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Originally Posted by bigpooch
Yes, I'm sure Kasparov will mention inflation one day!
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.
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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.
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).
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Originally Posted by ganstaman
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.
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.