That Norwegian fellow Carlsen can play a bit, can't he?

[MJMcCready]

Over the years I've often been able to scrape a win against any 180 at my best if they were too deep in time trouble to survive, and could turn over any 200+ player who blundered horrendously in the opening several times. So I wondering which world champions might stand a chance against me at my best. I thought I'd begin by looking at Carlsen's games in Bilbao...bloody hell he can play a bit can't he? Okay, not the best choice of opening against Naka in their first game who then outplayed him in the middle game but the games against Karjakin (1st one) and Giri (2nd one) especially showed just how far above them he is. Karjakin's Rc4 wasn't the worst move I've ever seen but the way he was dismantled, and the level of control shown by Carlsen was something else. Even at critical phases in the game, he found moves so strong it seemed like his opponent was lost psychologically, and could only soldier on, feeling too inadequate with their meager sub-2800 rating. He seems so far ahead of the pack at times, it's no longer a question of who is number one, who is number two, who is number three, and so on, its who's the new number two?

[Ray Sayers]

He reminds me of Karpov at his best, where world class opponents looked doomed to be simply outplayed from move 1.
I'm left scratching my head why there are so many Carlsen haters online, eagerly following him from game to game hoping he loses and dismissing any wins as 'lucky'.such people of course generally are armed with chess software and know little of the game themselves.
I did hear a pretty impressive statistic yesterday; that out of the last 50 classical tournaments Carlsen has played in, he has finished in the top three 48 times. Pretty lucky, huh?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Which two did he bomb out in? Was it in Norway both times?

[Roger de Coverly]

Which two did he bomb out in? Was it in Norway both times?

One of them was GCT Norway 2015. He's done well in the others in that series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Ch ... _Results_3