Nothing too big today. Just your everyday, 1 vs. 2, 5655 combined live rating, uninteresting matchup

Carlsen looking strong with white just by playing simple, straightforward, control-the-center chess.

carlsen is gonna done one more strategic crush

look at the clock now, still lots of moves left before 40min, aronian will make some more small misstake and carlsen will beat another 2800...

and there the misstake...

I love watching center pawns just roll up the board like this.

In before 3 queens on the board

Really impressive game, doesn't look like he's playing against the worlds #2 and that's not at all a smirk against Aronian.

I think this kid can become really good at this game.

Are the games posted somewhere? I'm at work and can't log onto ICC to check them out. Y'all are teasing me with all of this Carlsen talk.

http://www.tatasteelchess.com/tournament/livegames

Also, Nakamura gets himself into the weirdest, ugliest positions.

In the Carlsen-Aronian match, the houdini-approved best move in the current position, after 37. ... Rd6, is pretty sick. When the games are over and I can get a PGN to put it in the diagram generator, I'll post it.

Carlson-approved

White to move, black just played Rd6.

Thanks for the link Kyle.

And yes, Bc1 is indeed disgusting. Gorgeous move.

Although finding Bc1 is for us mortals really impressive, I don't think Carlsen will be satisfied with how he played during Aronian time troubles.

Also I really really don't get why he didn't play 34.e7 (Rxd5 35.e8Q), I was under the impression that Aronian would resign after e7. But It's 2 easy to miss for Carlson so I'm probably wrong. Houdini agrees with me though.

I'm glad he didn't though. Seeing houdini spell out the whole Bc1 combination and then them playing it perfectly in time trouble was a lot of fun.

Giri

seems like Carlsen is about to finish up the clean-up work in the endgame. Very nice win, assuming that's what it is.

Nice game by Carlsen ( he hasn't won quite yet, but after Kc5 it's extremely grim for Aronian ) and what happened to Giri? Giri had a nice run, but he'll get over his blunder; besides, he's only a 17-year old 2700+ GM.

Five of the participants are younger than Radjabov and the tournament is this strong!

I would have blown that endgame, not finding Nd4+

I just realized there is a big chance that Carlson saw the whole 38.Bc1 move and cyclus basically untill the position after move 46 (and took the time to analyse that position) before he took on f7 on move 34. He had to at least seen it when he played 36.Kxg2 otherwise that makes no sense at all but yeah he probably already saw it when he took on f7. So that's the reason that he didn't go for e7.

Still the wrong decision I guess but a sick, sick impression of what super GMs can do.

Serieusly, put the replayer on move 34 and then go to 46 and realise that before Bc1 Aronian also has some other moves (after that it's more or less forced) and also Carlson has to compare this position with position he got when he just won the rook against knight advantage by playing 34.e7.

Sick

Nothing wrong with Giri's tournament, just rooting for him so I want him to win every game

Also rooting for Navaro who had one of his brainfarts today. Guy is so talented but there's never ever been a 2700+ player who makes so much big blunders.

And that's another win for Carlsen. He is now less than 9 points away from reaching the highest rating ever achieved.

This is fascinating to think about because Carlsen's brain is still developing. He will probably pass Kasparov in the next year or two, (and Kasparov will INSTANTLY do an interview or write an article where he references ratings inflation repeatedly).

Unless Magnus goes insane (a real possibility given his brain-type), I think 2900 is easily within his reach, and even 2960 isn't out of the question, due to a combination of his strength and severe ratings inflation.

Since average ratings went up by roughly 50 points in the last 10 years, we could estimate, conservatively, that Carlsen will equal Kasparov's 1999 strength (I believe he is more talented than Kasparov and is in the Morphy/Capablanca/Khan/Fischer class) and gap between his contemporaries when Carlsen reaches age 30, which will be in 2020, and at which point a 2851 rating in 1999 will be roughly equivalent to a 2951 rating.

Yes, I'm sure Kasparov will mention inflation one day!

Maybe if Carlsen played with the killer instinct of Fischer every game and maybe if the World Championship matches weren't so long, he could get above 2900. I don't think FIDE will do anything about any rating inflation, and since Magnus still has quite a lot of chess ahead of him, after today's game against Lev, I'd like to change my "guess" to ~2900.

How is Kasparov not in that list, especially if you're putting Khan in there? To be honest, this is the first time I've seen anyone put Khan in a top 4 list.

Is this what happened to Morphy and Fischer? Sad if its a true possibility.

Absolutely. Garry is a brilliant passive-aggressive saboteur when it comes to defending his status. I've read several in the "Great Predecessors" series and they served only to convince me that he wrote them solely to have an excuse to pick apart Capablanca and Fischer in a public forum.

I think that's a good conservative estimate. He's going to gain 50 points in the next 10 years due to inflation alone...and he's already 2840(!) and over 30 points ahead of the World #2 (who he just put a whupping on today).

Well, I'm not rating them based on overall greatness at chess or long-term success (Kasparov would be #1)...I'm just going based on raw talent. Sultan Khan had an incredible skill level given that he was apparently illiterate and unable to read chess books, and he beat Capablanca (!), after which Capablanca acknowledged that Khan was a genius. That's good enough to impress me.

Garry to me is more like the Michael Jordan of Chess. Jordan was the greatest ever at the sport, but not a 7-foot physical freak on the level of Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O'Neal were. Kasparov is the greatest chess player ever by resume, but not the mental freak that Morphy, Capablanca, Khan (possibly Pillsbury) and Fischer were...or that Carlsen probably is.

IM Grover v. GM Adhiban in Group C today. Watch an IM get crushed under QRR complications.

Also, Happy Draw Day, everybody!

Harikrishna finally stopped by Cmilyte in a game where all kinds of crazyness happened without, according to the on-site Houdini evaluation, ever leaving the drawing margin. Worth playing over.