I think he 100% deserves them.

Now I must go out to lunch, but I will be back later tonight as the discussions on this page interest me a lot.

Well, we've used some postings here at CG to discuss this before, and now it is at other forum as well.. Remember, frogbert, and many other Magnus fans including myself, we have never tried to take anything away from Karjakin, we even considers him at equal level and equally talented as Magnus.

Still Magnus has had the edge in rating and ranking, and even won a crucial qualifier to get the spot at Amber 2007 just to mention something I remember.

Since this debate about invitations is going on in other forums as well I will not use place here.

repeating something that is wrong a lot of times doesn't make it true. it just taints your credibility. someone in the gambit blog even said 8 to 1.

first, this "last +year" measurement is totally artificial, and has only been created (mig (ab)used it, for instance) to make the difference look as big as possible, since this way both tal memorial tournaments will get included. it's just a miscommunication of facts, sometimes also called "journalism".

for instance, regarding corus a, karjakin and carlsen both have exactly two (2) starts. those starts have been at the exact same age, too (if we forget about the difference of 1,5 months, they both were 16 and 17). has the corus organizer treated karjakin unfairly compared to carlsen? i don't think so - next year we will probably see both of them there, and i'm happy that it'll be the case.

ok, done with corus a - karjakin and carlsen are equal there. what is left?

tal memorial 2006 & 2007, aerosvit 2006 & 2007, linares 2007 & 2008, amber 2007 & 2008, 2nd acp rapid cup 2008, dortmund 2007, bilbao blind 2007

some people argue that carlsen has got a huge lead in experience playing top opponents, but that is mainly a deceit. while carlsen played tal memorial in 2006 and 2007, karjakin played aerosvit 2006 and 2007. aerosvit has sported 12-player fields, while tal memorial has sported 10-player fields. let's consider karjakin's top 9 opponents too - and consider the strength of the tournaments with january 2008 numbers as well (in paranthesis below):

aerosvit 2006, category 18, avg: 2691

Ruslan Ponomariov 2738 (2719)
Vassily Ivanchuk 2731 (2751)
Alexander Grischuk 2719 (2711)
Alexei Shirov 2699 (2755)
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 2699 (2760)
Liviy-Dieter Nisipeanu 2695 (2684)
Sergei Rublevsky 2687 (2695)
Pentala Harikrishna 2680 (2664)
Viorel Bologan 2666 (2663)
Sergey Karjakin 2661 (2732)
Andrei Volokitin 2660 (2674)
Alexander Areshchenko 2660 (2645)

avg top 9 opponents: 2702 (~cat 19)
avg 2008 ratings: 2704 (~cat 19)
avg top 9 opps 2008: 2713 (~cat 19)

---

aerosvit 2007, category 18, avg: 2694

Svidler, Peter 2736 (2763)
Ivanchuk, Vassily 2729 (2751)
Jakovenko, Dmitry 2708 (2720)
Shirov, Alexei 2699 (2755)
Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter 2693 (2684)
Sasikiran, Krishnan 2690 (2677)
Eljanov, Pavel 2686 (2692)
Karjakin, Sergey 2686 (2732)
Rublevsky, Sergei 2680 (2695)
Dominguez Perez, Lenier 2678 (2690)
Van Wely, Loek 2674 (2681)
Onischuk, Alexander 2663 (2664)

avg top 9 opponents: 2700 (~cat 19)
avg 2008 ratings: 2709 (~cat 19)
avg top 9 opps 2008: 2715 (~cat 19)

---

just by considering the names of the participants in aerosvit, one sees that these two tournaments were very strong. in both tournaments, karjakin's 9 best opponents averaged 2700+, and many of the players he met, appears to have been slightly underrated then, by comparing to their january 2008 ratings. so while tal memorial 2006 and 2007 were category 20 events, both of the aerosvit tournaments featured players that would've made them category 19 events today, and karjakin met cat. 19 opposition (average 2700+) in 9 games in both of them.

to avoid comparing classical with other events, i will compare karjakin's invitation to the 2nd acp rapid cup (only top opposition, a bunch of 2700+ players) with carlsen's amber 2008 participation, even if the latter is an instance of carlsen being invited back, after being successful in his first start (shared 2nd in the rapid part of amber 2007). also, both players were invited to the bilbao blindfold "world cup", together with high-profiled players like topalov and polgar (and other young players like bu and harikrishna).

summary so far:

karjakin ___________ carlsen
corus a 2006 _______ corus a 2007
corus a 2007 _______ corus a 2008
aerosvit 2006 ______ tal memorial 2006
aerosvit 2007 ______ tal memorial 2007
amber 2008 ________ amber 2007
acp rapid 2008 _____ amber 2008
bilbao 2008 ________ bilbao 2008

that leaves us with linares and dortmund, where karjakin has not played. again, carlsen's 2008 participation in linares was probably a direct result of his stunning shared 2nd last year, as the lowest rated player in the field. so let's consider the "first" invitations:

at the time invitations for linares 2007 went out, carlsen was rated 2698 (october 2006), while karjakin was rated 2672. does anyone think it was strange that the organizers chose the almost one year younger carlsen, 2 points shy of 2700, (who'd gone from 2626 in january to 2698 in october) over the 26 points lower rated karjakin (2660 in january, 2672 in october)? i don't think so. more or less the same argument goes for dortmund 2007.

but while there have been obvious reasons for organizers with a will to invite a young "outsider" to choose carlsen over karjakin, i will of course count these 3 events for carlsen in the above comparison:

linares 2007
dortmund 2007
linares 2008

<what does this come down to? for these top profile events sporting the finest, most attractive players, the "score" is 10-7 in carlsen's favour, from mid-2006 to spring 2008.>

given carlsen's younger age, more rapid rise, higher rating since october 2006, and bigger fan-base, i don't find it strange or "unfair" at all that the invitations are mildly skewed in his direction. there are more events not mentioned here, where both karjakin and carlsen have been invited and played, but those were not against top opposition, so i keep those out of this for now.

we must also keep in mind that carlsen in general has played significantly more than karjakin over-all, and the difference in lower-profile events played by the two is much bigger - carlsen played most of those too.

now, everybody who has read these two posts should from here on know that the next time someone talks about "7 to 1" or "8 to 1" or other similar nonsense, they either don't know what they are talking about, or they are deceitful on purpose. <the true difference is maybe 30-35% more invitations to carlsen tops, that is, NOT 7x or 8x, but roughly 1,3x to 1,4x>.

thnx for asking <frogbert>. I am doing ok - still very busy as my job needs more skills than i have and i need to do some catching up.

what is stopping you <frogbert>? u afraid of being considered intolerant? of being accused of hitting below the belt? come on!
when does it reach the point where ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ?

I have to agree with this, <frogbert> dropping Linares and Dortmund out of the list looks tendentious..

In any case, I think the entire discussion is irrelevant since it is obvious that in the last year+ Carlsen was doing much better then Karjakin and that was the main reason he got those invitations: he showed steady progress while Karjakin was stuck around 2670-2690 area which doesn't get invited to elite tournaments most of the time.

and then i added:

<i will of course count these 3 events for carlsen in the above comparison:

Oops.. sorry I have to admit I didn't read your entire post, only the list u gave and <slomarko> response to it.

I guess u also presented the reason for Carlsen's invitations to these tournaments better then me.

if you aren't able to debate things in a civil manner, without using words like "absurd" and similar, i will need to hush the most noisy visitors out of my "house".

< muddy the waters by counting non super tourneys and even rapid-blindfold exhibitions like Amber and acp rapid cup >

slomarko. people throw out "lack out invitations to top events" as often as anything else. if you cared to follow the debate on gambit, you'd see that people have mentioned carlsen's amber 2007 participation as something he's got that karjakin hasn't. that amber and the acp rapid cup are top events that give an indication of if you're "hot or not", is obvious for (almost) anyone.

<in the Tal Memorials Carlsen played against the likes of Kramnik, Leko, Aronian, Morozevich, Gelfand, Kamsky and so on and so forth.>

ok.

<a far cry from Bologan, Harikrisha, Nisipeanu, Sasaikiran, Areshchenko (who?), Dominguez, Onischuk that Karjakin faced in his Aerosvits.>

you really take pride in disqualifying yourself from sensible debate. you compare the upper layer of participants in tal memorial over two years, with the lower layer of participants in aerosvit. this is deceitful, dishonest and indeed an effort to "muddy the waters".

today, the 6 strongest closed tournaments are linares, corus, dortmund, mtel/sofia, tal and aerosvit. the first 4 of these are the most established ones, sometimes referred to as the "grand slams" of chess. the interesting thing, though, are the realities of the matter, that is: <which players compete(d) in these events?> that aerosvit counts for nothing, while corus 2007, mtel 2007 and tal 2006 are entirely different in terms of getting top level matching - <that> is an absurd claim.