English Chess Forum

Prompted by some discussion in one of the Olympiad threads, this is a timeline for when the members (past and present) of the 2800 club (those with a FIDE rating of 2800 or above) first achieved that distinction.

*January 1990 - Garry Kasparov (2800)
*July 2001 - Vladimir Kramnik (2802)
*January 2006 - Veselin Topalov (2801)
*April 2006 - Viswanathan Anand (2803)
*November 2009 - Magnus Carlsen (2801)
*November 2010 - Levon Aronian (2801)

I've excluded live ratings of 2800 or above, as I can't find a complete record of those.

One of the other reasons for this timeline was that there was a possibility that Radjabov might have been joining the 2800 club if he continued his fine form at the 2012 Olympiad, but he has just lost in round 9, so that possibility is receding somewhat. Nakamura is also edging up towards 2800, so it will likely be one of those two to be next up on this timeline.

http://www.2700chess.com/

Which prompts the thought: does it really mean anything to break this 2800 rating barrier, or is it relatively meaningless?

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: Which prompts the thought: does it really mean anything to break this 2800 rating barrier, or is it relatively meaningless?

Not meaningless - but not anywhere near as relevant as when Kasparov and Kramnik achieved it for the first time.

For the same reason I could not care less when Carlsen breaks 2851. The indicator I will now use for dominance (for lack of a better word) is whether the No. 1 in the world can establish a 50pt gap over the No.2, or if the Nos.1 + 2 and can establish a 50pt gap on No.3.

Inflation makes straight numerical comparisons meaningless.

Andrew Bak wrote: Inflation makes straight numerical comparisons meaningless.

Or possibly deflation, depending on which way you think things are going.

Paul Cooksey wrote:Sticking with my cross-thread theme, I'll admit the 47 year old Short (2698) might be a little better prepared than the 28 year old one (2655) who played Kasparov. But surely the 1993 Short was a stronger player than the 2012 one is?

It's difficult to say either way; you'd need some way of measuring a player's strength using something other than rating, which isn't trivial.

(Also, being better prepared is part of being a better player; it doesn't really make much sense to dismiss it in that way.)

When comparing the 1993 Short and the 2012 Short, you probably need to look more at relative rankings. Short was, around that period when he challenged for the world title, in the very top 3-4 players in the world (I forget precisely which ranking he reached in the rating lists). I don't think (with all due respect to his current playing strength) you could say that now. You could even ask Short himself in what way he thinks he is stronger or weaker than he was in 1993.

An interesting experiment would be to ask someone not familiar with a player's games, to judge which of a number of games were played earlier or later in that player's career, and see if they manage to correctly place games in that context. Would it be possible to identify age-related declines among the normal fluctuation in playing standard? Looking at someone like Karpov or Korchnoi might demonstrate something there, but Short himself is a good example as he is regularly held up as an example (by himself among others) of an older player who is still in the world's top 100.

And to get back to the topic of the thread. To get to near to or at the top of a rating system like the FIDE one, and to stay there for any sustained period of time, takes an immense effort. Nakamura and Radjabov are both relatively young, certainly compared to Kramnik and Anand, but I agree with what Andrew said earlier in the thread. The real stand-out achievement is to establish yourself way ahead of everyone else and to stay there. Kasparov did that (boy, did he do that!), and Carlsen has been on top for some time, the question being how long he can be there and how dominant he can be. I'm always a little bit worried, though, by how the top ratings can get distorted by the relatively closed nature of the super-GM tournament circuit.

On the subject of rating inflation, 2700chess says that today is the first time there have ever been 50 players rated above 2700 in a live ratings list.

As recently as the first list on the older live ratings site in April 2008, there were only 27 such players. In the oldest archived list on the FIDE website (July 2000) there were 11.

Daniel Young wrote:On the subject of rating inflation, 2700chess says that today is the first time there have ever been 50 players rated above 2700 in a live ratings list.

As recently as the first list on the older live ratings site in April 2008, there were only 27 such players. In the oldest archived list on the FIDE website (July 2000) there were 11.

Fascinating. I wonder who was the first player to be rated above 2700, or is that a trick question? Was Bobby Fischer already above that level when the lists started? (Yeah, he was, 2760).

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:

Daniel Young wrote:On the subject of rating inflation, 2700chess says that today is the first time there have ever been 50 players rated above 2700 in a live ratings list.

As recently as the first list on the older live ratings site in April 2008, there were only 27 such players. In the oldest archived list on the FIDE website (July 2000) there were 11.

Fascinating. I wonder if working out who was the first player to be rated above 2700, or is that a trick question? Was Bobby Fischer already above that level when the lists started?

http://www.olimpbase.org/index.html?htt ... mmary.html may be of interest to you. But to save you looking, yes, Fischer was 2760 (!) on the first official list, Karpov reached 2700 in 1974, then Tal in 1980, and so on and so forth.

Returning to something sort of related to this topic, I was looking at this again:

http://www.2700chess.com/

And wondering if England have ever had three players above 2700 before? McShane only went above 2700 in the May 2012 list. But then Short was above 2700 for that list (and July as well). So the question now becomes, was May 2012 the first time England had three players above 2700?

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:So the question now becomes, was May 2012 the first time England had three players above 2700?

Almost certainly. I don't believe any of the other possible candidates such as Speelman, Nunn, Chandler or Sadler ever got to 2700.

Andrew Bak wrote:For the same reason I could not care less when Carlsen breaks 2851. The indicator I will now use for dominance (for lack of a better word) is whether the No. 1 in the world can establish a 50pt gap over the No.2, or if the Nos.1 + 2 and can establish a 50pt gap on No.3.

Inflation makes straight numerical comparisons meaningless.

Coming back briefly to this to note that the current lead by the world number one (Carlsen) over the number 2 (Kramnik) is 51 rating points going by the January 2013 list, but has increased to 61 points on the live rating list (Carlsen's live rating after round 10 of the Tata Steel tournament is 2871.8 ).

The original point of this thread, to add when someone else joins the 2800+ club, I'd still beat on that happening this year, but not sure who. Radjabov has good chances.

Someone is likely to be a member of the 2900 club at some point in the not too distant future

Ray Sayers wrote:Someone is likely to be a member of the 2900 club at some point in the not too distant future

Well, I was going to say that would take a while, but Carlsen's 2930 performance at Tata Steel 2013 (Wijk aan Zee) was (according to him) his "best tournament result since Nanjing 2009". He scored 10/13 (+7=6,-0) and was undefeated on +7 with a performance rating of 2930 and gaining 11 rating points to rise to 2872 in the live ratings. He won't be able to do that every time (surely not!), so it will still take a while to get close to 2900 and harder the wider the gap is between him and those below him. You can tell he is aware of these records, as he also said (before the final round) "I need a draw tomorrow to equal Kasparov’s tournament record of 10/13 from 1999, and a victory would yield a new record."

Caruana now at 2796

Assuming he doesn't play until Dortmund, his pairings are interesting
http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/again ... tournament

Starts with black against Andreikin, presumably a win would take him over 2800 - if not, then black against Leko, white against Mickey Adams, black against Wang Hao, not easy