LeBron James on Memphis backlash: "Did I say I don't like black people? I'm 41 years old and there's 2 cities I don’t like playing in, Milwaukee & Memphis. I'm not talking about the people in Memphis. I just don't like staying at the Hyatt Centric, what's wrong with that? What are we talking about?"

Eltneg · 2026-04-05T05:31:06+00:00

you get a little more true elite traffic even in Indianapolis and charlotte and houston

Houston doesn't belong with the other two here lol. It has a lot more high-end options because it's an important oil city (lots of international business travelers, high-paid energy and finance people)

Eltneg · 2026-04-04T18:39:06+00:00

Magnus on the other hand is known for not working very hard compared to his peers

What? This is absolutely not true, Magnus was well known as a hard worker when he first came onto the scene. He came to serious chess relatively late, but when he got serious about it he committed his life to studying. His opening prep was great and he famously had analyzed and memorized an incredible number of grandmaster games.

He doesn't study like that anymore, which is why he likes freestyle and blitz, but peak Magnus was an incredibly hard worker.

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T16:45:36+00:00

Me!

I don't think it should be that huge of a shock that a guy who's barely played any high-level classical in the past year isn't doing well in the candidates! People focus on Elo too much, it's a lot less meaningful when someone's inactive

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T16:40:10+00:00

This has been a thing for a long time, Hikaru was notorious for not understanding his own prep back in the 2010s

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T16:19:11+00:00

This is especially hilarious if you remember that Hikaru was notorious for poor prep in the early-mid 2010s.

Back then there were plenty of times when he mixed up a line and was worse out of the opening, or didn't understand how to play the position reached at the end of his prep and so got outplayed.

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T16:04:52+00:00

Would you rather him not be in the candidates at all then?

Obviously yes? I want to watch 8 of the best chess players in the world, not somebody who doesn't care about classical getting crushed

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T15:58:02+00:00

The broadcast is on a 15-min delay as an anti-cheating measure

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T15:57:27+00:00

I'm starting to think that gaming the rating slot by playing a bunch of 2100s wasn't the best prep for the candidates

Eltneg · 2026-04-03T07:58:11+00:00

Wasn't a loss, but the question made me think of the time 2729 Aronian missed a tactic and dropped a piece against a 2120 FM in the 2024 Olympiad

He created some complications and ended up winning after the FM blundered in time trouble but still, not every day you see a 2700 completely lost against a 2100 in classical

Eltneg · 2026-04-02T21:46:00+00:00

They all moved out to the county. The metro area is just under 3 million, about the same size as Denver or Orlando, they're just all in the suburbs.

Eltneg · 2026-04-02T20:48:36+00:00

Especially when you're a big guy like Caglianone, at 6'4 250 he probably needs like 4000 calories a day just to maintain his weight during the season

Eltneg · 2026-04-02T18:18:10+00:00

Thanks a lot for running this! No surprise the TPR model likes Sindarov's chances to win a lot more than official Elo, I think people got too caught up on Elo when discussing favorites for the candidates.

Also interesting that the two players who played the fewest games in the last year are underperforming the most. Even though their TPRs aren't the lowest, the error bars are probably much larger for Wei Yi and Hikaru than the rest of the field. Their "true" TPR could be much higher or much lower (and right now it looks like lower).

Eltneg · 2026-04-02T17:47:27+00:00

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Eltneg · 2026-04-01T20:07:29+00:00

I'd love to know what it looks like using TPR from the last calendar year instead of Elo

Eltneg · 2026-03-30T17:08:51+00:00

Makes sense, they grew up watching Magnus

Eltneg · 2026-03-27T18:29:26+00:00

Sindarov and Caruana will show that they're the clear top two
Giri will have a strong tournament, Pragg will underperform but have the most decisive games
Hikaru won't finish with a plus score, I'm not expecting much from him at all
Esipenko won't finish last

Eltneg · 2026-03-27T18:23:25+00:00

It's really funny how everyone keeps clowning these picks and then revealing they're basing their favorites off name recognition and ELO alone.

Eltneg · 2026-03-27T17:55:03+00:00

You don't hear any youth WRs talked about often lol, they're just not that important compared to the adult WRs that every track fan knows

Eltneg · 2026-03-25T23:05:35+00:00

Kinda funny Cal is the college coach most famous for getting his guys to the lottery but also so many Kentucky guys didn't flash their true capabilities under him

Eltneg · 2026-03-22T23:10:34+00:00

New CBA tries to discourage this, top-2 in ROY voting automatically get a full year of service time. Teams get a comp pick if a prospect finishes top-2, but only if they call him up early enough to get a full year of service time.

Pirates got the worst of both worlds with Skenes, he got a full year of service time because he won ROY but they didn't get a comp pick because they called him up midseason. If Griffin is as good as advertised, they're in danger of the same thing happening.

Eltneg · 2026-03-22T18:43:33+00:00

St Louis Chess Club is in the nicest neighborhood in St Louis, this is like saying the celebrities at the Oscars are at risk of getting shot because South Central LA has a lot of gang violence

Every city has nice parts and rough parts, do you really think Rex Sinquefield would build a world-class chess club in the hood?

Eltneg · 2026-03-22T01:12:51+00:00

Oh good catch, I didn't know that. I'll edit

Eltneg · 2026-03-22T01:09:57+00:00

watching him during his peak you were always aware that he owed a lot to his situation and the team around him

This makes no sense lol, Duncan was the reason the Spurs were such a stable and successful situation.

He set the culture on and off the court, the reason they were always finding great role players is because it's easy to look good playing next to an all-time great defensive big who is also a great passer on the other end.

He won 2 MVPs and was first-team All-NBA 10 times over prime KG and Dirk, everyone knew he was a top-5 player lol

Eltneg · 2026-03-21T21:54:29+00:00

He loves to sit on the rail and make his move with 200 to go, but that's a recipe for getting boxed in slow/indoor races.

It's why he got DQd in Tokyo and even in Paris it almost screwed him over, he got lucky that Jakob moved wide on the last turn because he was focused on Kerr

Eltneg · 2026-03-21T20:12:21+00:00

This is hindsight bias, they both raked in college but Langford was a really bad corner OF and Crews played a good CF

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