I don't know if there has ever been a more crazy candidates matches than this one. What a finish! Chessbomb site went down there were so many people trying to see what was going on!!!
Ivanchuck has restored my faith in him. To be frank, I don't understand the man. He goes on to beat the two best players in form at the tournament, and then loses on time on four occassions, and almost loses the last game on time too. Congratulations to Carlsen who played magnificently. Although, he needs to become a more universal player than he is currently. Objectively, he is not as strong as Fischer was at peak yet. Grinding down opponents will not work forever, imo. To say nothing of his responsibility to raise the art of chess as world champion (I know I am jumping the gun) On to the World Chess Championship between Anand and Carlsen.
A very interesting article using computer analysis to gauge how error free and how complex the position of several players from history: http://www.chessbase.com/Home/TabId...quality-of-play-at-the-candidates-080413.aspx Interestingly Ivanchuk has the second highest complexity of all the players, which may be why he loses on time so often! The obvious thing to do that the authors don't do is to normalize the error number by the complexity measure. This would then give a better indication of the quality of moves. By this measure, I would not be surprised to see Carlsen, Kasparov and Fischer at the top. Here is the result of that compuation for the candidates 2013: So Carlsen is 21.16 / 3.86 = 5.48, etc. Carlsen 5.48 Grischuck 4.94 Aronian 4.20 Kramnik 3.92 IvanChuck 3.27 Gelfand 2.97 Svidler 2.89 Radjabov 2.33 In fact, other than Grischuck, this follows the pattern of strongest player. So, if you are looking for a player to improve dramatically soon, it would be Grischuck. And one that was and may still be way overrated is Radjabov. Svidler in an interview did not understand why he only scored the way he did. Increase the complexity of your games while keeping the number of errors more or less stable, and you will score much higher. The logic is obvious, the more pressure you put on a player, the more errors he makes. Note that if you are able to extrapolate Anand's results, it would be: Anand 4.18. That means he stands almost no chance againt Carlsen in the WC, unless he gets his error term down or increases his complexity considerably.
Magnus Carlsen makes Cosmopolitan Sexiest men: http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/love-sex/cosmo-centerfolds/cosmopolitan-sexiest-men-of-2013?page=5 With the exception of David Beckham, the rest of them look like a bunch of fags to me. Carlsen walks, talks and looks like a man. He is well mannered and a gentleman. And he plays a war game for a living. "Magnus Carlsen Check this hottie out! Chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen might just have converted us to the board game. The 22-year-old Norwegian will be competing in the game's world championships in London and we'll definitely be getting our geek on and tuning in." Of course, they had to stick the "geek" word in. Thankfully, women aren't that stupid, just the morons that write these things. Further, what they said about the World Championship is innacurate, but that can be overlooked - it is Cosmopolitan and not the Washington Post after all.
http://www.chessbase.com/Home/TabId...-should-be-required-in-us-schools-170413.aspx I understand why one would want to make chess required [kids will probably learn more about problem solving than any class they take in school], but in a sense, it ruins what it is.
Exceptional chess players can make lots of money, but only if they take a more commercial vision of themselves: http://en.mediamass.net/people/garry-kasparov/highest-paid.html
One of my students game. With the black queen on c7, he had just played N-d5 attacking the black queen, and black played Q-c6?? [?? in chess is notation for terrible move]. I spotted the error instantly. He didn't find the winning move, but the position is very instructional. White to move and win. Simple. No computer help.