Monday 1 September 2014

Five from Five

I was going to talk about something other than the 2014 Sinquefield Cup, but it is almost unavoidable, given Fabiano Caruana's 5 from 5 start. With his win over Nakamura in this mornings round he has beaten half the worlds top 10 players in the last 5 days. After todays rest day, he then gets the opportunity to do it all again!
In terms of numbers (and by that I mean ratings), attempts to calculate a performance rating for Caruana do not work. However there are a couple of statistics worth noting. He started the tournament with a rating of 2801, and has already gained 25 rating points. Before round 1 he was neck and neck with Lev Aronian on the FIDE list, but is now 32 points ahead.
Dr Ken Regan has even calculated IPR's (Intrinsic performance Ratings) for the players, which is a measure based on matching moves against computer engine choices. Through the first 4 rounds Caruana had an IPR of 2935, ahead of Vachier-Lagrave with 2855 and Carlsen with 2835. Interestingly, the average for the tournament is 2785, which is close to the pre tournament rating of 2801. While there have been a couple of below-par games, the quality and accuracy of the games has been quite high. Another artefact of the 'computer' generation!

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