Considering the beat-down that Brother-leader Kramnik put on Mr Kasparov just 5 years earlier despite a ratings difference of 70 points, it was foolish of Topalov to make the above statement.

Of course he knew better and I believe he was merely playing mind games.

It is 5 years this month, how time flies hey.

Can't help but feel that he must be surprised and disappointed at the way things have turned out.

Danailov almost had the chess world by the balls when Topalov was riding high.

Thank goodness Topa didnt win in Elista, Danailov would have flung the chess world like a rag doll.

Can't begin to imagine the antics those two would have subjected us to.

They were choosing which journalist to talk to, who to ostracise, which tournaments to blacklist, even imposing their own rules etc.

He is most probably talking about the 60 points difference between 2700 and 2760.

No. Topalov/Danailov were talking exactly about the Elo difference between himself and Kramnik at the time. (Topalov had just won FIDE title in a tournament and Kramnik, who was hampered by physical pain associated with a medical condition, was falling in ratings after relatively indifferent, even poor competitive results.)

Yet the real underlying issue was that Topalov developed a peculiar variant of champions' disease and rather than challenging for the Stenitz-line title OTB, his manager Danailov angled to win the unified WC title for Topalov by a fiat.

and the silliest mistake topalov did when it comes to "rating tehnicalities", was to misjudge kramnik's current rating at the time for kramnik's actual, well-proven capacity as a chess player. as gypsy mentions, kramnik's rating at the time was the consequence of a string of weak results, probably caused by his physical illness. the rating system could reflect these performances - but how on earth could any system "predict" if and how much better he would/could perform once he was physically fit again?

if two players <consistently>, over time, are separated by 60-ish points i would agree that there's a difference in class. any player's current rating (interpreted without also taking history into account) is first and foremost an expression of his/her <most recent results>. most players have good and bad streaks; the streaks are mostly releatively short, but then there are streaky players who can go on good and bad streaks for longer periods of time - the "classical" example being ivanchuk.

it's all too easy to forget what ratings measure - results, not absolute skills. but consistent results over time is a good estimate of chess skills - imho the best we have.

(but nothing in the elo rating theory promises instant result prediction to be part of the package; that's a common misunderstanding and its current widespreadness is helped a lot by jeff sonas' two misguided projects: "inflation correction" and ranking of rating systems based on "immediate result prediction" capabilities. the first is clearly pointless/meaningless, while the second totally lacks solid justification. jeff being touted by chessbase as a "statistician" (as if statistics were his profession) and fide making him a member of their "rating expert group" haven't exactly made it easier to neutralize the more harmful effects of these projects.)

<I should also say that Topalov is right. The difference between peter-heine nielsen of 2700 and the regular top 10 guys is signficant>

here's the same effect as with kramnik pre 2006, but with reversed "signs": nielsen, while an excellent player and opening expert isn't capable of 2700 on average - when he gets to 2700, it's the consequence of a string of <above-average> results. heine's skills aren't oscillating up and down very much, but most players' results do indeed follow such a pattern.

so yes, the difference in skills is significant, but assigning "2700" to nielsen distorts the picture; the difference between his rating and the top 10 average is mostly significantly more than 60 points. also, when i say that radjabov and ivanchuk are "too close" to the top four players right now, it's for the same reasons. my expectation based on history is that their near future results will (again) regress towards the mean of their overall results. and while radjabov is young enough to increase his capacity as a player, i'm pretty confident that ivanchuk is not.

In Jan 2003 his 2735 rating was "sub-elite" against Kramniks 2809, but in 2.5 years or so he had not only bridged the gap, but passed him by 60 points.

Participants of grandmaster group A

Name Country Rating Position

GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2823 1
GM Levon Aronian ARM 2807 3
GM Sergey Karjakin RUS 2772 5
GM Veselin Topalov BUL 2768 6
GM Vasily Ivanchuk UKR 2765 7
GM Vugar Gashimov AZE 2756 10
GM Gata Kamsky USA 2756 11
GM Hikaru Nakamura USA 2753 12
GM Teymour Radjabov AZE 2752 13
GM Boris Gelfand ISR 2746 15
GM Anish Giri NED 2722 23
GM Fabiano Caruana ITA 2712 32
GM David Navara CZE 2705 42
GM Loek van Wely NED 2689 55

Average rating : 2752
Category : 21

Not probably it was caused by it.

Kramnik has apparently has proclaimed the queens gambit declined as refuting 1.d4 for a win.

He said something along those lines in the press conferences after the candidates.