On the live rating list, Caruana now has an official rating of 2800.0. He joins the exclusive club of Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Aronian and Carlsen.

Congrats to him!

Congrats indeed, extremely impressive accomplishment. Curious to see how high he can go. One can't help but feel that his career will be remembered in the shadow of Carlsen's.

rating inflation .........

i didnt use to think the rating inflation argument had much traction after the year 1998 based on the rating history of anand and kramnik. they have bounced around in the 2770-2820 range for the last 15 years. however, looking at the top guys wasnt the answer.

in july of 2000, there were 11 2700+ players
7/2003: 16
7/2006: 19
7/2007: 21
7/2008: 29
7/2009: 33
7/2010: 37
7/2011: 42
7/2012: 45
2700chess right now: 46

the more 2700s there are, the more 2800s there become. it does appear as if the rate of growth of 2700s is slowing down, but as these ratings stabilize and the younger generation comes through there should be an influx of 2800s emerging from the group of 2700s. i suspect in 5 years that there probably wont be more than 55 2700 rated players, but the entire top 5 will be in the 2800s



nonetheless, great accomplishment to reach the top 3 and the 2800 number. apestyles made a bet a few months back that carlsen would remain the highest rated player for the next 5 years. the person he bet against was a big aronian backer and thought it was >50% that levon would pass him at some point. however, it seems that the real threat will end up being caruana who is still improving and has not reached his peak yet

Who cares? it's a big accomplishment even if you try to downplay it.



Zy

fyp.

He used to play fairly often in our local club when he was 8-10 years old, and I played him a few times. I knew he would be very good but obviously had no idea I was playing a future 2800.

Nailed it

Rating inflation is a rise of the mean (average), not an increase the number above some bound, which could simply be due to an increase in participation.

It's probably going to be really difficult to analyze with FIDE dropping the floor though.

I doubt that the size of the rating pool quadrupled in 12 years. It's not proof, but the odds are relatively low that the number of people above this specific bound would go up by a factor of four if participation increased by a much smaller factor. Statistically possible, but not likely. An increase in the average (inflation) is a more plausible explanation.

Proving it will be very tricky, though.

The level, quantity and quality of resources available for improvement have improved well beyond a magnitude, let alone 4x, is the past dozen years.

Without a doubt there is rating inflation. Unfortunately my rating was pretty stable over the last 20 years which means .... I GOT WORSE!!!

I was expecting someone to reply pointing out that Caruana got doomswitched as soon as he touched the even 2800 mark.

I suppose now he will only join the 2800 club if people count live ratings.

I still expect him to get a published rating of >2800 at some point in his career, but definitely he has a hill to climb to get back there after his (post round 1) performance here.

I have had the luck to talk with him for a quarter of an hour seven years ago, and even then his intellect fascinated me. The way he was thinking about chess superseded his age group by a huge margin. He was also humble and laid back.

years ago in pool there was a rating system similar to chess, and over a 10 year period there was "Rating inflation" as well, i think its the nature of games-non specific to any particular game.

in any case its still one heck of a achievement.

At some point hopefully.