<i would think that american chess tournaments in general are stupid (i don't, mind you), >

when i just wrote

<even <if> i would think that american chess tournaments in general are stupid (i don't, mind you),>

---

<People think playing in American-style swisses is bad for your chess game (like playing too much blitz)>

the only reason i've been skeptical to doing that in the case of nakamura, was that after he'd reached 2650, he hardly met any opponents there that would represent any challenge for him.

until you reach 2600-level (fide) or so, there's nothing wrong in playing us swisses. the more above that level you are, the less developing it'll be for your chess to keep playing down and down all the time.

Here's one of your posts from March 2008 (page 105):

<a tournament similar to the recent heviz category 16 tournament held in hungary (double round robin with balogh, naiditsch, nisipeanu, almasi, vallejo and mikhalevski, average 2645) would've been an excellent learning experience for nakamura, who rather seldomly faces players rated above 2600.

while nakamura sure is a very talented fellow, gaining rating points against player around 2650 is very different than destroying 2500-averages (and lower) like nakamura has most experience doing. as far as i'm concerned, it's no point banging your head hard in the wall of the world top 25, which so far is on a different level, unknown to nakamura. :o)>

Funny....Back then you were saying he only beats 2500s, and has no experience beating 2650 players

It sounds strangely similar to the arguments you make now....Except now you say he "only" beats 2650 players, and doesn't do so well against 2700s!

And your clear implication is that the 'top 25' was WAY beyond his level at the time

<how "unpopular" as it might be among american chess fans, there are probably around 8-10 players as young and/or stronger than nakamura that yet haven't played in the very elite events (without first directly qualifying for it at least once)>

Then you go on to say who those players, who are "as young and/or stronger" are:

<the best example is probably karjakin, who has two starts in corus a. ...

the three chinese bu (2708 - 1985), ni (2704 - 1983) and wang (2703 - 1987), cheparinov* (2713 - 1986), jakovenko (2735 - 1983), alekseev (2716 - 1985) and movsesian (unofficially 2707 now, will be 2695 in april). from the good 1983 edition, there also are eljanov (2701) and dominguez (2695), for instance.>

It's interesting to read that now...do you STILL think those players are "stronger" than Nakamura, and more deserving of invitations?

Or were you just fixated on the fact that they had about 30 or so more rating points at the time.....

which was true at the time, easily documentable. your point is?

<It sounds strangely similar to the arguments you make now....Except now you say he "only" beats 2650 players, and doesn't do so well against 2700s!>

that's false. i don't say that. you need to pay attention to what i actually say, riverbeast.

the above was the case for the entire 2009. again, easy to document - it was a simple description of matters in 2009.

based on his first events in 2010 (plus london 2009), i've said, quite clearly, on this very page that nakamura has adapted to playing 2700+ players and that 2700+ players no longer is any notable problem. that only happened towards the end of 2009 and in the beginning of 2010, though.

between those march 2008 statements and nakamura's cat. 18 debut in san sebastian, he did <exactly what i said he should do> - get more experience and prove himself against stronger 2600-playesr. he did, and what do you know - he's now got the invitations to the events where he's started to gain notable experience against 2700+ players.

<my initial reaction was that the "tournament calendar" listed above was depressing. nakamura might manage to gain rating by playing another national open and so on, but he will hardly gain valuable experience. i feel like i'm repeating myself, but nakamura is a rather hot and interesting player for organizers of closed category 15-17 events - and closed category 15-17 events should be rather hot and interesting events for nakamura. limping around playing even more "stupid" (sorry!) american opens to "manipulate the rating", instead of playing some good quality round robins against even and strong competition, simultaneously sulking about not being invited to the super-gm events, sounds like one of the more futile strategies i've ever heard about.

there was one single "good" thing in that tournament calendar, and that was the french league participation.>

so basically you were saying he was playing in 'stupid' (ahem) American tournaments to "manipulate his rating"...But he really hadn't proven he was a strong enough player

<"insulting" the corus organizers by turning down the corus b invitation and naming the offered conditions "ridiculous" (or something similar), is showing the social skills of fischer - without having the chess skills to go with such a "strategy".>

no, i said it was way above the level he'd used to face, which was 2500s and low 2600s. again, completely true.

and i said it would make sense to take one step at the time - first taking on the 2650+ players before going after the elite. that sounds like very good advice to me.

i was saying that in order to become a <better chess player>, nakamura (at 2650+) should opt for <stronger opposition>, not getting a higher rating number. and what happened? he <failed> to reach his rating goals (2730 by the end of 2008) by the method of playing in us opens. instead he started playing <european events>, faced stronger players, started to take chess more seriously, improved as a chess player by playing the kind of opposition i had suggested, and <then> he got his invitations.

<Apparently he didn't "insult" the corus organizers at all...>

The point is, there were some people who said Nakamura was headed toward the elite, and belonged with them, way back in March of 2008

They were dismissed as "kooky", "delusional", "irrational", "unobjective", and "partisan"

To be fair, most of those comments came from other kibitzers as well, not just <Frogbert>...so I don't mean to single him out or gang up on him

But <frogbert> provided most of the 'analysis' as to why Nakamura didn't really belong, and hadn't really proven himself

And please don't tell me Nakamura's game IMPROVED so much in the meantime...I don't think that's true...Some people saw (correctly) that Nakamura was playing strong, 'elite' chess almost two years ago

The argument I was trying to make, is that if you're consistently beating 2500 players, then you MUST be a 2700 player!

Or were you just fixated on the fact that they had about 30 or so more rating points at the time...>

i think i also listed current achievements as of that time. for tournament invitations there are basically 2-3 things to go by: rating (as an objective measure), achievements (results in varying strong fields/events) and to some degree fame/age/local connection/etc also count.

all of the above players had more impressive results in international events at the time of writing (imo). only until his last 4-5 events has nakamura made a big catch-up to most of those players. in terms of <unrealized potential> i do consider nakamura to have the biggest among these players today. and that's a <change> from 2 years ago.

however, to say that the evaluation back in 2008 was wrong - note, i was not talking about <potential> or <talent> - is quite far-fetched. those players had more experience against tough opposition and better results. nakamura had the barcelona event in 2007 and his first us title, in a field that makes aeroflot a look super-strong.

the only 3 players that really have disappointed among the above, are bu, ni and cheparinov i think. however, ni put up a string of good results and was rated 2724 in april 2009 when nakamura wasn't even above 2700.

wang yue did what after that list? he entered top 10, officially, and he's been unofficially top 10 for many, many live rating lists.

jakovenko has been the top-rated russian player, 4th in the official rating lists, having a scoring/performance profile quite similar to nakamura, but he's been rated as high as 2760. that requires a long string of good results...

movsesian has also been officially top 10, with a 2751 rating (and 3 times top 13), while alekseev has won the aeroflot open and made a very respectable result in dortmund (shared 2nd in 2007, with anand and leko). he also reached the quarter-final of the 2007 world chess cup. ranking alekseev ahead of nakamura in early 2008 was a no-brainer.

dominguez has proven to be a very solid, strong player, capable of playing on equal terms with the elite for a long time already, while eljanov has mostly been rated 2700+ since july 2007 (dipping below a couple of times), being rated 2736 and 14th in the latest official list of january 2010 - and he has <still not received a single cat 19 invitation>. how's that for being unfair?

who the stronger player is of jakovenko and nakamura today is hard to say for sure, and probably when we're dropping karjakin and wang yue into the mix, too. i think it would depend slightly on the type of tournament. imagining one of those four players in linares with this year's field, i think it would be a toss-up who would do better.

the difference is that jakovenko and wang yue both have done respectable results in events like dortmund and linares already - so they have a lead in experience. karjakin is likely to score an even result no matter where he'd play, while nakamura is more of a unknown.

i don't think there's any huge difference between wang yue, karjakin, dominguez, jakovenko and nakamura at the moment - but in lack of any crystal ball it was certainly not wrong listing the 9-10 players as stronger than nakamura back in early 2008. then, as now, was i repeating that nakamura needed to <prove himself> and <improve by playing the right competitions>. demanding that tournament organizers should have special faith in a player that hardly had improved his results and rating in 3 years (2005-2007) was completely unrealistic and as such an example of the kind of self-deceit i wanted to arrest back in 2007/2008.

So much? 50 rating points. That's about what it is. This also follows from frog's posts (playing vs 2650 - vs 2700).

you don't "belong" until you <prove> that you "belong", riverbeast. it doesn't help having someone with a crystal ball that he believes in.

organizers don't have scouts that evaluate "the quality of people's games" all around the world. hence, the use of ratings which is a very decent measurement of players' <actual results> which is what counts.

and believe it or not, his <results> have changed notably in less than 2 years. and so has his experience.

that you <believe> that nakamura would've been able to hang with the big boys already in early 2008 does <not> constitute any evidence to that effect.

he lacked results and experience and rating. that's what i said, and i was right. when he finally did the wise thing and started to work on getting the stuff that give one tournament invitations, he got his invitations.

that you and other fans insisted on short-cuts custom-made for nakamura is quite beside the point. and playing what-if games, or rather "i knew he was strong enough, and if he would've been given the chance, he would've proved it!", is about as far from a convincing argument you can get.

first, he wasn't consistently beating 2500 players. in fact, he's had more consistently good results once he started to play many higher-rated 2600-players - somewhat surprisingly, but that's stats for you. against "weaker players" (sub-2600) he used to mess up and lose all too often (judging by his rating) both in 2007 and 2008.

<And I don't see how that's "manipulating your rating">

I'm sorry, but history has shown otherwise

As soon as Nakamura got the invitations, he instantly proved he belonged....There really wasn't much of a "ramp-up" period, like other players who got their first invitations to top events (and often bombed out)..... And there's no reason to think he wouldn't have done as well in Corus A in 2009...Had he been invited

That's the point we were trying to make....And the point that you dismissed as irrational and unobjective

<organizers don't have scouts that evaluate "the quality of people's games" all around the world>

Most organizers are chessplayers...And once someone has a fair degree of chess understanding, they can gauge someone's strength

They certainly don't need scouts 'all around the world' ...That's what games databases like cg.com, and others, are for

But maybe you're focusing too much on ratings, and not enough on the games, if you're saying something like this:

<nakamura is still quite far from being in carlsen's class when it comes to classical chess>

i'm not sure how strongly this is attached to nakamura himself, as opposed to the ideas that nakamura has been unfairly treated in europe due to being "american". riverbeast, strongest force and others seem to have thought that some special kind of exceptions should have been made for nakamura, for reasons i find quite hard to see (the explanations given - that 2200-2300-rated riverbeast could "see" that nakamura was already an elite player - obviously don't stand to any scrutiny at all).

when i said that nakamura needed to play stronger events than us swisses and stronger players as a 2650+ player wanting to join the elite, then some people heard that as some anti-american rant dissing their open events - while it in fact was a description of how to go about to reach the desired goals.

and when i try (tried) to offer my little knowledge about how the european tournament organizers consider (and <must> consider) their invitation policies, then it is descrbed as <the typical European patronizing attitude toward Americans>.

and finally, when nakamura essentially adopts all strategies that i've ever recommended and eventually <does> receive the wanted invitations, then the defenders of icc blitz time and us swisses as the way to join the world elite of classical chess come shouting: "<see!> we we're right all along, you have been proven so very, very wrong now - there you can see for yourself, you dumb naysayer and america-hater!!!" ...