sokrates, are the two debating on their own, or is someone presenting/arguing a different position? so far big pawn seems by far the most well-spoken in this grantedly off-topic debate - but those who try to challenge him are equally off-topic.

I see that he has once again gained valuable rating points without having to face REAL opposition.

btw, why do you care for rating points at all, chessinfinite, when you don't believe in the rating system at all?

Carlsen seems to be very comfortable in the Single/Double round robin style events where he can score heavily against GMs other than those 4, and still win the tournament ( remember London 10 ? ).

All i am saying is that it would be very impressive for him to see win one such event where more or all of those player are involved...

chess.liverating.org is going to stay put, and there are more things to follow, but not necessarily tomorrow. i intend to use my site for more chess stats related stuff as time and energy permit, including more graphs, articles, added/improved functionality and so on.

but maybe over a 2-5 year period - work and home account for the big majority of my time anyway (and both have demanded more over the past two years), and i even have other hobbies beside chess. and there are other things i like to do within chess too, like <playing> once in a while, and <discussing> various topics on cg.com and elsewhere.

[i'd assume not having carlsen counts as much as not having, say, aronian.]

what was more "heavy-weight", tata steel or bazna?

maybe the former, but how much does that say about how hard it is to perform well or not in the event?

tata had more top players, and it had many more sub-top players (even sub-2700 players). if you ask naka, what do you think he'll say was the toughest challenge? (oh, scratch that: he'll say that he played super-well in waz and terrible in bazna - although the difference probably was much smaller than he seems to think.) for reference: -1 in bazna, +5 in tata.

carlsen finished (0,5 points) behind anand in waz, in shared 3rd, so he didn't win. but why? you mentioned anand, aronian and kramnik. let's include naka too, the winner in waz - then we get the top 5 players in that event. how did they score against each other there?

1. carlsen +2 (2 draws, beat naka, kramnik)
2-3 anand = (4 draws)
2-3 aronian = (4 draws)
4-5 kramnik -1 (lost to carlsen)
4-5 nakamura -1 (lost to carlsen)

not too bad for carlsen, i'd say. how about the <rapid> chess played in amber? there all of topalov, anand, kramnik, aronian and carlsen were present. results:

1. carlsen +3 (3 wins, drew aronian)
2. aronian +1 (3 draws, beat anand)
3. topalov = (-carlsen, +kramnik, 2 draws)
4-5. anand -2 (-carlsen, -aronian, 2 draws)
4-5. kramnik -2 (-carlsen, -topalov, 2 draws)

again, carlsen doesn't look too shady, does he? if you're studying the details/facts, you'll find out that carlsen didn't drop 24 points from 2826 to 2802 (to give anand the number one spot again) due to bad results against top players, but rather due to generally being slightly out of shape for some months (the single worst result was the olympiad, with 3 losses against much lower rated players). in waz he missed the top spot due to going 0/2 against giri and nepo, with the <white> pieces. and not at all because aronian, anand and kramnik were present.

so your theory doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, chessinfinite.

If you went to a psychiatrist with your stories, he would have you in a straightjacket, on meds and in the closed ward before you could say "Jack Nicholson", were it not for the fact such ludicrous crap is socially accepted because it is called Christian Belief.>

Simon - I am not going to debate this here anymore, but:

Debate me somewhere. You have no idea what you are talking about. I can argue *for Athiesm* better than you can. You're tone and sarcasm reveal your lack of confidence. You have no ideas and you'd never debate me anywhere.

congrats to both Carlsen and Karjakin.

Can anyone clarify why Karjakin is on top in the results? According to the official site Carlsen ended on top by the Sonneborn-Berger-Tie-Break variable (? something to do with the ratings of the ones they defeated ?).

chessgames.com has never implemented any real sorting in their tables except for by points. after that it follows some "internal-to-cg.com's-implementation" value that creates some in-theory-predictable ordering - but it's got nothing to do with varying tie-break rules of the tournaments, anyway.

They wont remove them. They would have to dismantle half of the site. Well it doesn't matter really what his religious views are. I have my own views (I don't belong to any religion as such) my parents being devout atheists!! I believe there is SOME raison d'etre but what I think we can never fully know.

Religion, politics and Fischer are the three topics on here that trigger people.

Sex usually takes a back seat!