Win Chances of Grenke Chess Classic After First Round

All 4 games in the first round Grenke Chess Calssic 2015 yesterday ended in draws, which should shift the win chances a bit. We would expect that those playing with the white pieces yesterday would have their chances somewhat decreased, while those playing black saw their chances increase a bit. Having re-run the model after the first results, that is mostly what happened. The updated chances can be seen below. The original chances are outlined in blue, while the current chance with their current probability listed.

Probability distribution of win chances following the first round.

The exceptions to the general rule are Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen. After their draw, there was no change in their win chances. This is mostly due to the fact that since Magnus Carlsen is the highest rated player, by far, he is expected to manage at least a draw even when playing black. Much like his live rating went down even though a draw with black against Aronian intuitively and subjectively is a good result. The biggest loser yesterday was Caruana, while Anand and Naiditsch both increased their chances by almost 1 percentage point.

The players’ central tendencies are now:

Player	Mean	Median	Mode
Carlsen	4,00	4	4
Caruana	3,71	3,5	3,5
Anand	3,58	3,5	3,5
Aronian	3,57	3,5	3,5
Adams	3,45	3,5	3,5
Bacrot	3,30	3,5	3,5
Naiditsch	3,46	3,5	3,5
Baramidze	2,95	3	3

With the biggest change being Caruana’s median and mode dropping to 3.5 instead of 4. Shown below is the distribution of each player’s expected points, and we can see that Caruana has moved towards the the big lump in the middle while Bacrot is lagging just a bit behind.

Each player’s distribution of expected points following Round 1.

Other changes after the first round are that getting 5 points now gives a 90% probability of winning the tournament, and a 99% chance with 5.5 points. If Magnus Carlsen follows his plan of drawing with black and winning with white, he’ll end up at 5 points. Speaking of Magnus Carlsen, his chances of continuing his streak of finishing first or second has now increased to 54.5%.

Finally, here are the estimated win probabilities for Round 2:

White	Black	White wins	Draw	Black wins
Anand	Naiditsch	29.7 %	48.1 %	22.2 %
Carlsen	Adams	36.9 %	48.2 %	14.9 %
Baramidze	Aronian	22.2 %	47.0 %	30.8 %
Caruana	Bacrot	36.2 %	46.4 %	17.5 %