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With an unbelievable perfect score on Saturday, Magnus Carlsen seized the lead by a three-point margin at the Grand Chess Tour: SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia 2023
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- Title
- Carlsen Towers Above Rivals With Perfect Score
- Authors
- Vanessa West (NM_Vanessa)
- Published
- Jul 9 2023
- Word count
- 1140 words
Thanks for sharing this, very cool!
I've played chess badly for a long time, I haven't the motivation to study openers and end games. The only Queens Gambit I know is the TV show. But I love Chess, it's my favourite example of a non physical sport and a great counterpoint to detractors who try to denounce certain activities as not a sport (like e-sports).
I am in awe of Carlsen as a prodigy in his youth and now the best to ever do it. He reminds me of Lionel Messi or Ronnie O'Sullivan from Snooker. His list of feats is quite astonishing, beating the best players, beating accomplished players simultaneously keeping multiple games in his head at once, and many other silly feats to challenge him since the idea of simply playing a normal match seems boring.
Imagine being such an outlier that all of the other humans who dedicate themselves to the same thing, still seem miles off your peak. Messi for example, some of his worst ever seasons are better than even great players, best ever season.
Not only do these kinds of people transcend the competition on paper and raw numbers, but they also continuously pass the eyeball test and seemingly pull off moments of pure magic and brilliance.
And even Messi, as legendary as he is, has been compared to Ronaldo throughout his career. Magnus is peerless— so inarguably better than his contemporaries that the debate about the best player can’t even happen despite the contemporaries themselves also being better at chess than anyone who came before them. He’s unreal.
The dispute for the chess GOAT is a lot less controversial. In football, Messi is definitely up there, but a lot of people will mention Maradona, Pelé, Ronaldo Nazário as possible contenders as well. There is a recency bias when people think this is just a matter of Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the chess world the only doubt is between Magnus and Kasparov. Unfortunately, Magnus disinterest for the World title will make it very hard to ever settle the matter. But people forget about the absolute monster Kaparov was in his time.
Well, Magnus would easily win against Kasparov if they competed against each other in their respective prime. I suppose who is "greatest" depends on how you define greatness. Is the greatest chess player the one who plays the best or the one who dominates the world scene the longest?
This is very difficult to compare. Kasparov's dominance was comparable to Magnus if not superior, and lasted for longer than Magnus is willing to endure. You can't really compare them in raw accuracy because they are both products of their time and who knows how much better Kasparov would have been if he could benefit from the same environment as Magnus?
A contemporary GM could probably defeat Morphy in his time, in large part because Morphy's games were analyzed to death and the game evolved as a result. That wouldn't mean that said GM is comparable to Morphy in the history of chess.
The meta keeps changing and a player is a product of its time. What you can do is compare their superiority to their own peers, in their own time.
Sure, but the same could be said about many sports. The current pole vault world champion Armand Duplantis has the world record as well - is he the greatest pole vaulter? Or is it Sergey Bubka who held the indoor world record for 20 years and was the first to clear 6 meters? Or is it some other past great pole vaulter who perhaps dominated even longer? (I don't know enough about the sport to say...) I suppose I just want to say that "superiority to their own peers, in their own time" isn't the only way to claim greatness.
That's just how many sports fans tend to think. Pelé would have a hard time in contemporary football as well, the sport is way more athletic and defenses are tighter. And Maradona was addicted to drugs and overweight for much of his career. Nevertheless, many call them "GOAT".
Think like that: Louis Pasteur became famous for discovering things that are trivial for many highschool students today. That doesn't mean that a very good high school student is more of a GOAT than Pasteur.
If you remove context, the question becomes pointless and boring. Even an average athlete can be better than the top of the past. So you attribute value to performance relative to the baseline of their time period.
IMHO Ronaldo only ever kept pace in stats and champions league performance.
If you watch their respective best seasons there’s no doubt in my mind Messi wins the eyeball test of otherworldly plays. I’m not getting drawn into messi v ronaldo on here!
Ronnie O’Sullivan in Snooker is my other, better example, but more chaotic.
Less consistent, but when he wants to be, and his head is in the right place, he is easily the best ever.
My favourite example of this is from cricket - Don Bradman was an Australian batsman who is not only indisputably the GOAT in his sport, but has a strong case for being then "GOAT of GOATs" in terms of just how much of an outlier he was in his sport.
His test match (international) batting average over 52 games was 99.94. No other batsman before or since with at least 20 test matches has an average over 62!. A statistical analysis showed he was 4.4 standard deviations above the mean for his sport - compared to next up 3.7 for Pele and 3.6 for Ty Cobb. An almost unfathomably dominant athlete, his wiki is well worth a read.
GothamChess analysis of the nine games can be found here.
I'm glad Magnus bounced back after a bad tournament. Good to see him back at the top. I'm interested how the next world championship with Ding will go.
Carlsen truly is a tabletop games genius.