[somenameforme]

I do wonder if Fabiano Caruana (the commentator in question, world #7) is going to have some introspection following these events, because that pattern occurred several times during his commentary. He came up with endless (and completely valid) ways for both players to 'kill'/simplify/draw the games at various points, but the players chose far more ambitious routes ultimately culminating in the final game where it decided the world championship.

For some context here, Fabiano played a world championship match against Magnus Carlsen. Every single classical game was drawn, and he then lost 0-3 in the tiebreaks. Fabiano plays relatively weaker in faster time controls, whereas Magnus is also the strongest rapid player in the world by a fairly wide margin.

[hibikir]

The weird thing is that, if you look for stylistic differences in super-grandmasters, Fabiano is one of the most combative in tournament play. In any random day, he is far less drawish than Ding himself, or Anish Giri, the commentator earlier in the match. It's not that Fabiano was too passive: It's that the two players in this tournament took unreasonable risks with black.

If you look at the Fabiano/Carlsen matches, what you see is that both players know Carlsen is the better calculator, but that Fabiano is going to have better prep almost every single time. He is one of the best theoreticians alive. So what did he play? Give absolutely nothing Carlsen could grab on to when playing black, yet the scariest possible theoretical openings as white, sometimes still being in-book for 5-10 moves over Carlsen. When Fabi was white, he had plenty of ambition and plenty of chances, but the calculation wasn't quite good enough, as Carlsen's worst moves were never significant, visible blunders.

The Fabiano of that championship would have won this year's championship with relative ease, just because he'd never lose with black, and would capitalize on blunders. The way he played really is the best chance he had.

The wonderful spectacle of a match we just got only comes from two players that, inexplicably, kept trying to win with black, and fail. Good for us, but I suspect that for a top professional it's very hard to understand.

[somenameforme]

Ding vs Fabiano is +6 =10 -3 (including 2 wins with the black pieces)

Nepo vs Fabiano is +7 =21 -2 (including 3 wins with the black pieces)

---

I think a lot of what we're seeing is not about openings, but risk tolerance. Fabiano has incredible, and fighting, opening preparation. But what really matters is what happens after the opening. In high level chess you often find yourself in a scenario where you see two main ideas in a position. One gives you slight winning chances, but basically zero losing chances. The other gives you good winning chances, but the position will be complex and difficult to play - your opponent will also have plenty of winning chances. And Ding, in particular, seemingly had just zero fear of risk this entire match, which is largely what drove everything.

I'd also add this drives another common misconception in chess. If two very strong players both play a game while making a conscious effort to avoid complexity, you'll end up with a draw that has an extremely high level of accuracy. By contrast if they decide to enter into these sort of unclear positions, you'll see even the best in the world make mistakes, and even blunders, because chess is hard! So people outside the game see the mistakes as driving the results, and that's certainly true. But the reason those mistakes are happening is not because the players are just playing weaker, but because even the best in the world will make mistakes in complex positions.

[kthejoker2]

Fabi's 4th in the world in Blitz, dude can play fast.

Carlsen is just a beast.

[somenameforme]

Their match was played in November 2018. Here are the classical [1] and rapid [2] rating lists from that time. Fabiano was 12 points behind Magnus in classical, and 91 points behind him in rapid. It's all going to be relative. Obviously Fabiano is extremely good at all forms of chess, but all top players (in any sport) are going to have relative strengths/weaknesses when compared against each other.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20181003104802/http://ratings.fi...

[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20181009092541/https://ratings.f...

[hgsgm]

Classics is an extremely impractical format for ratings, because the games are so long so players can't play many games.

It's like Heisenberg Uncertainty.

[kzrdude]

Yet my impression is that the rapid list is volatile and often not reflecting the reality, the classical rating is better in tune with actual strength

[jstx1]

The number of games does influece the stability of the ratings but the result is the opposite - classical ratings are more reliable because there are regular organised events while there are very few serious blitz and rapid events. Most top players only play the rapid and blitz World Championship, no other events in these time controls.

[fraggle222]

I think Fabi is licking his chops thinking he can now finally be a world champion since Carlsen is out and Ding maybe won't be too hard to best. He predicted lots of lines in the match or saw better ones from his commentator chair (granted the eval bar helps a lot). But you are right he will have to take some risks probably.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

He must first defeat Nepo in the candidates.

[gsinclair]

“The eval bar helps a lot” is a very significant factor, to be sure.

[srge]

I agree as a spectator that draws are boring. However strategically it probably makes sense to draw ambiguous games and only push for a win when you have a certain advantage.