User Profile: alexmagnus

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alexmagnus
Member since Dec-06-04 · Last seen Oct-31-25

Hobby player.
If you feel misunderstood, feel free to say it.
My favourite players are: Magnus Carlsen, Kateryna Lagno and Hanna Marie Klek!
The domination list, based on the peak rating distance to the #10 player (official lists only, distance 50+ needed to "qualify"):
Kasparov 175 (January 1990)
Fischer 160 (July 1972)
Karpov 130 (January 1989)
Carlsen 123 (March 2014)
Kramnik 110 (January 1998)
Tal 105 (January 1980)
Ivanchuk 105 (July 1991)
Anand 105 (July 1998)
Korchnoi 95 (January 1980)
Topalov 84 (July 2006)
Caruana 80 (October 2014)
Aronian 72 (March 2014)
Spassky 70 (January 1971)
Shirov 65 (July 1994)
Ding 64 (Nov 2022, Dec 2022, Jan 2023)
Nakamura 62 (October 2025)
Gelfand 60 (January 1991)
Kamsky 60 (January 1996, July 1996)
Morozevich 57 (July 1999)
Portisch 55 (January 1980)
Jussupow 55 (July 1986)
Timman 55 (January 1990)
So 53 (February 2017)
Adams 52 (October 2000)
Mamedyarov 52 (November 2018, December 2018)
Erigaisi 51 (Dec 2024, Jan 2025, Feb 2025)
Bareev 50 (July 1991)
Vachier-Lagrave 50 (August 2016)
...
(Gukesh 43 October 2024)
#1 record distances to #2 (no qualification hurdle):
Fischer 125 (1972)
Kasparov 82 (January 2000)
Carlsen 74 (October 2013)
Karpov 65 (January 1982)
Topalov 34 (July 2006, October 2006)
Anand 23 (July 2007)
Women's "domination list" since July 2000:
J. Polgar 248 (April 2007)
Hou 160 (December 2015, February 2019)
Humpy 114 (October 2007)
Goryachkina 100 (August 2021)
S. Polgar 96 (January 2005)
Xie 92 (January 2005)
Ju 92 (August 2019)
A. Muzychuk 82 (August 2012)
Stefanova 76 (January 2003)
Galliamova 65 (January 2001)
Zhao 64 (September 2013)
Lei 60 (August 2025, September 2025)
Kosteniuk 58 (July 2006)
Lagno 58 (February 2019)
Chiburdanidze 57 (October 2000)
Cramling 56 (April 2007)
T. Kosintseva 56 (November 2010)
Zhu J. 56 (October 2025)
Zhu C. 52 (April 2007)
M. Muzychuk 52 (June 2019)
N. Kosintseva 51 (November 2010)
Earliest Soviet championship with living players: USSR Championship (1955) (Shcherbakov)
Earliest Interzonal with living players: Gothenburg Interzonal (1955) (Panno)
Earliest Candidates with living players: Amsterdam Candidates (1956) (Panno)
Earliest WC match with living players: Karpov - Korchnoi World Championship Match (1978) (Karpov)
Earliest WC match with living winner: Karpov - Korchnoi World Championship Match (1978) (Karpov)

Earliest WC match with both players living: Karpov - Kasparov World Championship Match (1984/85)

>> Click here to see alexmagnus's game collections.

   alexmagnus has kibitzed 11632 times to chessgames [more...]

   Oct-27-25 Vladimir Kramnik

alexmagnus: The worst thing to me in the whole debate is Kramnik claiming he showed concern for Naroditsky's health during the latter's final stream. Concern? It was pure <mockery>. If this is the way VK expresses concern, I don't want anyone, ever, to have an emergency with only ...

   Oct-23-25 Daniel Naroditsky

alexmagnus: Whatever the cause of death, we've all seen that final stream. Even if his death turns out to be unrelated to Kramnik, it doesn't make Kramnik less of a bully.

   Oct-08-25 alexmagnus chessforum

alexmagnus: October: European Union: 1. Firouzja 2762 2. Giri 2759 3. Keymer 2755 4. Vachier-Lagrave 2737 5. Duda 2729 6. Rapport 2724 7. Fedoseev 2720 8. Topalov 2717 9. Van Foreest 2697 10. Bluebaum 2687 Former Soviet Union: 1. Abdusattorov 2750 2. Mamedyarov 2742

   Sep-15-25 FIDE Women's Grand Swiss (2025)

alexmagnus: <I think the women should play, say, nine rounds> Usually the formula for the optimal number of rounds in a Swiss system is the floor of the binary logarithm of the number of players plus three. So in this case it would be eight rounds in the women's section and nine in the

   Sep-11-25 FIDE Grand Swiss (2025)

alexmagnus: <When has a World Champion lost three games in a row? Kasparov lost to Karpov in the 1986 match, in a tournament surely never.> Ding lost four in a row one IIRC. And of course, when it comes to WC matches, Steinitz lost five in a row against in his match vs Lasker (games ...

   Jul-28-25 Divya Deshmukh

alexmagnus: Divya's way to the World Cup: Qualified to the World Cup as the 2024 World Girl's Champion (with World Girls' championship itself being invitational). 2024 World Girl's Championship: R1: vs Anurpan (India, 1872), win R2: vs Sherali (India, 1955), win R3: vs Tejasvini ...

   Jul-28-25 FIDE Women's World Cup (2025)

alexmagnus: ...And Divya won. But before this recent form high she had quite a slump, so that she is still below her peak rating (her live rating is 2478, her peak official rating is 2501 in October 2024).

   Jul-18-25 Josiane Legendre

alexmagnus: Any relation to the 18th-19th century mathematician?

   May-31-25 M Christoffel vs H Steiner, 1946

alexmagnus: Christoffel symbol.

   May-15-25 Superbet Chess Classic Romania (2025)

alexmagnus: <There is nothing sacred or romantic about it.> It's a game, not a religion nor a love affair.

indicates a reply to the comment.

< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 41 OF 57 · Later Kibitzing>
Aug-02-19		moronovich: Thank you very much for your answer <alexmagnus>! Much appreciated.

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Post-Communist (except USSR, China): 1. Rapport 2747 2. Wojtaszek 2739 3. Topalov 2736 4. Duda 2730 5. Le 2726 6. Navara 2724 7. Almasi 2687 (Rausis 2685)* 8. Leko 2674 9. Laznicka 2667 10. Berkes 2666 *Rausis publicly admitted cheating and is under investigation. Latin America: 1. Cori 2686 2. Granda Zuniga 2644 3. Bruzon Batista 2643 4. Mareco 2640 5. Iturrizaga Bonelli 2635 6. Bachmann 2633 7. Delgado Ramirez 2612 8. Leitao 2605 9. Flores 2604 10. Cordova 2599

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Nordic/Baltic: 1. Carlsen 2882 2. Grandelius 2691 3. Kovalenko 2654 4. Hammer 2635 5. Tari 2634 6. Nielsen 2617 7. Andersen 2603 8. Hellers 2601 9. Agrest 2583 10. Neiksans 2577

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Middle East: 1. Firouzja 2702 2. Amin 2692 3. Gelfand 2686 4. Rodshtein 2684 5. Nabaty 2673 6. Salem 2668 7. Maghsoodloo 2656 8. Ipatov 2650 9. Sutovsky 2643 10. Adly 2636

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Alpine: 1. Ragger 2683 2. Lenic 2644 3. Milov 2598 4. Borisek 2584 5. Bogner 2569 6. Skoberne 2567 7. Pelletier 2563 8. Fontaine 2554 9. Pavasovic 2546 10. Dragnev 2535

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Old guard: 1. Anand 2756 2. Kramnik 2753 3. Topalov 2736 4. Svidler 2729 5. Sadler 2692 6. Adams 2690 7. Almasi 2687 8-9. Gelfand 2686 8-9. Ivanchuk 2686 (Rausis 2685)* 10. Leko 2674

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: Superstitions: One-third of all world champions had 7-letter long names. Here's a list of the top players with 7-letter long names. 1. Carlsen 2882 2. Caruana 2818 3. Aronian 2765 4. Kramnik 2753 5. Rapport 2747 6. Topalov 2736 7. Svidler 2729 8. Gelfand 2686 9. McShane 2682 10. Korobov 2679

Aug-02-19		Count Wedgemore: Goldsby.

Aug-02-19		saffuna: <One-third of all world champions had 7-letter long names. Here's a list of the top players with 7-letter long names.> How about a best player for each number of letters in the name? 10: Polugaevsky 9: Capablanca 8: Kasparov 7: Fischer 6: Karpov 5: Anand 4: Euwe 3. Tal 2. So

Aug-02-19		beatgiant: <Saffuna> Here is the per name length Aug. 2019 list. By convention, I count only letters, not spaces or hyphens. I stopped at 14 because it seems like a lot of work to find who's the top player with a 15-letter name. 2: So 2776 3: Wei 2727 4: Ding 2805 5: Vidit 2705 6: Anand 2756 7: Carlsen 2882 8: Grischuk 2759 9: Andreikin 2743 10: Mamedyarov 2764 11: Harikrishna 2738 12: Kasimdzhanov 2657 13: Anton Guijarro 2678 14: Vachier-Lagrave 2778 As for your all-time list, Polugaevsky is 11 letters. How about Rubinstein for the 10-letter spot? Of course in any cross-era list, there can always be different opinions... like who was greater, Lasker or Karpov?

Aug-02-19		saffuna: I can't even count??? Yes, Rubinstein is much better. Your list is current players. I was thinking historical.

Aug-02-19		diceman: <beatgiant: <Saffuna> Here is the per name length Aug. 2019 list. By convention, I count only letters, not spaces or hyphens. I stopped at 14 because it seems like a lot of work to find who's the top player with a 15-letter name. 2: So 2776 3: Wei 2727 4: Ding 2805 5: Vidit 2705 6: Anand 2756 7: Carlsen 2882 8: Grischuk 2759 9: Andreikin 2743 10: Mamedyarov 2764 11: Harikrishna 2738 12: Kasimdzhanov 2657 13: Anton Guijarro 2678 14: Vachier-Lagrave 2778> 2: So 2776 3: Wei 2727 4: Ding 2805 5: Vidit 2705 6: Anand 2756 7: Carlsen 2882 8: Grischuk 2759 9: AlphaZero 10: Mamedyarov 2764 11: Harikrishna 2738 12: Kasimdzhanov 2657 13: Anton Guijarro 2678 14: Vachier-Lagrave 2778

Aug-02-19		Count Wedgemore: Here are some other great 7-letter chess personalities: TheTurk Houdini Maróczy Menchik Goldsby Saffuna Diceman Freeman

Aug-13-19		diceman: <alexmagnus: To people who like to pose Elo inflation: how do you explain the advances in other sports, where the measure of strength is objective?> The measure may be "objective" but it doesn't account for other changes. (Sports Science/Technology/Other) This highlights a few of the changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CO...

Aug-18-19		alexmagnus: <Sports Science/Technology/Other> So, what changed in snooker?

Aug-20-19		diceman: <alexmagnus: <Sports Science/Technology/Other> So, what changed in snooker?> First let me say I don't know how to play snooker, so my thoughts are a guesstimate based on 9-Ball/8-Ball matches I've seen. I'm not exactly sure how much play is required to win. Let me also say, I think it's a bad metric, because you can have a different quantity of players contributing, and lower rated century breaks look just like higher rated player century breaks. I was only able to find data from: 2014 to 2019. If you take the century breaks divided by the amount of players contributing you get: 2014: 3.17 2015: 3.38 2016: 3.58 2017: 3.22 2018: 4.00 2019: 4.35 So even though century breaks went from 58 to 100, it only averaged an increase of 1 per player involved. If you look at the contribution by the top 5 players you get: 2014: 63.16% 2015: 62.74% 2016: 52.33% 2017: 55.41% 2018: 54.76% 2019: 48.00% While some of this is due to the fact that "5" is a larger percent of a smaller group of contributors, it doesn't explain all the movement. In general the lower ranked players are contributing more. Think of chess where 1800's become masters, IMs become GMs. Chess is getting better, but it doesn't impact the top elite players. So I think more players being able to make century breaks, along with lower ranked players getting better is what's driving the increase in century breaks.

Aug-20-19		diceman: While not exactly the same, (player results vs tournament results) I was able to find a you-tube video with the top 15 snooker player century breaks by date: Jan 1975: Top 5: 67.84% Mid 5: 23.62% Low 5: 8.54% You can see that players 11 through 15 contributed almost nothing compared to the top 5. Fast forward to, Jan 2019: Top 5: 46.55% Mid 5: 28.05% Low 5: 25.40% The lower players contribute enough to lower the contribution of the top players. (My guess is top players flat-line like elite Grandmaster ratings) I would imagine this weighting also happened in the World Championships, because it's the top players who would qualify. This is probably due to more money, more interest, and more international players entering the game.

Aug-25-19		alexmagnus: <diceman> That doesn't explain the fact that the player with most centuries today scores nearly as many centuries as the entire chapionship did in the 1980s (the record for most centuries in a world championship by a single player is 16, set by Stephen Hendry in 2002. That's more than the overall number of centuries in each championship before 1985 save for 1983, which had 18 overall centuries - and the 20 mark wasn't surpassed until 1991).

Sep-01-19		beatgiant: September 2019 Post-Communist (except USSR/China) 1. Rapport 2752 2. Wojtaszek 2739 3. Topalov 2736 4. Duda 2730 5. Navara 2724 6. Le 2708 7. Almasi 2687 (Rausis 2685) 8. Leko 2670 9-10 Laznica 2667 9-10 Saric 2667 Rausis publicly admitted cheating and is under investigation. Latin America: 1. Cori 2676 2-3. Bruzon Batista 2644 2-3. Granda Zuniga 2644 4-5. Bachmann 2633 4-5.Mareco 2633 6. Iturrizaga Bonelli 2626 7. Delgado Ramirez 2615 8. Cordova 2610 9. Leitao 2606 10. Flores 2602 Nordic/Baltic: 1. Carlsen 2876 2. Grandelius 2691 3. Kovalenko 2674 4. Hammer 2635 5. Tari 2630 6. Nielsen 2617 7. Andersen 2603 8. Hellers 2601 9. Agrest 2583 10. Neiksans 2577 Middle East: 1. Firouzja 2702 2. Amin 2699 3. Gelfand 2686 4. Rodshtein 2684 5. Salem 2675 6. Maghsoodloo 2664 7. Nabaty 2658 8. Ipatov 2650 9. Sutovsky 2643 10. Tabatabaei 2642 Old Guard: 1. Anand 2765 2. Kramnik 2753 3. Topalov 2736 4. Svidler 2729 5. Adams 2694 6. Sadler 2692 7. Almasi 2687 8-9. Gelfand 2686 8-9. Ivanchuk 2686 10. Kamsky 2685 (Rausis 2685)*

Sep-01-19		beatgiant: I have decided not to do the Alpine category this month. Reasons: - It's a lot of work. - I doubt the list has a lot of fans. Most of the players are under 2600. - Depending on how Brexit proceeds, in the future we may include Switzerland in some kind of "semi-EU" list with the UK and Norway. I was also planning to kill the "Superstitions" category, but changed my mind after getting all the responses last month. It turns out there really are fans! I'll post a new superstition below.

Sep-01-19		alexmagnus: I add my usual ones: European Union: 1. Giri 2780 2. Vachier-Lagrave 2774 3. Rapport 2752 4. Wojtaszek 2739 5. Topalov 2736 6. Duda 2730 7. Navara 2724 8-9. Adams 2694 8-9. Howell 2694 10. Sadler 2692 Former Soviet Union: 1. Nepomniachtchi 2776 2. Mamedyarov 2767 3. Karjakin 2760 4. Grischuk 2759 5-6. Aronian 2758 5-6. Radjabov 2758 7. Kramnik 2753 8. Artemiev 2746 9. Andreikin 2741 10. Vitiugov 2732 Former British Empire: 1. Caruana 2812 2. So 2767 3. Anand 2765 4. Dominguez 2763 5. Harikrishna 2746 6. Nakamura 2745 7. Vidit 2718 8. Xiong 2707 9. Shankland 2705 10. Amin 2699 Asia: 1. Ding 2811 2. Anand 2765 3. Yu 2763 4. Harikrishna 2746 5. Wang Hao 2726 6-7. Wei 2721 6-7. Bu 2721 8. Vidit 2718 9. Le 2708 10. Firouzja 2702 Born later than the world champion: 1. Caruana 2812 2. Ding 2811 3. Giri 2780 4. So 2767 5. Yu 2763 6. Rapport 2752 7. Artemiev 2746 8. Duda 2730 9. Wei 2721 10. Vidit 2718 Nuclear powers: 1. Caruana 2812 2. Ding 2811 3. Nepomniachtchi 2776 4. Vachier-Lagrave 2774 5. So 2767 6. Anand 2765 7-8. Yu 2763 7-8. Dominguez 2763 9. Karjakin 2760 10. Grischuk 2759

Sep-01-19		beatgiant: Superstition of the month: Awesome Alliteration Gioachino Greco! Adolf Anderssen! Alexander A. Alekhine! Richard Reti! Throughout chess history, great GMs with alliterative appellations have enlightened us with excellent examples of the execution of... oh, forget it, here's the list. To be eligible, a player must have first given name starting with the same letter as surname (or the equivalent in the player's culture). 1. Yu, Yangyi 2763* 2. Rapport, Richard 2752 3. Matlakov, Maxim 2716 4. Shankland, Sam 2705 5. Dubov, Daniil 2699 6-7. Areshchenko, Alexander 2675 6-7. Salem, Saleh 2675 8. Sjugirov, Sanan 2662 9-10. Guseinov, Gadir 2654 9-10. Sevian, Samuel 2654 * Earns the A.A. Alekhine triple alliteration bonus (Yu, Yang, Yi). Honorable mentions: Le, Quang Liem 2708: Near miss - the second part of the given name alliterates with the surname. Sethuraman Panayappan Sethuraman 2624: If he ever makes the top 10 alliteratives, he earns the Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine "name based on patronymic" bonus.

Sep-01-19		beatgiant: Does anyone here understand how Vietnamese names work? A quick check on wikipedia tells me that the order is surname, middle name, given name, in which case Le, Quang Liem should be number 4 on my list.

Sep-01-19		beatgiant: On a little further research, I'm convinced that Liem is Le's given name. Here is the corrected Awesome Alliteration list. 1. Yu, Yangyi 2763 2. Rapport, Richard 2752 3. Matlakov, Maxim 2716 4. Le, Quang Liem 2708 5. Shankland, Sam 2705 6. Dubov, Daniil 2699 7-8. Areshchenko, Alexander 2675 7-8. Salem, Saleh 2675 9. Sjugirov, Sanan 2662 10-11. Guseinov, Gadir 2654 10-11. Sevian, Samuel 2654

Sep-02-19		alexmagnus: <beatgiant> Yu is not the only triple alliteration in your list. Dubov is another one (Daniil Dmitrievich).

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