Under the Statistics: Leaders vs. Projections #chess #math #statistics #timemanagement

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]into the time spent up to move 20. Now, this is quite an interesting graph as well to see which players are spending more time than they probably should in their opening moves. I'm going to draw a line right here. Any player to the left of this line has spent more than half their time allotted at move 20. So, Gukesh, Caruana, and Duda. Now, they did perform around with the projections model expected of them, but not very good in comparison to Hans Niemann and and Wesley So, these tournament leaders.

[00:00:29]Let's look at look at Firouzja as well.

[00:00:31]Almost 16 minutes spent up to move 20.

[00:00:35]Now, Firouzja is a very quick player.

[00:00:37]He's a quick chess powerhouse, but performing very slowly in comparison is as what he usually does. Now, Gukesh had a great quote that got posted on the Grand Chess Tour Instagram where he said, "In blitz chess, all you need to do is play fast and pray." And coming into blitz chess, that's exactly what these players are going to have to do if they're going to catch up to Hans Niemann and Wesley So in these later rounds. Let's take a look at what these projections looked like coming into the blitz rounds today. Now, Hans Niemann came out of the rapid rounds leading by a full point, but the projections model said, "Ah, we don't care. We're still taking Wesley." Wesley at 50% to win the tournament, Hans Niemann at only 37.1.

[00:01:18]Now, what's the reasoning behind this?

[00:01:20]Well, 18 rounds to play and the model is aware that Wesley So probably a little bit better of a performer than Hans Niemann even though Hans is very, very strong blitz. It says Han- Wesley is going to be able to make up those points in the later rounds. Have we seen it right now? Not quite yet. They did tie for the top points at one point, but Hans leads by a point right now. How is this going to go later into the rounds?

[00:01:45]We are not sure, but it's looking like some of these other players don't have a shot. But make sure to stay tuned in the later rounds to see what happens, but