Sindarov, Divya deserved winners but Chess World Cup format makes upsets more likely: Anish Giri

Javokhir Sindarov emerged as the youngest World Cup winner in the open category earlier this week while Divya Deshmukh had become the first Indian Women’s World Cup champion in July this year. Apart from being youngest champions in their categories, both Sindarov and Deshmukh were also not among the top 14 seeds for the tournament. Dutch Grandmaster Anish Giri believes that such results are not surprising.

Divya was the 15th seed for the Women's World Cup while Sindarov entered the open World Cup as the 16th seed. However, both of them scripted historic wins to claim titles. Giri believes that both of them were within favourites to win trophy.

Divya, Sindarov were both favourites but…

“First of all, 15 and 16 seeds are not the middle at all. It’s the top. So Divya and Sindarov were both among the favourites, but perhaps within the favourites, they were not at the very forefront,” Giri told TimesofIndia.com. “For example, Arjun (Erigaisi) and Vincent Keymer and Gukesh (Dommaraju), obviously Praggnanandhaa (Rameshbabu), were more favoured, but Sindarov was not a surprise. He is an elite player. And the same goes for Divya,” Giri, who will soon be in India for the Global Chess League in Mumbai, said.

READ MORE | Chess World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov honoured in Uzbekistan

“I think it’s a coincidence, frankly. I think if you ran this tournament 100 times, the top 10 participants would score more victories than the people ranked between 10 and 20,” added the 31-year-old Grandmaster.

More from Chess

Chess World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov honoured in Uzbekistan: From airport fanfare to a three-room apartment Javokhir Sindarov crowned youngest Chess World Cup champion after beating Wei Yi in tie-breakers :white_tick: 1

Chess World Cups are played in a knockout format where players play two games in a round before going into rapid tiebreakers. Giri said that the gap between top players is so small that anyone can beat anyone on their day and thus the two matches are not enough to see the difference.

“I do think that ratings are still there for a reason, but the gap is too small now to show in the short run. And when you have a two-game match, you can play someone rated from the top 100 in the world, but you can’t tell the difference in a two-game match,” he said.

If you want best players to win, then more games are needed to see the difference, as per the Dutch top-ranked chess player.

“You need more games if you want to really be reliable,” he explained. “If we played the World Cup 1,000 times, Sindarov would win 20 times, and Praggnanandhaa would win 40 times. But we just ran it once, and it happened this way.”

“But it’s fine this way. I mean, still, in the end, the great player wins; I’m just saying the upsets are more likely.”