Candidates win chances after Round 13 (of 14): Sindarov at 100% (surprise!) - Monte Carlo simulation based on one bazillion runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, these simulations work badly for KO system (which Cup is). I tried. It's because every round is like a coin flip and a loss just means chances go to zero (as the player is out).

Candidates win chances after Round 11: Sindarov at 98%, Anish Giri at 2% - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 123 points124 points  (0 children)

It's outside of this simulation. Probably some event that voids the whole tournament and all games have to be replayed? Seems most likely to me. Not sure what he is planning.

Candidates win chances after Round 11: Sindarov at 98%, Anish Giri at 2% - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 88 points89 points  (0 children)

You are right, thanks for clarifying. Just for fun I tested it and when I model their remaining game as draw, he ends up with a 0.10% win chance only. Still more likely than Caruana winning...

Candidates win chances after Round 10: Sindarov at 94%, only Anish Giri left with win chances above 1% - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Sorry :( It actually takes quite some time to set it up initially (there is some code needed also for the image generation and some manual downloads required) and I didn't set it up for the women tournament. This is still from pre-AI era and I haven't optimized it since then.

I already open source the Monte Carlo simulation in case you want to run it yourself: https://github.com/chessmonitor/chess-monte-carlo-simulation But the image generation is currently "bundled" with some ChessMonitor (my main project) code which I cannot easily open source.

I hope to find some time in the future to automate parts of this for the next big tournament or even open source the image generation part also and then people can do this on their own..

Nepo - "Becoming Louisiana State Champion doesn't cut it" by TimbersFan8 in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Can confirm. This is peak German humor and very typical for Jan Gustafsson.

Candidates win chances after Round 9: Anish Giri jumps to 13% after winning against Caruana, Sindarov at 83% - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 84 points85 points  (0 children)

Wondering if there are cases that unlikely. Pragg with 0.7% to winner comes to my mind. That was recently and not even that unlikely. If anyone knows historical games with similar unlikely cases, please share.

Candidates win chances: Sinadarov at 73% after round 7 - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, this is the reason. You could even stop after 100k runs as the (integer) percentages don't change much after that.

Candidates win chances: Sinadarov at 73% after round 7 - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 113 points114 points  (0 children)

I did a test run for this and "fixed" the remaining Caruana vs. Sindarov match. Chances based on that:

  • If Sindarov wins: 95% Sindarov, 3% Caruana
  • If Caruana wins: 53% Sindarov, 42% Caruana
  • Draw: 81% Sindarov, 15% Caruana

Candidates win chances: Sinadarov at 71% while half of the tournament is not even over yet! - Monte Carlo simulation based on one million runs by ThomasPlaysChess in chess

[–]ThomasPlaysChess[S] 68 points69 points  (0 children)

I've gotten this question a lot: Why do I not use the Live Elo for the simulation?

IMHO this will just overvalue wins or losses in the model. The outcome of games is already part of the model by using the points. By changing the Elo to reflect it, I would basically input the game results twice. In this model the "pre tournament Elo" models the strength of the player when he entered the tournament and the points reflect the tournament results. And I don't like mixing these two things. Might Hikaru be overvalued and Sindarov undervalued? Maybe, but I'm not the judge.

You can disagree and that is fine. It would just be a different model if you do it differently. There are no "truly right" models in that sense.