Anyway, I simply see him as a very strong chess player, strong enough to face anyone in blitz -- even if this is not his specialty. And right now he happens to be (and deservingly so, he played a great tournament) the blitz world champion -- besides being #1 in classical rating.

There is a handful is extremely good players who can beat each other depending on what day of the week they played or what they had for lunch.

True.

No need to make a lot of excuses for Magnus.He is , chesswise , a grownup and doesn´t deserve to be pampered like a little kid.

metatron2, i don't understand what you think is a problem here.

i say that <correcting> for inflation is meaningless, and hence i don't even try to do that. that's consistent, non inconsistent.

furthermore i have made no direct comparisons of tprs that are more than 10 years apart: i've listed tprs for kasparov between 1995 and 2005, and given tprs for carlsen for 2008 and 2009. and i said that you shouldn't compare numbers that are more than 5-10 years apart because then the common base of reference becomes too small.

what does that mean? you shouldn't compare kasparov's 1995 performance with carlsen's 2009 performance, for instance. but it makes good sense to compare kasparov's 2003-2005 performances with those of carlsen in 2008-2009, by the same argument.

i basically had two points:

1) kasparov wasn't producing "kasparovian results" every time he played, of the kind carlsen did in nanjing - at least not for the last 10 years of his active career, during which period kasparov himself claims he played his best chess. <the tprs varied hugely>.

hence, even the phrase "kasparovian result" becomes a bit of a misnomer; it tries to establish a mythology around kasparov's career, instead of looking at it in an impressed, but neutral and realistic modus. my reasons for limiting myself to 10 years for kasparov's performances, was to make these tprs more or less <internally> comparable - kasparov compared to kasparov.

2) my second point was to show that what carlsen has produced lately (2008-2009), in particular in 2009, isn't terribly far away from what kasparov produced in a more or less comparable environment - or pool of players. but don't go further back than 2000, because the differences just becomes bigger and bigger, mostly because of the <new> competition around today that wasn't there in kasparov's days, but also (to a somewhat lesser degree) because some of kasparov's peers probably have seen their best days now - but this effect is much slower than the upgrowth of new talent, obviously.

karpov, bareev, adams, kamsky and shirov are examples of players that in various degrees have faded compared to their best years during kasparov's reign. i think it's much harder to conclude that anand, kramnik, topalov, ivanchuk, gelfand and morozevich have been weaker players during 2005-2009 (carlsen's years so far) than during 1995-2005, the last of kasparov's years.

the most radical change remains the number of younger players that have supplemented the elite group of players - players that were completely absent in the picture of 1999-2000. then i basically think of any current 2700+ players born in 1982 or later: aronian, gashimov, wang yue, mamedyarov, grischuk, eljanov, radjabov, ponomariov, jakovenko, vachier-lagrave, karjakin, wang hao, bacrot, navara, nakamura, tomashevsky and alekseev to mention 16-17 of them, in addition to carlsen himself, of course.

for some reason many people seem to think it has become <easier> to score high tprs because there are so many 2700+ players now. but the players i mentioned above are all super-strong players, and while possibly not all of them are equally strong relatively as the segment ranked 10 to 25 in 1995-2000 (the vast majority of them are (naturally) not top 10 yet), the idea that this big bunch of players are much weaker than players hovering around rank ten 10-15 years ago, appears very strange to me.

and note the following: from carlsen's and kasparov's views respectively, the task of preparing well for 20-30 different (and steadily new) very strong elite players during a typical year (carlsen's reality) is something i consider notably harder than preparing well against maybe 10-20 (max) different elite players during a typical year (kasparov's reality). the increased breadth is clearly not an advantage for the best and most famous and most studied player(s). additionally, due to strong computers these days, the number of strong chess players that can assist an elite player with preparing nasty stuff for his opponents is <clearly> bigger than ever.

i've done neither. i tried to explain how i saw the mechanics and psychology of the final. and i've given lots of credit to nakamura for his skills, both mental and otherwise - i explicitly said it was impressive how he came back after playing not very well in the first two games, and i similarly said carlsen was <not> able to make his come-back. i even half-jokingly suggested a sports psychologist - for <carlsen>, not for nakamura.

and earlier today, when i was leaving, i turned around and went 10 meters back when i saw nakamura emerging from the crowd, so that i could shake his hand and congratulate him with his victory, while i wished him good luck in london.

if that's made out to being a poor loser, then you set the bar pretty high for being a good loser!

and nowhere did i say nakamura's win wasn't deserved or anything. he made fewer mistakes than carlsen in the decisive moments of the games, and hence he deserved to win. but carlsen could've decided the final (essentially) in game two, and he didn't. that's also part of the story. and also his inability to recover from that "stupid loss".

and in my own experience: losing a game where you were clearly winning is much worse than losing a game where being deconstructed by the opposition from move one.

anyway, i was among the first to congratulate nakamura with his win, and apart from that, i repeatedly refuse to see the world in black or white, making claims like "today nakamura was clearly the best player and gave carlsen a real beating". that's simply nonsense and doesn't very well describe what went on.

be serious please:

Corus 5.-6.
Linares 3.
Dortmund 2.-4.
Tal Memorial 2.-3.

and please, be serious:

you can't compare what carlsen does with <what you think kasparov <<<would have>>> done>.

Why are you drawing my attention to a comment I made on a game Carlsen played at the Tal Blitz mega fest, accompanied with the "no offense intended" remark - while at the same time engaging in historical comparisons that are imo completely irrelevant and merely filling these pages with garbage?

Any explanation? Motive?

I looked up your previous comment, and it was chess technically as shallow as can be.

Why do you alternate posts with perfect spelling and grammar, and a reasonable chess understanding, only to switch to posting complete syntactical gibberish and idiotic tendentious, trollish remarks about Carlsen, Naka, Karja ??

We all know the history and who's kissing who; but please just clear up these little contradictory signals I keep noticing.

I feel you are poisoning the Carlsen page this way, and I do not know why. But this is getting too obvious now.

Thanks.

and you "forgot" these:

I agree about the healthy approach, though I see no sound point in estimating how Naka would have done in a 42 rd marathon blitz fest. Less well than Carlsen, that is. Unnecessary speculative one might argue.

<... I see no sound point in estimating how Naka would have done in a 42 rd marathon blitz fest. Less well than Carlsen, that is. Unnecessary speculative one might argue.>

I agree.

Wrongfully accusing me will not look good on you, just stick to the text or put me on ignore, or try and get that whistle going.

I just came home from badminton and am here, just gotten ready and prepared, to have a civil talk for old times sake.

Drunk posting is familiar to you, and i bailed you out in the past.

Will you go any lower? If you do make sure you back up the tough talk at my forum, for example.

The change make sense to me!!

heh - but entertaining blitz duel today, for sure.

For sure! but I missed the (best) part of it, attending a birthday party. No milk there, (un)fortunately :)