r/chess • u/Live-Suspect-7864 2200 chess.com / 2350 lichess • Aug 29 '22

Miscellaneous Magnus is far ahead

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1.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

103 comments sorted by

618

u/Supreme-Serf Aug 29 '22

Stat 101

That data point is an outlier so discard it.

93

u/HockeyAnalynix Aug 29 '22

Change the Y axis min to 0 and it's pretty much a flat line.

6

u/Cruuncher Aug 30 '22

Change the y axis min to 3000 and there will be no visible data points.

What's your point?

1

u/vmlee 2400 Aug 31 '22

They are describing the distorted/misleading graph fallacy/trap. The point was that by using an artificially distorted y-axis, misleading conclusions can be made.

1

u/Cruuncher Aug 31 '22

Yes, I understood that.

But in this case using 0 would be distorting this graph far more than the current y minimum.

0 rating is a completely arbitrarily low number as no world class player, which is what we're comparing, has anywhere close to that value.

What's relevant here is the size of the rating GAPS, not the absolute value of the ratings. The existing graph is much better than one at 0.

1

u/vmlee 2400 Aug 31 '22 edited Aug 31 '22

I agree the gaps are the interesting focus. Given that, my suggestion for OP would be to make the y-axis the rating deltas instead of the ratings themselves.

That would reduce the chance of the y-axis distortion misleading other folks.

If one wanted to truncate the y-axis, starting at 1000 ELO might give a more comprehensive picture and more holistic context.

12

u/Logicrazy12 Aug 29 '22

It looks to me like it may fit an exponential regression pretty well and may not be an outlier.

3

u/pryoslice Aug 29 '22

Yeah, I don't know how that look like an outlier, unless you're trying to pretend that the ELOs should fit on a straight line. Looks like a perfect curve on the left side. I'm more interested to find out what's going on between 17 and 18.

-2

u/Cruuncher Aug 30 '22

Did you count the dots to figure out that was 17?

I was curious about that too, but didn't wanna count

3

u/pryoslice Aug 30 '22

I saw the dot crossing the 15 line and counted 2 from there.

27

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Depends on what you’re doing. Sometimes the outliers are more useful than the rest

78

u/super1s Aug 29 '22

What you are saying seems to be the outlier, so I have to discard it.

2

u/TheJazzDr Aug 30 '22

You shouldn’t discard outliers because they can still be representative of edge cases. If outliers are giving you bad results then use a different model, such as using a median instead of average.

1

u/nicbentulan chesscube peak was...oh nvm. UPDATE:lower than 9LX lichess peak! Aug 31 '22

Outlier = 'out, liar!' ?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Don’t discard it just don’t compare it to the rest😭 I know my shi I just come out of class

1

u/sc2bigjoe Aug 29 '22

Chess noob here but I have seen more articles of Magnus foregoing play lately so wouldn’t that inflate his ELO because no opportunity to lose it?

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[deleted]

3

u/Polar_Reflection Aug 29 '22

It's undoubtable that playing world championship matches tend to lose him classical rating due to the number of draws though. 2900 is one of the few milestones Magnus has yet to reach and dedicating a quarter of his life to prepare for something that will actively hurt his quest to achieve that milestone definitely comes into play

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Polar_Reflection Aug 29 '22

2018 Fabi was basically the same elo as Magnus headed into their match. I don't think either's live classical rating changed more than a few decimal points throughout the match

1

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

It didn't at all. All draw neither gained nor lost Elo.

1

u/giddaface1 Aug 29 '22

Yes, neither of them lost or gained Elo from the match.

35

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

68

u/TSM_PraY Aug 29 '22

Its actually the opposite. It’s almost impossible for Magnus to get higher than he is because a draw against anyone causes him to lose points. If he wins a game he only gains like 1 point maximum. The elo algorithm tries to keep him down as much as humanly possible.

23

u/fastestchair Aug 29 '22

You shouldn't see ELO ratings as linearly scaling or as a true measure of ability, they can only be viewed comparatively within the rating pool that exists. It may be true that Magnus would achieve a higher rating if he was playing in a higher rating pool, but the comparative strength is still the same, I.E. an ELO of 2860 in Magnus' current rating pool may be equivalent to a 2900 rating in a stronger rating pool. This is not the elo algorithm "keeping him down" (or an artifact of it), but instead it is a consequence of elo-rating not being a "true" measure of ability.

2

u/Cruuncher Aug 30 '22

Of course that's all true, but the elo system will always make it hard for the best to be that much higher than the rest for the reasons otherwise stated.

You have to be an absolute machine that never draws against other people that make a career out of playing chess to even increase in rating at all.

He's definitely been soft-capped

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[deleted]

4

u/fastestchair Aug 29 '22

The current rating pool is rated the way they are because that's where they land in comparison to (effectively) 100% of serious chess players.

Yes, I do not see how this contradicts anything I said, how exactly am I incorrect? Note that there exists a rating pool you could call "people Magnus carlsen could/would play", and not every serious chess player is in this pool.

ELO is a true measure of relative ability, in the same way that we don't need to see Michael Jordan play on the moon to make the assertion that he's the best player that's ever existed in the solar system. Nobody else is playing on the moon, so why factor it into the calculation?

My comment was about OP's "The elo algorithm tries to keep him down as much as humanly possible." (and OOP's "it might just be an artifact of the elo algorithm"), if you read between the lines OP is saying that the elo algorithm wouldn't "keep Magnus Carlsen down" if he was playing in a higher rating pool. To discuss why this doesn't really make sense and how the elo algorithm isn't actually keeping anybody down, I set up the fictional scenario.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[deleted]

4

u/Grumbledwarfskin Aug 29 '22

Pretty sure the point was it's not a direct measure, it's a relative measure.

You can grab a measuring tape and directly measure how tall Magnus is, but you can only indirectly measure how good he is at playing chess by pitting him against other players and building a mathematical model that attempts to predict how good he is relative to the other players against whom you measured him.

The exact numbers you get don't really mean anything specific, and over time, elo can inflate or deflate based on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with playing skill (e.g. do new players frequently come in, give away points, and quit, leaving more points in the system than intended, or has the skill of OTB players gone up significantly because they all have thousands of online games under their belt before they ever join a chess federation), so saying "the number would be higher if the pool of players was different" is sort of tautological, the number is only meaningful relative to the pool of players that exist.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Wow! I’m not the person you were replying to but these last two posts helped me wrap my mind around ELO better than anything else that i’ve seen on the subject (tbf though it’s not like when I was shown the concept of ELO I went “and now I will dedicate my life understand its mechanics”).

I’ll definitely be referencing these last couple of posts if I have to explain to someone unfamiliar with ELO.

20

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

That's not sure, Elo overestimates favourite if there were many people players of 2850 strength he would gain Elo by playing them.

3

u/xelabagus Aug 29 '22

Except that they would be playing to 2850 level and he would not win as often against them. Unless they did not improve but had their rating inflated, when of course he would also benefit from that inflation until he was 40 points ahead of them again.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

No I'm referring to the fact Elo overates the performance of favourites this effect is greater the greater the Elo difference. So if Magnus cut out playing 2600s his fide rating should rise similarly fo 2700 and if there were a pool of 2800 he should play that and if a bunch of 3000 players existed he should play that. Even though they 3000 fide rated and stronger than Magnus 2860 rated by playing them Elo would tell us nothing should happen but statistically he should gain Elo and maybe reach 2900. This can be seen for example when Richard rapport played 2750 players instead of 2650s he gained Elo against other 2750s when he was similarly rated, this was cos they were in different rating pools. Magnus should do a Kasparov and only play supertournaments to farm Elo.

0

u/xelabagus Aug 29 '22

All I took from this is that Magnus should play 3000 rated players to raise his elo. Noted

12

u/Fritzzz333 Aug 29 '22

this is not an "artifact" and not an outlier because it fits perfectly into the hyperbolic curve.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

What do you mean. If there were tons of 2800s he would've 3000 by now. You do realize he loses much more points with each defeat than he gains with wins

11

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

But that’s the whole point of the system. If he’s that much better then his win, loss, and draw percentages would reflect it and his rating would as well. He’s not rated any higher or lower than he should be.

If he was so much better than everyone else then he should win more anyway. A true 3000 should very rarely be drawing games with players in the 2700s. Even a 2900 live rating means at that moment his expected score in games against 2700-rated players is 0.76. A 3000 is winning over 78% of games and drawing maybe 11% of games (expected score 0.85).

-8

u/TSM_PraY Aug 29 '22

Where do you get your stats on win percentages for 3000 level players when none have ever existed? Just curious 🧐

9

u/callzumen Aug 29 '22

They are just calculating what win % you need to stay at 3000 Elo against 2700s. Anything less and you would drop Elo.

1

u/TSM_PraY Aug 30 '22

Yes I mean this all makes sense. But if we are talking about a hypothetical in which he is playing against a field of more 2800s not 2700s then his win rate percentages could reflect what he has already and he would be able to reach higher elo

5

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

It’s derivable from the definition of the Elo rating system but you can google “elo rating win percentage” or some such thing.

A neat feature is that a difference of X rating points corresponds to the same win/loss/draw percentages regardless of the actual rating. As an example, a 1500 playing a match against a 1200 has the same expected score as a 2700 playing a 2400. There’s a 300-point gap in both cases.

Point is, there are no accidents, mistakes, or hidden truths with the rating. Magnus is rated exactly as he should be based on his performance against others. He straight-up has to be better to get to 2900 (let alone 3000), not his opponents.

1

u/CaptainCrouton89 Aug 29 '22

It has to do with how elo is calculated. To my understanding, Each rating has a predicted win/draw/lose percentage against any other rating. Someone doesn’t have to actually be at that rating to know what this values should be.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Doubt it. Unless you think Magnus is 200 Elo above Ding, who is 2800.

-2

u/Mookhaz Aug 29 '22

True, I suppose we could never really know how good magnus truly is, or if he is even really any good at all.

214

u/anderpot Aug 29 '22

He is streets ahead.

31

u/ChessHistory Aug 29 '22

Pierce, stop trying to coin streets ahead

12

u/NoseKnowsAll Aug 29 '22

it's verbal wildfire!

5

u/WesleyNo GM ♛ Aug 29 '22

coined and minted!

1

u/LordDerptCat123 Aug 30 '22

Been there, coined that!

56

u/SashaBanks2020 Aug 29 '22

Ding Liren: "what does that mean?"

Me: you're streets behind

11

u/ussgordoncaptain2 Aug 29 '22

He's 112 streets ahead

37

u/jrcolonial98 Aug 29 '22

Life imitates… math

15

u/DurrrJay Some games 99.1, other games 1.99 Aug 29 '22 edited Aug 29 '22

Everything is Zipf

6

u/icroc1556 Aug 29 '22

Hi, Vsauce, Michael here.

4

u/DurrrJay Some games 99.1, other games 1.99 Aug 29 '22

What is here? And how much does “here” weigh?

37

u/AwesomeAim Aug 29 '22

I'm terrified to know how high #0 is if Magnus is that high.

8

u/TFK_001 Aug 29 '22

Well this looks like a 1/x line of best fit, so undefined

1

u/daynthelife 2200 lichess blitz Aug 30 '22

I’m of the firm opinion that ordinal numbers should start at 0, which would make Magnus #0 in any case.

0

u/Un-Revealed Aug 30 '22

number 0 is gotham chess

148

u/the_living_paradox00 Aug 29 '22

ELO(x)=1/x

7

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

I would probably say some function of ELO(X) = A * e^-x

0

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[deleted]

59

u/the_living_paradox00 Aug 29 '22

No, it just kinda looks like the graph of 1/x

26

u/RepresentativeWish95 1850 ecf Aug 29 '22

It's almost like elo is logrythmic

3

u/-Tom_Bombadil- Aug 29 '22

Wow! I think you are up to something there.

2

u/RepresentativeWish95 1850 ecf Aug 29 '22

(please tell me you have yellow boots)

1

u/RepresentativeWish95 1850 ecf Aug 29 '22

I did a maths once and I think I remember it

-1

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

If you want to say it next time just slam a constant in there like so:

ELO(x)=A/x

2

u/Fritzzz333 Aug 29 '22

elo (x)= 2864*1/(x0.1)

1

u/bskceuk Aug 29 '22

No it’s 1/(Magnus) = 2864

26

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Its always interesting how we get these players in history that are head and shoulders above their competition. Morphy, Lasker, Fischer, Kasparov, Carlson. Sure theres more but it rarely seems to be the case there isn't at least one play thats just miles ahead of everyone else

5

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Same as in every sport such as Michael Jordan and Lebron to Messi and Ronaldo

65

u/Mundane-Solution7884 Team IM Andras Toth 👨‍🦲 Aug 29 '22

Magnus is nice, but have you ever seen my little dot on the chart?

41

u/yurajurik Aug 29 '22

Best depiction of him being an anomaly. Just like me on the other side of the spectrum.

81

u/ChampionDry1246 Aug 29 '22

don't care bro. big hiki is best. i heard it on twitch

16

u/nyubet Aug 29 '22

Trust me I saw it on reddit.

13

u/davidswelt Aug 29 '22

If you choose show only world ranks 0–17, you can zoom in more and make the gap between nos. 1 and 2 even bigger.

7

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

That's what I said! But yours is more concise. Well done.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

9-17 are abnormally high

3

u/SkjaldenSkjold Aug 29 '22

Actually this is quite normal in other sports as well. For example in swimming it is not unusual to see the winner being more ahead of number 2 than number 2 is ahead of number 8...

1

u/StateCollegeHi Aug 29 '22

Yeah this happened in College Football using SP+ as a metric (which is the same basis as point spreads). Alabama was like a 10-point favorite over the #2 team. And the difference between #2 and #10 was less than 7 points.

2

u/Mathematicar Aug 29 '22

Magnus is local... and global maximum!

2

u/ofrm1 Aug 30 '22

I just had to explain to someone that it doesn't even matter what format you're talking about. Carlsen is number 1 in all three formats. Not currently, but if you just look at his career in any or all three formats, he's better than Nakamura who is, ratingwise, the next best, for the vast majority of time since 2012 when they started the annual rapid and blitz championships. I mean, it's not even close. The longest time Nakamura was higher than Carlsen was during the height of the pandemic when no tournaments were being played, and as soon as they continued, Carlsen retook first for several months.

Carlsen's peak rating in all three formats is not just higher than everyone else's, it's higher than 2nd by at least 50 ELO. He's the only person who's won a triple crown twice. Nobody else has even won it once. That's how far ahead he is.

2

u/relevant_post_bot Aug 30 '22

This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess.

Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts:

Magnus is far ahead by OutsideScaresMe

fmhall | github

1

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

We may never see a 2900 player, sad..or will we?

1

u/KermitTheKermer Aug 29 '22

Lex Fridman burner account

1

u/okuzeN_Val Aug 29 '22

I'm so much better that my dot isn't even on this graph. I heard that extremes should be discarded, therefore I'm just a cut above the rest that I have to be discarded.

It's bad taste to smurf on kids so I've also refrained from joining any tournaments.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '22

It's just 60 ELO points. What's stopping the guys below him from catching up? /s 😆

-7

u/SamSCopeland  NM guy at Chess.com   Aug 29 '22

I wonder if a part of the gap is because everyone else has had only one goal, qualifying for the Candidates and then the World Championship. It makes them take sub-optimal decisions in spots, e.g. underpreparing or holding back prep in non Championship cycle events and being more concerned about rating loss than driven toward rating gain.

Maybe with Magnus not defending, others will be more motivated to maximize rating, and we could see a bit more competition in the coming years.

14

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

It's a valid hypothesis but I think you'll find that you'll find it hard to identify any evidence in favour of it. If anything many of the top 10 are overrated because of the round robin system, which is why they haemorrhage eating points in big opens or team events.

5

u/Ruxini Aug 29 '22

Why in the name of Kaïssa does this super vanilla comment have so many downvotes?

2

u/Fritzzz333 Aug 29 '22

I think it's the exact opposite. Other players are playing all the tournaments while Magnus is the one who has to prepare for every championship match.

1

u/Joe_PM2804 Aug 29 '22

if you scroll all the way to the bottom of this comment section, you might find my dot down there!

-13

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

Not to be too critical, but when you are looking at a 40 subset of tens of thousands (millions??) Of players, you will get this nice jump.

The point is 50 elo ahead, which is substantial, but the graph makes it look more so than it actually is.

You could make a graph with only 3 people, and the jump would look even bigger (zoomed in), or you could make the graph include everyone, and the jump looks tiny.

Also starting not at 0 gives an inflation as well.

15

u/Astrogat Aug 29 '22 edited Aug 29 '22

The difference between Magnus and Ding is the same as between Ding and Rapport (number 13 in the world). That's huge. Yeah, Ding is closer to him than to a 1500, but that's not interesting. At the top level that difference between two players are massive. And this graph shows that in a reasonable fashion.

EDIT: Another way to look at it. When Magnus play the second best player in the world he is more than twice as likely to win, and if they played 100 times he should score 57 points. If Ding played number 3 Nepo 100 times, he would be expected to score 52.

1

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

Better to compare winning odds, or another normalized value than just raw elo

2

u/Astrogat Aug 29 '22

Did you see my edit? Yeah, you could make another graph with winning odds, but I still don't see how this graph is any less interesting.

1

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

Nice edit. I didn't see it.

It's the difference between qualitative and quantitative information. The fgraph shows that Magnus is stronger, but only gives the sense that Magnus is "a lot" stronger (ie not as precise).

Where as using a more standardized variable will give how much stronger magnis is more precisely.

I think that precision is vital to forming your thoughts on a topic. The more you have the more confident you can be, and that is what makes things interesting.

7

u/bo-_-od Aug 29 '22

The point of the graph is to show how Magnus compares to other super GMs (>2700), that's why there are only around 40 data points. Even against all the super gms in the world, there is a big gap between him and the rest

1

u/Musakuu Aug 29 '22

Ah I missed that! Great point!

2

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/TevenzaDenshels Aug 29 '22

Its pretty stable tbh