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Oct-24-11 | | acirce: Yes, two more super-tournaments that both have all of Carlsen, Anand, Aronian and Kramnik! What a year. |
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Oct-24-11 | | Mr. Bojangles: <s," Topalov stressed. "In chess 60 Elo points means a different class altogether. If Vladimir was offered to play against someone 60 Elo points below himself he’d simply burst out laughing. If there is going to be a Topalov-Kramnik match, it will be on purely commercial basis. I do not believe we can play for the title because I’ve already won it here in San Luis. A Topalov-Kramnik match for the title is out of question...> 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. 05/06 Topalov was becoming invincible until Kramnik shattered that facade for good. He hasn't been the same since. |
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Oct-24-11 | | acirce: Col. Kramnik didn't burst out laughing when Lékó won the Dortmund qualifier either. The difference in rating was 85 points at that time. |
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Oct-24-11 | | Mr. Bojangles: Lol@Col Kramnik... |
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Oct-24-11
 | | chancho: 2006.
Good laughs:
http://www.chessbase.com/eventlist.... |
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Oct-24-11 | | Mr. Bojangles: Thx for d memories Chacho
It is 5 years this month, how time flies hey.
Damn we had a ball here !!!! |
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Oct-24-11
 | | chancho: <Mr Bojangles> Yeah, it was a laugh a minute. |
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Oct-24-11 | | jussu: The most famous laugh: http://www.chessbase.com/news/2006/... <nescio> - Of course, Tal Mem, too. Meaning that the two probably most notable tournaments of the year are still ahead. |
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Oct-24-11 | | acirce: <jussu> I thought your link would lead to this: http://chesspro.ru/match/images/pho... |
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Oct-24-11 | | Mr. Bojangles: Yes that was the Dracula Laff from Danailov.
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. Posterior-holes both of them! |
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Oct-24-11 | | The Rocket: <"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."> He is most probably talking about the 60 points difference between 2700 and 2760. That is those of the top 10 and the rest. It is well known that of the few that reach 2700 even fewer reach the top 10 |
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Oct-24-11 | | The Rocket: I should also say that Topalov is right.
The difference between peter-heine nielsen of 2700 and the regular top 10 guys is signficant |
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Oct-24-11
 | | Gypsy: <... 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. I remember it well. Till that point, I was an enthusiastic fan of Topa. I liked his fighting attitude. Then his attempt to gain title by fiat turned me off. Yet, when he later agreed to play Kramnik in the title unification match in Elista, I was ready to embrace Fighting Topa once again; whether he won or lost the match. Alas, when he and Danailov pulled off the toilet-gate crap in Elista, my regards for him got broken again, now apparently beyond repair. |
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Oct-24-11
 | | HeMateMe: Danailov is now president of the Europeon chess federation, or something like that? Why would the other countries want Topalov's manager to be in a leadership position? Is this a job title you can buy, like a peerage, in England? |
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Oct-25-11 | | jussu: <acirce>, Aye, I actually looked for that, but did not find it. |
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Oct-25-11 | | frogbert: <Topalov/Danailov were talking exactly about the Elo difference between himself and Kramnik at the time.> 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. summarizing, topalov - the world champion - clearly failed to draw the right kind of conclusions from the available rating data, <unless> it was all "propaganda" and exclusively aimed at causing discomfort in the kramnik camp. but even though the majority of the elite players are very smart people, not all of them necessarily have the deepest of insights into the rating system or the prerequisites to gain them. and why should they have? their expert area is, after all, chess - not maths or statistics. |
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Oct-25-11
 | | tamar: Those were heady days for Topalov, but overall I don't blame him for touting his ratings edge over Kramnik. Players do it all the time. 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. And you can hear in Kramnik's recent interview on whychess, that he himself divides players into elite and sub elite, so it is hardly just Topalov who only believes ratings when they are in his favor. |
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Oct-25-11 | | frogbert: <it is hardly just Topalov who only believes ratings when they are in his favor.> certainly. that makes things worse, not better, though. |
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Oct-25-11 | | bronkenstein: Giri`s comments on his games from Unive http://anishgiri.nl/html/eng/anish_... (credits to delftfan). |
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Oct-26-11 | | achieve: <Tata Chess 2012>
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
FIDE-ratings of September 2011 |
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Oct-26-11 | | The Rocket: <"probably caused by his physical illness"> Not probably it was caused by it.
It is unhuman or very difficult under the medication that he underwent to have any stort of consistent playing streight at the level he had before the illness. |
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Oct-26-11 | | The Rocket: "I managed to get Kramnik out of his Queen's Gambit fortress and it immediately paid off."- Giri 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. Of course no opening move is enough to win a chess game. This is plausibly shown by the fact that even objective advantages in the middlegames are not forced wins all the time. And the opening move advantage is far smaller than the middlegame edges you get. |
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Oct-28-11
 | | beenthere240: <The rocket> Sorry, I think someone in the mid 1900's (Adam Weaver, I believe) proved that 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 is a forced win for white. Unfortunately, Weaver's dog, Fermat, ate the analysis, forcing people to settle for the Ruy Lopez. |
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Oct-28-11 | | haydn20: I have an elegant proof that 1. a3 is a win by force, but this website is too small to contain it. |
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Jan-22-12
 | | maxi: <haydn20> To congratulate you for proving that 1.a3 wins would be the same as congratulating myself. Why? Because fifteen years ago I conclusively proved that 1.a3 wins by force. It is in my notebooks, as I don´t like to publish my results. |
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