Casey Oliver

@nickkorte Oh I thought they were part of the 3.8M # originally provided (esp since they weren't high bars, although 40% of snaps NLTBE, and I never heard an "up to $Xm" statement above that #).

@StatsGuyCasey All I saw was a report on his incentives, which would only make it more likely he qualifies if he earns them.

Signing Marquise Brown for $5M cancels out a 6th round 2027 compensatory pick from the Eagles, and adds a 7th rounder to the Chiefs. overthecap.com/player/marquis…

@EmilSutovsky 1) 2 spots each from fide circuit and world cup rather than 1 vs 3. 2) rating spot having a certain # of required games against high level opponents rather than just games in general.

FIDE Circuit-2025 has a winner! Congrats to Pragg, well-deserved spot to Candidates-2026. As we are finalizing regulations and prepare some updates and novelties, you are welcome to feedback about the FIDE Circuit: What did you like, and what should be improved going forwards. Thank you!

@micahfries That's awesome :)

@ryanburge But I don't discount the fact that some people experience more immediate material rewards for faithful giving (though in no way implying the converse that if someone is struggling financially they haven't been faithful in giving)

@ryanburge I actually think all 3 causal relationships might be at play here (a->b), (b->a), (c->a and c->b). C here being a set of stewardship values/principles that would lead toward tithing and lead toward taking steps toward financial health in other ways)

There are so many terrible 'statistics' in the Christian world and this is a prime example. A 'Christian tither' is twice as likely to be debt-free compared to a 'Christian non-tither' Just think one for second why that could possibly be the case.

@GmNaroditsky No comment on Magnus, just want to say how much I appreciate the way you teach and excited that your otb blitz performance proved to anyone remotely fair-minded what most already knew, that the allegations were baseless. Happy for you and grateful for you!

If only I had known that the rules were flexible, I'd have lobbied for all 10 players who tied for first to be included in the knockout. Or, if we can have two co-champions, why not 10?! Alas...

@DinaBelenkaya Danya has basically been my chess coach the last few years (via YouTube). He's grown my understanding of the game and I love his ability to communicate his knowledge and appreciation of chess. I'm angry and sad that he's had to deal with this nonsense

When your childhood hero turns against you 💔♟️

@natesolon gxh6 Bf8 h7 Bg7 h6 Bh8 Ng5 and there's no way to protect f7 so the bishop in the corner is lost as is the game?

White recaptured on c5, which ended up being good enough, but missed a very nice forcing win. Can you calculate it to the end?

@natesolon I think this is awesome (and as a London player who sometimes lets black equalize too easily after early c5 these are very pertinent to me)

I'm experimenting with different ways of helping my students prepare their openings more effectively. One idea is review questions about key ideas or moments. Here are some examples from my London files. What do you think, is this a helpful approach?

Jalen Brunson

@micahfries "Who's the wild man now!" gets me every time

@natesolon Yeah probably. Do you agree that low depth "bad" moves/high depth good moves is a possible rough measure of human intuitiveness of a move? If the idea only makes sense further down a line than a human can generally calculate you aren't regularly playing it in a rapid game right?

@StatsGuyCasey I think brilliant is basically just a good move that sacrifices material

Part 2 of the Math of Chess Cheating: Engines and Accuracy Scores It is possible for a human to play a great game of chess, but even the best players are not infallible. How do you draw the line between great play and impossible play? Generally, you look at how well someone played, or how closely their moves line up with the engine’s moves. Since the engine is the authority on correct chess play, these amount to almost the same thing. The natural starting point is to look at centipawn loss. This sounds fancy, but is actually really simple. The idea is to look at how much the player gave away by making moves inferior to the engine’s top choices. The traditional metric for chess engine evaluations is the centipawn. This comes from the idea that an advantage of 1 pawn = 100 points. So if after the best move, the engine evaluates the position as +87, but after the move you actually played, it’s +41, you have a centipawn loss of 46 for that move. That is, your move gave away the equivalent of about half a pawn. You can then average this over all your moves. Intuitively, this gives a score for how much worse your moves were than optimal play, on average. If you play the engine’s top choice on every move, your average centipawn loss is 0, and unless the game was trivially short and easy, you were probably cheating. Beyond that, it gets fuzzier, but it can be suspicious if weaker players have a very low centipawn loss. Chess sites then take that centipawn loss and pipe it through some more calculations to produce an accuracy score. I think this is mostly to create a score that’s easier to understand for the average online chess user. Whereas the centipawn loss is somewhat technical and obscure, an accuracy score is more familiar, like getting a grade in school. Chesscom doesn’t explain exactly how they calculate accuracy, but they say, “Your Accuracy is a measurement of how closely you played to what the computer has determined to be the best possible play against your opponent's specific moves.” If you really want to know how it’s calculated, you can look at the documentation of Lichess, the number 2 biggest chess site, which is open source. Presumably they do something roughly similar to Chesscom. Many players get suspicious when their opponent’s accuracy is “too high,” most famously, former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, who has been “sharing statistics” about the accuracy of certain players. But accuracy isn’t a very good metric for detecting cheating, for several reasons: -As we’ve seen, it is designed to be intuitive for an end user, not to be a rigorous measure of quality of play. -Certain moves can throw off the accuracy score. For example, both Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura have shown a penchant for bizarre opening moves in blitz tournaments. The engine evaluates these moves as inferior, but it’s clearly a deliberate choice on their part to throw off their opponents. -The accuracy score is highly dependent on the style of game. In slow, maneuvering games, there are long stretches of moves where it’s hard to make a big mistake. This tends to lead to a high accuracy score. In contrast, in very complex, tactical games, the best players in the world often produce low accuracy scores, even in classical (slow) chess. -Your accuracy score is highly dependent on your opponent’s play. If your opponent makes your life harder, you will find it difficult to play accurately. Nonetheless, it is plausible that Chesscom could use something kind of like the accuracy score as part of their anti-cheating strategy, just tailored less to public consumption and more to rigorous cheat detection.

@AaronBWilson26 @Lifeway Congrats Aaron! That sounds amazing!

I'm excited to share that I'll be taking on a new role at @Lifeway this February as the publishing team leader for The Gospel Project for Kids. I've been a huge, huge fan of TGP since it was introduced a little over a decade ago. Can't wait to get started!

@GMJacobAagaard @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching I misunderstood you sorry.thought you meant he didn't qualify for championship (which I agree was under strange circumstances but i wouldnt have said didnt qualify) not the candidates (which i should revisit as I thought it was a straightforward he just needed the games). Thanks

@StatsGuyCasey @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching Not the same. Abasov was 4th. Fedoseev was 4th. Ding got the reserve spot on rating.

Very good series of tweets from an esteemed arbiter, and I may add the arbiter in Chartres Laurent Freyd was among many others the Chief Arbiter in the past two FIDE World Cups. I'm certain he will do his due diligence if he deems it necessary.

@GMJacobAagaard @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching You just said abasov qualified if Carlsen sits but by that same logic so did ding when Carlsen sat no? (And agree it was a mess I was pulling for Fabi and there's no way he plays the line he did against hikaru and tumbles down the stretch if he wasn't chasing nepo...sigh)

@StatsGuyCasey @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching He did not qualify for the match. And if the other players felt certain 2nd would have qualified, they would not have taken big risks to catch Nepomniachtchi and Ding would have had 3rd at best. The whole thing was a mess.

@GMJacobAagaard @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching Yeah thats fair, I just meant its hard to argue his rating was artificially inflated when he won the world championship soon afterwards.

@StatsGuyCasey @FressinetL @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching I think the players that qualify belong. This includes Abasov, who will qualify if Carlsen does not play. Even though last time they gave the spot to Ding and not Fedoseev.

@Vachier_Lagrave @FressinetL @GMJacobAagaard @ChessTeaching Thanks for the reply, obviously you're in a much better position from your experience than I am to evaluate and I respect your opinion and character. As an admitted outsider (2000 chesscom no otb experience) the games just seem very suspicious for gms but I'd prefer to be wrong

@StatsGuyCasey @FressinetL @GMJacobAagaard @ChessTeaching China's covid policy had not prevented numerous Chinese players to take part in 2021 FIDE Grand Swiss. As for possible match fixing, FIDE is investigating, but also imagine the mental state of the players with all eyes on them, and all their moves scrutinized.

@FressinetL @GMJacobAagaard @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching Also with benefit of hindsight ding obviously belonged in the event. Both w alirezas candidates and recent showings against super gms I don't think that's true here (obviously still a great talent but id be shocked if he finishes over 50% if fide lets him in)

@FressinetL @GMJacobAagaard @Vachier_Lagrave @ChessTeaching Imo different both from the fact that it was dings only chance due to china's covid policy and that his opponents didn't have to play poorly for him to make it. He just needed games not a big rating boost and I didn't see consistent 1 move blunders and resignations in his matches