Elos are already multidimensional, in a sense, because players have different ratings on different platforms. Hikaru Nakamura, for example, has a higher Elo on chess.com than FIDE. But that’s just nitpicky pedantry; I understand that you’re really asking is whether chess ability for a specific version of chess has subskills.
Among chess players and chess teachers, it is common (as you note) to break chess ability into three subskills:
Openings
Midgame
Endgame
Openings these days are mostly about memorizing solved lines. Openings are so well-solved and memorization-dependent, that they can be boring to top players. This boredom is a force behind the popularity of Fisher Random among top players.
Magnus Carlson (currently the world’s best chess player) is famous for his endgame ability. He’s less interested in openings (especially classical openings) these days. It’s not uncommon for him to open with something stupid, like switching his king and queen, and then still beat a grandmaster.
Could you use these subskills to predict competition results? Absolutely. If you were placing extremely precise bets on the outcomes of games, then you shouldn’t just consider Elo. In classical games, you should also consider how much time each player has prepared for the tournament by studying opening lines. You can extrapolate Elo trend lines too.
The reason nobody uses a breakdown this fine for competitions isn’t because it wouldn’t generate a small additional signal. It’s because nobody has a strong enough motivation too. There aren’t billions of dollars getting bet on chess competition results. Elo is perfectly adequate when you’re choosing who to invite to a chess tournament. It’s also extremely legible, too.
That said, there does exist an organization that does analyze chess skill at extremely fine resolution: chess.com. But not to predict winners. Instead, chess.com analyzes player skill at resolutions finer than “Elo” because in order to detect cheating. Chess cheaters often exhibit telltale signs where their skill spikes really hard within a game. This signal is not detectable with mere Elo.
Welcome to the realm of the posters!
Elos are already multidimensional, in a sense, because players have different ratings on different platforms. Hikaru Nakamura, for example, has a higher Elo on chess.com than FIDE. But that’s just nitpicky pedantry; I understand that you’re really asking is whether chess ability for a specific version of chess has subskills.
Among chess players and chess teachers, it is common (as you note) to break chess ability into three subskills:
Openings
Midgame
Endgame
Openings these days are mostly about memorizing solved lines. Openings are so well-solved and memorization-dependent, that they can be boring to top players. This boredom is a force behind the popularity of Fisher Random among top players.
Magnus Carlson (currently the world’s best chess player) is famous for his endgame ability. He’s less interested in openings (especially classical openings) these days. It’s not uncommon for him to open with something stupid, like switching his king and queen, and then still beat a grandmaster.
Could you use these subskills to predict competition results? Absolutely. If you were placing extremely precise bets on the outcomes of games, then you shouldn’t just consider Elo. In classical games, you should also consider how much time each player has prepared for the tournament by studying opening lines. You can extrapolate Elo trend lines too.
The reason nobody uses a breakdown this fine for competitions isn’t because it wouldn’t generate a small additional signal. It’s because nobody has a strong enough motivation too. There aren’t billions of dollars getting bet on chess competition results. Elo is perfectly adequate when you’re choosing who to invite to a chess tournament. It’s also extremely legible, too.
If you are putting that much effort into predicting outcomes, it may be cheaper to just bribe players. Bribery is especially cheap for chess variants with smaller prize pools, like Xiangqi.
That said, there does exist an organization that does analyze chess skill at extremely fine resolution: chess.com. But not to predict winners. Instead, chess.com analyzes player skill at resolutions finer than “Elo” because in order to detect cheating. Chess cheaters often exhibit telltale signs where their skill spikes really hard within a game. This signal is not detectable with mere Elo.