| Jun-16-04 | | weepingwarrior: Here's a neat game with the "Bishop Pair" verses the "Knight Pair". Even though the game is drawn, I feel the the Knight Pair won a small battle. I think Lasker would have been proud of the way Mister Khalifman handled those critters. Bravo! |
 |
| Jun-17-04 | | 600POUNDGORILLA: Khalifman is vastly underrated. He's capable of playing ANY master on earth to a draw or better. Khalifman is also very interesting to talk to, he's not a one trick pony. |
|
Jun-17-04
 | | acirce: <Khalifman is vastly underrated. He's capable of playing ANY master on earth to a draw or better.> Most 2668'ers are that. Why do you think he's underrated, btw? Has he not deserved the results he has got? Has his opponents been cheating? |
|
| Jun-17-04 | | 600POUNDGORILLA: I think Khalifman is underrated because he's not mentioned when strong GMs are mentioned. Khalifman is up there with the best of them. As far as "rating" goes, which is what you think I meant, ratings mean NOTHING. You have beaten masters, yes? Do you REALLY think you are a better player than they are? But you beat them. Rating means nothing without context. And Khalifman shows up to play when it matters..just look at his results vs top players. Khalifman/Kramnik= +0/-0/=3, Vs. Karpov +4/-3/=2, Kaspy +0, -3, =6, Shirov +1,-1, =8, Kamsky +2, -1, =1, Topalov +2, -1, =2, Polgar +2, -2, =4. Clearly this guy is a topnotch player, only Kaspy has an advantage. |
|
| Jun-17-04 | | PinkPanther: Anand destroyed him, like 11 to 0. |
|
Jun-17-04
| | acirce: <I think Khalifman is underrated because he's not mentioned when strong GMs are mentioned.> Okay, I partly agree. <As far as "rating" goes, which is what you think I meant, ratings mean NOTHING.> Well, of course it does. Ratings reflect your performances, and thereby indirectly your strength; far from perfect, but on the whole they work. A 2600 player is almost always better than a 2400 player etc. <Khalifman/Kramnik= +0/-0/=3, Vs. Karpov +4/-3/=2, Kaspy +0, -3, =6, Shirov +1,-1, =8, Kamsky +2, -1, =1, Topalov +2, -1, =2, Polgar +2, -2, =4.> You're taking those statistics from the chessgames.com database, right? I wouldn't trust it, it is way too incomplete. Anyway, you are leaving out Anand, who has 11 wins and 0 losses against Khalifman in this base! And Leko has 3-1, not counting draws. So if we judge after this base, he has only one win against the top 4 rated players, compared to 17 losses. |
|
| Jun-17-04 | | 600POUNDGORILLA: Take anand and Kasparov out of those figures and what do you have? Who hasn't been dominated by those 2 guys? Btw..that Anand stat looks pretty "fluky" to me. |
|
Jun-17-04
| | acirce: <Who hasn't been dominated by those 2 guys?> Of course! Any player who are substantially worse than Anand and Kasparov will be dominated by them. <Btw..that Anand stat looks pretty "fluky" to me.> 11 wins and 0 losses is no fluke, but it could be that some Anand fan happened to add exactly these games and not all the ones Khalifman won... not likely in this case though, but in principle you shouldn't trust the chessgames.com stats blindly just as I said in my previous post. |
|
| Jun-17-04 | | 600POUNDGORILLA: Good point. I'll take the stats from chessgames at face value though. Maybe Khalifman has beaten him a couple times and the games haven't been posted, but no matter. Kasparov is clearly one of the best ever, and Anand is hardly a slouch by any means. It doesn't diminish the fact that Khalifman is a top master in chess. To diminish Khalifman would be akin to diminishing Keres achievements. He was a perennial #3 on the world chess stage, after all. I veiw Khalifman at about that level...not THE best..but pretty close. Another thing to consider...and this may surprise everybody here. The LONGEVITY of Khalifman. He has been playing at the upper tier for about 15 years now. But his success has been so "low key" that hardly anybody knows about the guy. Go over his games and I'm sure you'll agree he's underrated. |
|
| Jun-17-04 | | PinkPanther: There are numerous players who haven't been "dominated" by Anand. Topalov, Gelfand, Short, Kramnik, and Kamsky all come to mind. |
|
|
 |
|
