Congrats to Carlsen and Aronian!

Personal FIDE rating records for Carlsen:
Rating: 2326 (3 times, including current)
Rating lead: 23 points (July&Sep 2010)
Number of 1st: 9 times (out of 12 since Jan 2010)
Consecutive 1st: 5 times (current is 3 times)

MCs current Live Rating is 2829,2
Carlsen is 22 points behind Kasparov´s all time high
Aronian is 14 points behind Carlsen
Anand is 23 points behind Carlsen

London Chess Classic: Magnus could enter the new year with a personal all time rating, as well as personal all time rating lead (+23,4 points) if he beats Aronian. Should he lose, then Aronian (just 3,9 points behind) could have chance to steal first place on the January list. With Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura and Englands best... Anything can happen. But the main game will be Carlsen - Aronian. Looking forward to the whole tournament – a worthy finale to 2011.

If i m the word champion i do the same (as anand reigning) Minimum of lose because i never show a weakness to my possible opponents for reigning!! It's simple strategy and the best way for money.

Go easy on criticizing Anand lest you be branded as nationally/racially/, biased.

@Johny

is anyone remember Johny winning any spelling bees in last few years....He got bit comfortable and lazy....he is not able to win any spelling bees recently so it is logic he is loosing respect of chess world....and his style?? now...he is boring like christmas I would not call it plaing safelly.... duuuuuhhh

One may suspect that Anand prefers to be 'unbeatable' rather than playing with some risk and perhaps disclose some growing weakness in his play. After all he had some bad experience recently loosing a game against Aronian where he felt lost in his overall chess-understanding.

Congrats to the organizers...great Tourney. Congrats to the winners. Carlsen getting a clutch win with Black..and winning the tourney added a pinch of drama. A lot of players had a shot at winning...and thats a fun tourney to look at. Gelfand landed where he probably was expected to. He played some nice chess. Lost a couple..ok..And the fact that it bothers people that such a distinguished long standing GM managed to fluke out a win and qualify for a WC shot sort of confuses me. A: Good for him...nice "Big thank You " from the chess world for 25 or so years of great chess. He deserves it. Don't forget...All the others played too under those ridiculous conditions..and lost. It was not Gelfands fault..Certainly look to FIDES ineptitude in putting together a cohesive and decent qualification process...They simply can't. They're too inept. But to knock Mr Gelfand I think is unfair. Of course we'd all like to see Anand play harder...so would I have..that's just not his chracter. He was never in any trouble in any of the games he played...and fully in command of his situations. I can sort of understand him not divulging anything for the time being. Nepo was outstanding...beenn keeping on eye on him for a while..nice to see him start growing again..he's a real pain in the arse to play against for these guys I'd imagine. Nakamura...well....I feel a little sorry for him. Besides all that Bravado and bullish beheviour he's sometimes shown..people are not cutting him any slack..and it's his own fault..but listen..he's still just a kid..plenty of time...hooking up with Kasparov can't be easy and I'd imagine harmful. Ivanchuk..Nepo..Karjakin..all came within a half point...they played great! So....sorry you have to read through all this..ultimatly...great Tourney!!!!!!! Congrats to all!!!!
And don't anyone go dissing Petrosian..I love the games he played.
Check out my fun blog..http://magnanschessblog.blogspot.com

Peace yall
Mike Magnan

Oh yeah..I forgot Aronian..haha..he played great too! and particularily vexing for him was letting Carlsen off the hook and not seeing Bc7..which probably wins in the first round!! haha..poor guy must be a little more than peeved at that!! But of course that game with Svidler..my god that was great..but what I particularily loved was seeing Kramnik go down. He's an amazing Talent..but he talks down about younger players...He showed in this tourney exactly who is who. Congrats Vlady.

Guys, anyone know what happened to Leko? I miss his games against Aronian. They were always crazy lol

Why is nobody calculating Fischer's score in this tourney, - if he had been there to play. 7? 8?

Magnus the Great wins another....He represents the future of professional chess.

I was watching the live video from Moscow today at the moment Carlsen played 32...Rxe1, taking the game to an opposite coloured Bishop endgame.
He played the move quickly and casually, while Nakamura was left surprised, looking once at the board, once at Carlsen, again at the board, again at Carlsen for some seconds before writing his opponent's move on the soresheet. He slightly delayed recapturing, though he had no other move.
My impression was that Carlsen had long ago planned to go for this endgame, where he thought he had great winning chances (or even a technically won game), while Nakamura had cut his calculations short at this point probably thinking "all opposite colored Bishop endings are drawn", or something like that.
And guess who was correct, it was the player who wins "100% of won positions", to quote a GM I have heard speaking about Carlsen.

stevefraser: Also include Aronian and Anand in that class.

I hope Anand is not reading the above shameful comments

this forum should be called ' Troll Central '

Incredible! He does it again. A last round win, snatching the tournament.
Carlsen has shown incredible resilience in the last year. It is especially the second half of the tournament that he shows his unbelievable tough fighting spirit.
This tournament saw no 'strange' failures.
Two wins to take the tournament is not too much, but it is an incredibly strong field.

Pity for Aronian. He's a co winner, of course. He shows great stability in all these super strong tournaments, where he's always part of the pack. But he seldomly wins them.

The comments on Anand are silly. His reputation is strongly linked to his World Chapionship and it is natural he's not playing all out while he's preparing for a match.

In the old days Karpov and Kasparov would destroy everybody around them in between their matches, but Anand does not have that kind of domination.

He's more the Primus inter Pares that Botwinnik used to be in his time, flanked by Smyslow, Petrosian, Tal, Korchnoi.

Gelfand commands a great deal of respect. But this tournament did show he's lacking just a little when compared with the absolute top.

Nakamura was dealt a very humiliating blow. He can use it, I think he's just a little to self confident, losing objectivity sometimes. If he can reassemble his game and outlook on himself and the competition, he can become a solid top 5 player and may even have a go at the very top, but he's not there yet.

Kramnik failed badly, but he succeeded so many times it is clear that this can happen sometimes. Too bad though, I love to witness his success.

But I think it's fair to say that Carlsen is the best player in the world at this point. He's shown such incredibly stamina in all the tournaments he played in the last few years. His 'failures' were small, his victories unforgettable.

He should be able to obtain the WC title, but he's shown good judgement not to hunt it too soon. Just play the game, consolidate the no 1. position.
The crown will come in due time. Anand's era is slowly coming to an end (although it is not there yet, he'll be on top for a few more years) and Carlsen will dominate for years to come.

Unless, of course, Anish Giri will continue to copy Magnus' Elo chart.

OH MY GOD. Anand won sooo much. Now he just had a child and is preparing for a wc-match. So obvious the results are not thrilling Atm he is the best player around together with Magnus.

A match between them is what we need

What we see is that MC decided to go through an imaginary way which would "show" to the chess world that the BEST is the one who wins more tournaments and has the higher rating, so he is putting ALL his energy to win games and tournaments. Some day, he would expect, that his massive tournament success will create a possible popular demand that will "force" FIDE to change the WC rules according to his preferences. But What are his preferences??? In opposition, ALL the other players accept the actual WC rules and go for them, also believing that the BEST is the Word Champion and not de "super winner" of tournaments and ratings.

"he is putting ALL his energy to win games"

That is indeed a pity.

I sense a healthy dose of sarcasm here as Peter Doggers wrote: "... also he [Carlsen] was in great form behind the computerscreen, as he explained his game like an experienced trainer"

Hehe - Carlsen is mostly awful to listen to and watch in post mortems, and if one thing: Carlsen DOES NOT come across as "an experienced trainer", that I guarantee you. ;-(

I thought it was a great tournament, but since Carlsen won Monokroussos is of course unhappy and already calls it "a tournament to be forgotten" over at thechessmind. At least he didn't write that it was a shame Carlsen won this time (as when he won Wijk 2010). It's fun to read commentators that don't hide their preferences though and he has never denied that he is a big Kramnik fan.

The final report at gazeta.ru states that the tournament showed that "as predicted, not all participants played at full strength", in fact Carlsen alone played at full strength and that's why he won according to GM Smagin, who is critical of Kramnik, among other things comparing him unfavourably to the patriotic Aronian, saying that Kramnik has lost the connection to the Motherland.

http://www.gazeta.ru/sport/2011/11/a_3848762.shtml

Tough for the top players with London already in a week, by the way. But until then I'm not even going to look at a chess site :-)

Aronian had one more white so the tie break favors Carlsen. However, Aronian's two wins were against Ivanchuk and Svidler, who both had better results than Gelfand and Nakamura (Carlsen's two victims) in this tournament.

Overall, Aronian played very well, obtaining favorable positions in most of his games, including in the game against Carlsen. In the process, Aronian consolidated his position in the 2800 club.

Congratulations to Carlsen for winning the tournament on tie-break but also congratulations to Aronian for the very successful tournament.

Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and prove Magnus can beat Anand in a world championship match. After that there is no debate.

Carlsen chickened out from a world championship match. Until he can actually beat Anand in match play, he is just one of the many promising talented players and nothing more.

All this Anand bashing is fair in some way as we are fans and then we have first amendment.
I am pretty sure at this point that the 'Weight of the crown' is getting to Anand.
This i think is a very true entity as Kramnik described. After Kramnik lost the title he felt liberated and then started playing like a free spirit with good results.
Unfortunately for Anand fans we may never see Anands 'original' play as long as he the World Champ.If he loses the title he will just fade away given his age and family commitments. If he retains the title we will continue to see uninspiring play.