To be fair, I guess Chainakhov has a fair chance of making the final 32 where the payment starts.
My consideration of "dead money" players are those with probability less than 50% of making the final 8 (quarter finals). I place players Chainakhov, Earl etc. in that category regardless of their past prowess. Dead money players are specific to the tournament and the people playing in it. I would not put Chainakhov and Earl in the dead money category for the Turning Stone classic, for example.
Here is Chinakhov's road to the final 8:
vs Robert Sopha 10-3, vs Tuan Chau 10-4, vs Jonathan Pinegar 10-5, vs Josh Roberts 10-6 and vs Bader Al-Awadhi 10-8.
Meanwhile players like Jayson Shaw, Naoyuki Oi, Fedor Gorst, Alex Pagulayan, Lee Van Corteza, and Alex Kazakis did not make it to the final 8.
As per Fargo ratings, it has Chinakhov above Justin Bergman, Bustamante, Roberto Gomez, Denis Grabe, Ralf Souquet, Thorsten Hohmann, Omar Al-Shaheen, Chris Melling, John Morra, Mika Immonen, Darren Appleton etc. That speaks for itself, enough said!
Fargo reminds me of the points system for the All-American team in trapshooting. The reasonably good shooters with lots of time on their hand attend many shoots and accumulate points that put them in the top standing for All-American points. However, when the team is chosen, they only take your top 7 scores and a lot of these people fall to the wayside and cannot make the team.

BTW, was it supposed to be Far
tgo?
