Thursday 21 November 2013

Chess vs Running: prize money sharing

Green to play?
The 2013 world chess championships are underway, and although I do not much follow chess, I noticed how they shared their winnings is markedly different than running. By comparison, running is more of a winner take all. But there is a spectrum of distributions filling out the middle.

Below is the money distribution for Chess. The ratio from first to 8th is 115/21 = 5.47. Even more generous is the first and second-place ratio of  a mere 1.07.
  • 1st place – €115,000
  • 2nd place – €107,000
  • 3rd place – €91,000
  • 4th place – €67,000
  • 5th place – €48,000
  • 6th place – €34,000
  • 7th place – €27,000
  • 8th place – €21,000
By comparison, here's the prize structure for the 2013 Boston Marathon:
  • 1st place – $150,000
  • 2nd place – $75,000 
  • 3rd place –  $40,000 
  • 4th place –  $25,000 
  • 5th place –  $15,000 
  • 6th place –  $12,000 
  • 7th place –  $9,000 
  • 8th place –  $7,400 
The 1st/8th money ratio here is 150/7.4 = 20.2, and 1st/2nd ratio of 2. So in chess the runner up makes almost what the winner does, and 8th place make 18% of the winner, though not fantastic, compare to the runner-up for Boston who makes 50% while the 8th place makes only 5% of the winner. Boston is typical for running. For instance the ratios are similar to London, for which 2nd place makes 55% of the purse and 8th gets 7.3%.

But I wanted to see which, between chess and running, is more the outlier. That is, compared to other sports or competitions.

Sunday 17 November 2013

Title

Haven't been up to posting lately. Not for lack of things to say, but been busy. Here are cities of which I spent at least one hour in between Oct 19th and Nov 17th (i.e. Today)

London, Mumbai, Dhaka, Jaipur, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Delhi, New Jersey, Fredericton, Sussex, Toronto, Hamilton, Napanee, Ottawa, Saint John, and Halifax.

Here's the total distances below. At 34,000 km total I almost, but not quite, circled the earth (40,000 km). If I ran this same distance at a rate of 20 km/day it would have taken me 4.7 years to complete.

City 1 City 2 Distance (km)
Halifax. London 4631
London Mumbai, 7200
Mumbai, Dhaka, 1891
Dhaka, Mumbai, 1891
Mumbai, Jaipur, 928
Jaipur, Agra, 239
Agra, Kanpur, 278
Kanpur, Lucknow, 83
Lucknow, Delhi, 414
Delhi, Newark 11768 
Newark Halifax 968
Halifax Sussex, 344
Sussex, Fredericton, 118
Fredericton, Sussex, 118
Sussex, Halifax 344
Halifax Toronto, 1265
Toronto, Hamilton, 70
Hamilton, Ottawa, 478
Ottawa, Saint John 753
Saint John Halifax. 206
TOTAL 33987

This was all pretty random, that's for sure. It'd take a while to explain all of it, but it include work, vacation, visitation and death. Opinions and whatnot, I'm sure there will be time eventually.