FIDE standard rating between about 2000 to 2500, so if you have a blitz rating of 2500, you could roughly estimate your FIDE as 2250 +- 250. Note that even though this is about the tightest correlation shown, the precision isn't great. Apparently people just vary a lot. Maybe it has something to do with skill playing online not being quite the same as playing in person.

One rather unexpected thing that stands out in the data, is that the correlation is worst at the fastest and slowest time controls. Since most lichess time controls average less than 25 minutes per game, compared to FIDE's typical 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, I was surprised to see that blitz has the tightest correlation.

Here are the linear regression coefficients, since I'm sure someone will ask for them (x indicates the slope):

[1] "ultraBullet"
Coefficients:
(Intercept)            x  
   1265.331        0.473

[1] "bullet"
Coefficients:
(Intercept)            x  
   722.0768       0.6261

[1] "blitz"
Coefficients:
(Intercept)            x  
    41.4256       0.9074

[1] "rapid"
Coefficients:
(Intercept)            x  
   309.9946       0.7962

[1] "classical"
Coefficients:
(Intercept)            x  
  1161.4994       0.4038

Thirty-six grandmasters — with a notable number of world champions among them — will compete in a mixed-gender team environment. Six teams will feature in the first season of the GCL.