Magnus Carlsen's Secret-Just Plain Good Chess, says Alexander Grischuk

Hello everyone,

Grischuk-Carlsen in Round 11 of the 2013 London Candidates tournament, an event where time trouble thwarted the Russian's ambitions | photo: Anastasiya Karlovich

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen's secret is plain good ol' chess! Thus says Russian Grandmaster and World No. 3 Alexander Grischuk!

If you've been following the monthly chess ratings, you would recall that Grischuk gained a huge 15 rating points this past month to jump to World No. 3 behind Carlsen and Levon Aronian.

The comments about Carlsen were made in a detailed interview in Russian for the website R Sport. A very nice translation in English appears on Chess24.com. You will enjoy reading posts at both the links!

On Magnus Carlsen

What qualities have allowed Carlsen to dominate chess and become World Champion?

The guy simply plays chess well. It seems to me that in such cases people are inclined to look for some supernatural explanation, although the simplest explanation is also the most appropriate: the guy simply plays chess well.

How big is the group of players who are capable of competing with him in the coming years?

It’s hard to say because his results recently are undoubtedly impressive, but history shows that it’s very rare for any domination by one person to last for a very long period of time. The group of Magnus’ competitors isn’t so small – eight to ten guys.

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Fide on Chess Ratings: Summary Report of QC Council

Alexandra Kosteniuk's Chess Blog for Daily Chess News and Trivia (c) 2013

Hi everyone,

SUMMARY REPORT OF QC COUNCIL MEETING IN ATHENS
1-2 June 2013 Annex QC1 

ANALYSIS

 

QC consultant Jeff Sonas has developed a "Retroactive Rating Calculator" so that FIDE can investigate hypothetical changes to the rating regulations. This allows us to determine what would have happened to all ratings calculated since 2008 if those hypothetical regulations had already been in effect, starting in 2008. This essentially provides a "beta-test" on proposed changes, to ensure the intended positive consequences would actually have occurred, and to identify any unintended negative consequences resulting from the changes. 

The QC has used this "RRC" to investigate a number of possible changes to rating regulations, considering their impact on three main areas:
- absolute magnitude of ratings (i.e. inflation/deflation)
- the total number of rated players
- correlation between ratings and future results (i.e. predictive ability of ratings), both for the entire pool and for targeted sub-groups.

(1) K-Factors
There seems no justification for modifying the K=10 coefficient currently used, as increasing this coefficient would push top players' ratings even higher than they currently are, and would reduce the accuracy of top ratings. However, increasing the other two K factors by 33% (K=15 becomes 20, K=30 becomes 40) will increase the accuracy of ratings throughout the entire rating pool without substantially increasing absolute magnitude of ratings. A smaller increase of 20% (K=15 becoming 18, K=30 becoming 36) would improve accuracy even slightly more, but the 20/40 coefficients were preferred in order to preserve the simplicity of manual rating change calculations.

(2) Sean Hewitt Proposal (maintaining most dynamic K-factor for playersSean Hewitt of the English Chess Federation suggested this simple modification, which would allow freer rating change for young developing players, especially those who play frequently at a young age and thereby hit 30 games early in their development. Recent changes to the rating regulations (including the move to a monthly list, as well as a larger population of low rated opponents so that players surpass 30 rated games sooner) make this rule change very appealing, and it has a very significant positive impact on the accuracy of ratings for all players, even for players out to 100+ games played. 

(3) For unrated players, only 5 games required for first rating, and all events and all games vs rated opponents count toward first rating, starting with first event where player scores >0% against rated opponents. 

This recommendation comes from the retroactive analysis of rating accuracy since 2008, and is a major change in the philosophy of the rating system. Prof. Elo’s principles maintained a system that blocks new players from achieving a first rating in many different ways. Jeff Sonas showed us that it is much better to provide a first rating more easily, and then allow players to regulate their rating by playing chess.

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World Chess Highest-Ever Rating Record Goes to Magnus Carlsen: Fide Makes it Official

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen had, at the London Chess Classic 2012, broken former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov's all-time high rating record of 2851. The achievement now finds space in history with Fide releasing the month's rating list on January 1, 2013. Carlsen earned 13 points for his hard work at the London Chess Classic 2012. Russia's Vladimir Kramnik is now in second spot! Here are the top-50 lists. For complete rating lists, visit Fide's rating site links.

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