My guest for Part 2 of the World Chess Championship preview is chess blogger Tai Pruce Zimmerman. Tai is an accountant by training, who created the excellent Chess by the Numbers blog to write about elite chess from a statistical perspective. With the World Championship just days away, I was excited to have the opportunity to ask Tai to walk us through various scenarios in the upcoming showdown between GMs Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniatchtchi. We tackled questions such as the following: Based on rating, how likely is Magnus to win? How likely are we to see tiebreaks? Would Magnus be as big a favorite if the match were to go to rapid tiebreaks? How likely would it be that one player “adopt” another? We take on all of these questions and more, as Tai describes how his model is made and tells all of the numbers we need to know for the match. As always, please read on for more details, timestamps, and relevant links!

0:00- Info from the Intro:

Be sure to go to MagnusNepo.com to join Aimchess’ Prediction Challenge!

Check out Chess.com’s easy-to-read World Championship schedule breakdown here.

Perpetual Chess Bonus World Championship Pods are planned for: November 29, December 2, December 6, December 9 and December 13

3:00- We briefly review the format of the World Championship Match, and then Tai dives into what goes into his statistical model, and what it says about the upcoming match.

Mentioned: Episode 249 with Dr. Mark Glickman, Nate Solon’s article about the World Championship

11:00- How would Tai’s model assess a potential rapid playoff?

16:00- What did Tai do to guess the competitors rating strengths other than just use their current FIDE ratings?

Mentioned: Pinnacle Sports World Chess Championships Odds

20:30- If the match goes to blitz tiebreaks, who would be the favorite to win the match?

Mentioned: Matt Jensen’s World Championship Preview of Chess.com

27:00- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Chessable.com. Check out what's new from them here: New Chess Courses Online - For All Levels- Chessable.com Don’t forget to subscribe to the How to Chess podcast as well!

27:30- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Aimchess.com. ACT NOW to enter their free Magnus-Nepo challenge on this site: https://magnusnepo.com/

29:00- Patreon mailbag question: “How does acclaimed trainer and author, GM Jacob Aagaard of KillerChessTraining.com assess the World Championship?”

Mentioned: Tarjei Svenson’s summary of a recent Magnus Carlsen interview

31:00- Patreon mailbag question “What are the odds of Magnus adopting Nepo?”

33:30- How does the Aimchess.com algorithm assess the players strengths and weaknesses?

Mentioned: Aimchess analysis here

35:00- We briefly discuss GM Alireza Firouzja’s recent dominance.

42:00- Perpetual Chess is brought to you in part by Chessmood.com. They offer a huge video library with instruction on every phase of the game.

43:00- Patreon mailbag question: “Any chance of Tai’s blog being sponsored by a major chess site?”

Mentioned: TwoPlusTwo chess forum, New in Chess Free World Championship Digital Magazine, Dennis Monokroussos’ The Chess Mind Blog

50:00- Tai shares a few more details about the methodology of his model.

54:00- Tai shares a bit more about his background and his other interests outside of chess.

56:00- In terms of rating differential, what prior World Championship provides the best historical analogue?

57:00- Thanks so much to Tai for sharing his data with us.

Check out and subscribe to his blog here:

https://chessnumbers.wordpress.com/

You can follow him on Twitter here:

https://twitter.com/ChessNumbers

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Our 2023 United States GP predictions