Win Chances of Grenke Chess Classic After Round 3

I think #Bxg4WTF sums that up pretty well. The Grenke Chess Classic broke wide open in Round 3, with Caruana, Adams and Naiditsch all winning their games. Others will discuss and analyze the games, but here we take a look at what happens with each player’s win chances. Caruana and Naiditsch both increased their win chances quite a bit, Adams is back in the pack, while Magnus Carlsen saw his chances drastically decrease from the 35% chance he had after round 2. Listed below is the current win chances of the tournament according to our model, with the original chances outlined in blue and the win chance after the previous round in yellow.

Probability distribution of win chances following the third round.

As can be seen, Caruana is now the most likely winner of the tournament, followed by a 2-player tie break and Naiditsch. The most dramatic change is Magnus Carlsen’s drop from 34.6% to 11.1%!

This is also reflected in the players’ averages, with three players now having a median and mode of 4 points, but with only Caruana and Naiditsch with a mean above 4. Adams has returned to the 3.5 point pack, while Aronian slipped out of it and Baramidze is even further behind.

Player	Mean	Median	Mode
Carlsen	3,85	4	4
Caruana	4,15	4	4
Anand	3,53	3,5	3,5
Aronian	3,01	3	3
Adams	3,44	3,5	3,5
Bacrot	3,38	3,5	3,5
Naiditsch	4,04	4	4
Baramidze	2,60	2,5	2,5

This is also reflected in each player’s expected point distribution.  While Magnus Carlsen was way ahead yesterday, he has now taken a step back while both Naiditsch and Caruana stepped up. We can also see that with Aronian’s loss with white put him back quite a bit.

Each player’s distribution of expected points following Round 3.

While Magnus Carlsen’s chances of winning it all were drastically reduced today, he still has quite a good chance of ending as either number one or two to continue his streak. He is still a large part of potential tie-breaks or ending up as number 2 if he doesn’t win, and his chance of continuing the streak is now estimated to be 48.5%

Looking at how many points are needed to win, we now see that scoring more than 4 points will now win the tournament half the time. Scoring more than 4.5 points looks to be almost a sure bet at 94%.

The number of points scored by the second best player.

There’s still a lot of chess to be played before we get to that point. First there is a rest day, before some interesting games on Friday. Magnus Carlsen is black against his World Chess Championship opponent Viswanathan Anand who is looking to pounce on a hurt Carlsen, while Naiditsch will try to stay in front even with black against the lowest rated and placed Baramidze. Here is our model’s prediction of the games of Round 4:

White	Black	White wins	Draw	Black wins
Anand	Carlsen	16.6 %	58.0 %	25.5 %
Baramidze	Naiditsch	25.1 %	42.7 %	32.2 %
Caruana	Adams	33.3 %	50.3 %	16.4 %
Bacrot	Aronian	26.3 %	52.3 %	21.4 %

Should be some interesting games, and I for one am looking forward to some more action. Who knows what the new #Bxg4WTF will be?