Do you think Ian has any chance, seriously?

At beating Carlsen?
(The start playing one month from now.)
I think Carlsen will win, hands down. I'm not predicting a crushing match score (not making any prediction abou score actually.) But I think it's close to 100% that Carlsen will win.

Above 99% I guess I would say. What is your prediction?

75-25% Carlson

Since you brought up probability, I'll play devil's advocate and embarrass myself by presenting this potentially miscalculated and dubious statistical argument:

Nepo has 2 wins, 1 loss, and 7 draws in standard games versus Carlsen (ratings.fide.com/chess_statistics.phtml?event2=1503014&event=4168119). They will play up to 14 games, with someone reaching 7.5+ points to win. The probability he wins at least 1 out of 14 games [1-(9/11)^14=~0.94], multiplied by the probability that he doesn't lose any of 14 games ((10/11)^14=~0.26), gives him a ~24% to win.

I guess this aligns with my gut feeling, which is that Carlsen must fall sooner or later. Why not sooner?

@PawnCreeper said in #2:
> 75-25% Carlson
Carlson? Magnus Carlsen is gonna regret this.

Yes, Ian clearly has a chance. He has a good score against Magnus, and Magnus - fighting his 5th WC - may have lost a little bit of his killer instinct. (One third Ian, two thirds Magnus)

@infinite2009 said in #5:
> Carlson? Magnus Carlsen is gonna regret this.
I think that was intended, not a misspell.

One of the more unpleasant opponents.

@Splorer said in #3:

> Nepo has 2 wins, 1 loss, and 7 draws in standard games versus Carlsen (ratings.fide.com/chess_statistics.phtml?event2=1503014&event=4168119). They will play up to 14 games, with someone reaching 7.5+ points to win. The probability he wins at least 1 out of 14 games [1-(9/11)^14=~0.94], multiplied by the probability that he doesn't lose any of 14 games ((10/11)^14=~0.26), gives him a ~24% to win.

It's hard to estimate the chances of win/draw/loss against Carlsen, so let's roll with 2-7-1. (Even though I don't believe in this distribution and the results are not independent between games.

The probability computed was 24% chance to win without dropping a single game, which is a bigger ask.

The probability that Nepomniachtchi wins outright in the classical segment can be computed by expanding (0.1 + 0.7X + 0.2X^2)^14 and summing all the coefficients greater than 14. (This simulates 1 point for a draw and 2 points for a win, >= 15 points needed for an outright win).

Wolfram Alpha tells me the polynomial expands to ... + 0.0149792 x^20 + 0.040118 x^19 + 0.0851857 x^18 + 0.143065 x^17 + 0.189072 x^16 + 0.195351 x^15 + 0.156878 x^14 + 0.0976753 x^13 + 0.0472679 x^12 + 0.0178832 x^11 + ...

Mentally summing the terms gives me about a 67% that Nepomniachtchi wins outright in the classical section.

@infinite2009 said in #5:
> Carlson? Magnus Carlsen is gonna regret this.

It's because of spell check. Many people have written Carlson before and everyone was like "haha he said Carlson it's Carlsen". It's just kinda stupid to keep repeating the same joke all the time.