With one round to go, Carlsen has won the tournament leading second place by two points after a fairly uneventful draw against Radjabov.

Congrats to Magnus Prime

Sad crosstable imo. 3 whole decisive games other than those played by Carlsen.

Standard imo.

It'd prob be about 4 decisive games in entirety if Carlsen wasnt pimped out by Kaspy.

Another win today against Jakovenko. Which means a 3002 (!) performance, and he will probably climp above 2800 on the next rating list.

Wonder if he could be the first human to cross 2900 or if this was just some run goods.

That'd be pretty funny.

GM < SuperGM < Magnus

First goal must be Kasparov's all-time high of 2849 (although back then in 2000 only 11 players were above 2700 - today the number is 32 - so a bit of inflation should be expected)

Jakovenko just tried to draw, going out of his way to trade off both bishops as Black.

Then just played passive defense, and got absolutely steam-rolled.

Congrats to Optimus Magnus Prime

That probably depends somewhat on how many novelties Kasparov has been hoarding.

My guess is that the number of novelties/system improvements overall

would be more than you would expect.

I would imagine playing Carlsen now in theory would be like walking through a landmine field.

Yeah, supposedly Kasparov has literally hundreds of unused novelties. That's pretty cool, actually; in a sense, it's an example of creativity triumphing over analytical prowess (you might beat someone who's a bit better at chess than you because you look at an opening line in a new way and found a creative new idea that you then spring on your unsuspecting opponent).

Combine that already with a top 10 (top 5) world player and you get an absolute monster who can perhaps perform like he did at Nanjing with some regularity..

Carlsen is a monster with a 3000+ performance in that tourney seriously, thats @!#!@$

The value of these novelties depends on whether Kasparov's former second Yuri Dokhoian, who was keeper of his opening database, is free for hire.

I'm sure that's either

1. part of the package
or
2. Kasparov has access to his own database.

Carlsen is on currently on an upswing based on a samplesize of 10 games. Regression to the mean will catch up with him. Carlsen, Grischuk, Radjabov and Aronian all pretty much have the same strength over the board. It is just their choice of openings that makes the difference, but this factor is changing on an everyday basis.

There is this idiotic view that "young" means something, because the best players of the past were much older on average*. Based on early success people usually predict much bigger success in the future. Bacrot and Leko were successful early but they never made it. Carlsen is certainly a favorite to become world champion one day, but what are the odds? Would you lay 10:1 or 100:1 or even 1000:1?

There is another idiotic view and this is that Elo 3000 means something. Elo is relative to the competition. Fischer had 2700 when 3 other guys had 2600 and the rest was in the 2500 range. Kasparov had 2800 when 3 guys had 2700 and the rest was in the 2600 range. One day Carlsen may have 3300 with 3 guys at 3200 and the rest at 3100. In the end nothing has changed. That inflation started in the early 90s when you could travel to weekend tourneys in Hungary and pay for a FM title. I even know a few average players who went there with 2100 and came back with 2300 and the title. They lost back the points pretty fast, but kept the title. These points raised the average in the pool.

* People forget the computer factor. Polugaevsky spend years of analysis before he played his variation for the first time. Nowadays, you run the engine for 30 minutes and know more about it than he ever did. Information comes much faster these days.

It's beyond ridiculous to say Carlsen, Grischuk, Radjabov, Aronian all have the same strength over the board. Just look at their games. It's not like Carlsen was just crushing his opponents with theoretical novelties. He was outplaying people hard. His game against Wang Yue was an excellent example of this. Wang was the one who was prepped hard core. Carlsen calculated, over the board, a speculative piece sacrifice and destroyed his opponent's home preparation with it.

Or Carlsen - Radjabov. They actually had played that exact variation earlier this year, and the first person to deviate: Radjabov. Radjabov was also the first person to play a novelty. And Carlsen again crushes him rapidly.

Just because just almost nobody is able to quantify the exact difference in their level of play doesn't mean it's zero. FWIW, Carlsen has now unofficially broken 2800. Only 4 other players have ever done that, and they all have 1 thing in common.

I think it's beyond ridiculous to say that it's beyond ridiculous to say all these players have approximately the same strength.

They do.

Aronian is at least as good as Carlsen (maybe a little bit better right now), and he will probably win the Chess Oscar this year. And deservedly so. Grischuk and Radjabov are a notch worse than the other two, but not by much. Carlsen had one good tourney right now, but that doesn't mean so much in the long run. After all, his results in 2009 so far (before Nanjing) have not been too impressive.

Edit:
To back this up, I just looked at their statistics. Aronian is up 11 wins to 6 against Carlsen (18 draws). In 2009 it is 2-0 (3 draws). Grischuk leads Carlsen 4-1 (5 draws).

Time, I think, will prove me right.

Relatively small rating differences at these levels are huge strength wise.

The difference between a 950 and a 1000 is practically nonexistent. 1600 and 1650 is very small. 2350 and 2400 is pretty large. 2600 and 2650 is a major difference. 2750 and 2800 is massive.

As such I have a bit less of a problem comparing him to Aronian than to Radjabov/Grischuk. But comparing him to Radjabov/Grischuk is just silly.

Carlsen's success is much more substanstial than either Leko or Bacrot and at a much earlier age. Bacrot first entered the top ten at 22, Leko's highest ELO ranking of forth was first achieved at age 24 (according to wikipedia). Carlsen is currently in the top 4 at 18, and in the next rating list looks certain to be ranked number 2.

major QFT

A+ reply post.


Bottom line: Carlsen out-played people. and he will probably continue to do so.

:: buys a lot of Optimus Magnus Prime stock ::

I would exclude Radjabov from the mix, but i wouldn't say Carlsen is that much better than Grischuk or Aronian (who had some outstanding results this year) based on Nanjing alone. Wait for the Tal Memorial and Wijk and we'll know more.

I concur, this is probably just the start of what is to come.

I'm really curious as to what Kasparov has prepared for Aronian and Grischuk...

Interesting article on the historical perspective of Magnus' performance:

http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5828