Chess. The FIDE World Grand Prix event in Zug, Switzerland, starting Thursday.
Teimour Radjabov is 11/1 with Marathonbet.
http://www.marathonbet.com/en/betting/ChessHis recentish record against the field (in order of current rating):
Karjakin (2 wins 3 draws 1 loss)
Caruana (5 draws)
Topalov (13 draws)
Nakamura (1 win 5 draws)
Mamedyarov (1 win 8 draws)
Morozevich (4 draws 1 loss)
Leko (7 draws 1 loss)
Kamsky (4 wins 3 draws 2 losses)
Ponomariov (3 wins 6 draws)
Giri (no classical games on record, but 2 wins 2 draws in blitz and blindfold comps)
Kasimdzanov (1 win)
The data is difficult to get much out of, as I have had to pull data in some cases going back 10 years. He doesn’t play much in elite competition against these guys but he is very solid.
The tournament is set up very interestingly. The players who are known for being aggressive in their style are...Karjakin, Caruana, Topalov, Nakamura, Mamedyarov, Morozevich and Kasimdzanov. The rest, including our man, are more solid. Of the more solid types, Radjabov is the best player and is the 4th highest rated player in the world (it will take a beating next month when the Candidates results are included, but only so much as to put him back in towards the top of the pack, rather than where he now is, at the top of it). The big boys aren’t in this one, because they already qualify by being the highest rated, the previous Candidate or the current Champ.
Radjabov is a very solid player (5 losses against this field in the last five or so years tells its own story). He likes to counter-attack, rather than to be a swashbuckler, but he has excellent opening knowledge and is more dynamic with Black than with White (this is a combination that tends to lead to a higher draw rate FWIW).
The Candidates all went wrong for Radjabov. He turned up having not played a serious competition for some time and started well (he should have beaten Carlsen in the middle weekend and was a whisker away from doing so). He missed a couple of chances through rustiness, having reached good positions in most of his games. Once he started to tire and the results started to go against him, it is commonplace to see the other players play more aggressively against an exposed player and, at that level, it was a horrible spiralling set of zeros that followed.
He will have been knocked about by that result and his rating took an absolute hammering. However, he has now had months of preparation, three weeks of elite competition and a few weeks of wound-licking behind him. He is now to be playing in a qualifying event for the next World Championship cycle. In racing parlance, I would describe him as “excuses latest; trip likely to suit”
I don’t expect Radjabov to win this tournament. However, the comp doesn’t favour players who win one and lose one over those who draw twice (in other words, it is 1 point for a win, ½ for a draw and 0 for a loss, rather than a football 3/1/0 system). It might well be that the top five in the market beat each other up and clear no ground. Radjabov, if he can win a couple of games against the rivals, might well find himself in contention. He most certainly has the talent and it would not surprise me in the slightest if he were up there at the end. 11/1 feels like the market has overreacted from his Candidates performance.
I’m going to be nitty. Would Fred fancy a fiver? It is a bit of a punt, because there are more dynamic players in the tournament and we can’t be sure how Radjabov will react to last month’s stay in London. Nevertheless, I don’t believe he’s three times less likely to win this than Karjakin. The majority of the time, we are not going to win anything, but I’m seeing 11/1 and thinking this could be an opportunity to value-nibble. Mamedyarov at 9/1 looks silly in comparison.
Really wouldn’t recommend ploughing into it and I promise to limit the updates to brief – en passant – posts. Just wondered whether
£5 at 11/1 with Marathonbet might enable Fred to cover a few darts elsewhere.
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