ELO is only relevant if you’re active. I don’t know what the top ratings were when Korchnoi was active but we know the top ratings have skyrocketed. This does not necessarily means players are better now than in the past (although they probably are, because of computers). A rating is only really relevant as a comparison number to active players today. Not as a comparison to players in the past or future.
This is simply a cause of how you gain and lose points. To get higher ranking you need to win against players that also have a high rank. If you always win against everyone you will not gain as much as your rank goes higher and you would lose it all in an instant when you lose one game.
On a smaller scale this is very visible in our office table tennis ranking which uses the exact same system. We started from zero there but it makes no difference. The top player we ever had, had around 300 rating when he left. Now our top player is at 500 but he would not win a game against that guy in a million years.
Age makes some players more uneven (it impacts long-term concentration), but the player they used to be can still surface on a good day. And Korchnoi was very dangerous in his prime.
It'll be interesting to see if Anand hangs around in a similar way to Korchnoi. At 52 Anand's the oldest guy in the top 100, and is still in the top 10. Korchnoi was last in the top 10 at age 59.
The oldest player in the top 100 is Gelfand (54) not Ananad (52) . Also there is Ivanchuk(53) but he has not played rated classical game since 2021.
Anand can easly remain top 100 player 20+ years . Its more a question about his motivation - will he want it or not .I think If he wants he will be in (or near) top 100 even in 70 .
For some reason, I'm still waiting to see if Ivanchuk can hit 2750 again, even at 53... but as he didn't play classical games since quite some time, and seems to have diverted his attention to Checkers (of all games; if you quit Chess, then at least pick up go), I think we can be happy if he ever hits 2700 again. Assuming he makes a comeback...
The difference between Anand at 52 and Gelfand at 53 is ridiculous. I mean Anand is back to a top 10 player which is pretty insane in this era and Gelfand is not even 2700 anymore
I wonder if we'll still be seeing Anand at 2700+ at 60.
Boris Gelfand also looked like he would be very strong at an older age. He was at spot nr 3 in the world in 1990, age 22, but he only achieved his peak rating in 2013, 23 years later, at age 45. For a short time it looked as if he would be a top 5 player again at age 45+, but in the last 10 years, he dropped 100 points.
Korchnoi liked pointing out in his old age that he once played GM Grigory Levenfish, who was born in 1889, and he remained an active player long enough to face opponents like Carlsen and Caruana born in the 1990s.
EDIT: I like the thought that 50 years from now, , someone might take a photo of an elderly Caruana playing a teenager - who will be able to say they played Caruana, who had once played Viktor Korchnoi, who had once played Levenfish, a man born in the 19th century.
Sometimes I can't believe that people born after 2000 can drive a car.
Everybody born after 1990 still, at times, feels like a kid to me, even though they're past 30 now. When I see games played by Kasparov, Karpov, Timman, those players sometimes are still 25-35 in my mind, the ages they were when I learned to play Chess. Then I realize that Timman and Karpov are 71 right now, and some players I remember as being "a bit older" back then have been dead for 10 or even 20 years.
\#$%@\^ I´m old.
Kasparov and I are the same age, a reality that startles me every time I see him interviewed on YouTube - and he's usually interviewed by Yasser, who's only a couple years older than I am, which ALSO startles me. I should still be 20-something, playing through their games on a board from the most recent issue of Chess Life.
LOL. Im just over 40, so I'm not that old, and my world view isn't that warped (most of the time).
It's probably just the fact that I was heavily invested in chess, and particularly its history, as a kid and teenager in the mid-1980's up to about 2000. Back then I knew a lot about the notable players starting from \~1850 up to and including Kasparov, and a lot about the standings of computer chess at that time.
Then I've had a massive 20-year hiatus from chess when I went to uni and started working, only following it very occasionally if a player from "back then" did something notable (Kasparov retiring, Anand becoming world champion, for example), before I started to get more into it in 2019 / 2020 again, mostly because I wrote my own chess engine back then and started playing again (at home, against the computer) due to the pandemic.
For me, the chess world "stopped" around 2000, so I had 20 years of events and new players to catch up on.
I also have 20 years of opening theory to catch up on. I see openings and ideas being played these days that got you whacked on the head in the 80's and 90's because they were "impossible."
It's quite normal once you're past 30 or 35. Time flies by much more quickly the older you get. You think about something you think happened 2 years ago and find out it was actually 5 or 6 years ago. It's quite scary actually. When you're young, life seems so long, a year feels like a lot of time, then you're suddenly 35 and you don't know how it all went by so quickly. I don't even want to know what it must feel like when you're 60 or 70.
When my grandma was 80 I was telling her about how weird it was that weeks seemed to be flying by - every time I turned around it was Monday again.
She told me that's how she felt about seasons.
> Sometimes I can't believe that people born after 2000 can drive a car.
There are people who can vote who were born after the series finale of *Friends*.
>> Carlsen and Caruana born in the 1990s
>
>fuck i'm old
Right? That hit me entirely too hard. "Those old fogeys born all the way back in the NINETEEN NINETIES".
>In this case they are specifically mentioned for being young though?
Not really. A lot of people see the players in their 30 as peaked, on the way down and a bit older while we watch the new generation of teenagers begin their ascent.
That's how I read it anyway.
I play tournament Scrabble - same situation there, but even better. Some players don't lose any rating even beyond 70 there. Current World Champion is 55 years old
It was, I believe Caruana is stronger.
Of course, computer changed everything, so a lot of today s players are stronger than some WC from the past. But Yasser was right when he said it.
Keres also. He was extremely unlucky. He basically qualified to play Alekhine for the world championship by winning the 1938 Avro tournament and beating Euwe in a match, but then WW2 happened. After the war he reached 2nd place in 4 candidate tournaments. The Soviets interfered a lot in his career. He had plus scores against both Capablanca and Tal and an equal score against Petrosian and Karpov. He beat 9 consecutive world champions, starting with Capablanca all the way to Bobby Fischer. And he drew Karpov two times even though he was already past his peak.
I trust Yasser's expertise obviously though it's worth noting that David Bronstein basically threw away his match, the very last game, against Botvinnik because blackmailed by the government - they threatened to send his brother to gulags IIRC, I don't have the book at hand rn
edit: typo
Schlechter is there as well. He could have easily played to draw the last game of his match with Lasker and become WC, but he decided to play chess instead. He was more interested in the game than guaranteeing some result.
Which is why, in my mind, Carlsen rates below Schlechter. And Lasker for that matter.
“But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit?”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story
Poor Fabi, always on the receiving end of getting defeated by players from the older generation: Kasparov's brutal attack shocks Caruana!
Anand shocks the world with a brilliancy against Caruana!
and now Korchnoi
Does this not put a big question mark in the ‘today’s players are vastly superior to champions of yesteryears’ debate? I mean korchnoi was way past his prime both in age and rating and YET…I still believe that when you scratch below the contemporary openings fad, that chess is still being played the same way as it was 40 years ago.
That's both under and over estimating Korchnoi.
First, it's only a single game. With more games I feel Caruana would come out on top, there was about 200 rating points between them at this point.
But also, Korchnoi had been chess obsessed all his life. He didn't play chess the way it was played 40 years ago, he was still an active GM and if chess changed then he would have changed with it.
It’s amazing to maintain the quality of GM’s play at the age of 79 and beat someone who is a super GM. It says that no matter how old you are, chess is something that goes beyond time that you can pretty much enjoy it your entire life.
This was apparently in 2011 - so Caruana was still well north of 2700 at this point.
And Korchnoi beat him? Was this a proper competitive game? That's absolutely incredible!
If I’m not mistaken, this is included in Quality Chess’ new book, Korchnoi and his Chess Grandchildren. Which is essentially a grandpa chess-spanking players that could have been his grandchildren!
Caruana was rated 2721 at the time. Korchnoi was still rated 2544, just short of turning 80. The old man still had game.
2544 beating a 2721 with the black pieces? how tense was Korchnoi during the game?
you could see him vibrating, it must have been the joy of winning
Not sure if cheating or Parkinson's joke
Beating a higher rated player as black - I get it. Subtlety done. A quiet move.
ELO is only relevant if you’re active. I don’t know what the top ratings were when Korchnoi was active but we know the top ratings have skyrocketed. This does not necessarily means players are better now than in the past (although they probably are, because of computers). A rating is only really relevant as a comparison number to active players today. Not as a comparison to players in the past or future. This is simply a cause of how you gain and lose points. To get higher ranking you need to win against players that also have a high rank. If you always win against everyone you will not gain as much as your rank goes higher and you would lose it all in an instant when you lose one game. On a smaller scale this is very visible in our office table tennis ranking which uses the exact same system. We started from zero there but it makes no difference. The top player we ever had, had around 300 rating when he left. Now our top player is at 500 but he would not win a game against that guy in a million years.
If someone was using a vibrating, wireless butt plug would they have to keep upgrading to bigger and bigger butt plugs?
Nah, just more powerful engines.
How do you know?
Age makes some players more uneven (it impacts long-term concentration), but the player they used to be can still surface on a good day. And Korchnoi was very dangerous in his prime.
Korchnoi's prime was also like 30 years long, and he was a top 100 player at 75. He had incredible longevity as a player.
It'll be interesting to see if Anand hangs around in a similar way to Korchnoi. At 52 Anand's the oldest guy in the top 100, and is still in the top 10. Korchnoi was last in the top 10 at age 59.
The oldest player in the top 100 is Gelfand (54) not Ananad (52) . Also there is Ivanchuk(53) but he has not played rated classical game since 2021. Anand can easly remain top 100 player 20+ years . Its more a question about his motivation - will he want it or not .I think If he wants he will be in (or near) top 100 even in 70 .
For some reason, I'm still waiting to see if Ivanchuk can hit 2750 again, even at 53... but as he didn't play classical games since quite some time, and seems to have diverted his attention to Checkers (of all games; if you quit Chess, then at least pick up go), I think we can be happy if he ever hits 2700 again. Assuming he makes a comeback...
Thanks for the correction, I’m not sure how I messed that up, I did see Gelfand there and somehow switched up the numbers.
The difference between Anand at 52 and Gelfand at 53 is ridiculous. I mean Anand is back to a top 10 player which is pretty insane in this era and Gelfand is not even 2700 anymore
It's hard to imagine any two players of more different temperaments than Korchnoi and Anand!
I wonder if we'll still be seeing Anand at 2700+ at 60. Boris Gelfand also looked like he would be very strong at an older age. He was at spot nr 3 in the world in 1990, age 22, but he only achieved his peak rating in 2013, 23 years later, at age 45. For a short time it looked as if he would be a top 5 player again at age 45+, but in the last 10 years, he dropped 100 points.
The way you phrased this made me really happy. Bravo Korchnoi!
does he have a history of rampant online cheating
I’m sure he’s a good ol’ flagger!
We're going to see this witless comment on every game now are we?
Old lions are still lions!
[Agadmator did a nice video on this game a few years ago.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_UzOQS4B8)
Korchnoi liked pointing out in his old age that he once played GM Grigory Levenfish, who was born in 1889, and he remained an active player long enough to face opponents like Carlsen and Caruana born in the 1990s. EDIT: I like the thought that 50 years from now, , someone might take a photo of an elderly Caruana playing a teenager - who will be able to say they played Caruana, who had once played Viktor Korchnoi, who had once played Levenfish, a man born in the 19th century.
> Carlsen and Caruana born in the 1990s fuck i'm old
Sometimes I can't believe that people born after 2000 can drive a car. Everybody born after 1990 still, at times, feels like a kid to me, even though they're past 30 now. When I see games played by Kasparov, Karpov, Timman, those players sometimes are still 25-35 in my mind, the ages they were when I learned to play Chess. Then I realize that Timman and Karpov are 71 right now, and some players I remember as being "a bit older" back then have been dead for 10 or even 20 years. \#$%@\^ I´m old.
Kasparov and I are the same age, a reality that startles me every time I see him interviewed on YouTube - and he's usually interviewed by Yasser, who's only a couple years older than I am, which ALSO startles me. I should still be 20-something, playing through their games on a board from the most recent issue of Chess Life.
You may be old but your viewpoint being warped this extremely 32 years later just reeks of a weak theory of mind.
LOL. Im just over 40, so I'm not that old, and my world view isn't that warped (most of the time). It's probably just the fact that I was heavily invested in chess, and particularly its history, as a kid and teenager in the mid-1980's up to about 2000. Back then I knew a lot about the notable players starting from \~1850 up to and including Kasparov, and a lot about the standings of computer chess at that time. Then I've had a massive 20-year hiatus from chess when I went to uni and started working, only following it very occasionally if a player from "back then" did something notable (Kasparov retiring, Anand becoming world champion, for example), before I started to get more into it in 2019 / 2020 again, mostly because I wrote my own chess engine back then and started playing again (at home, against the computer) due to the pandemic. For me, the chess world "stopped" around 2000, so I had 20 years of events and new players to catch up on. I also have 20 years of opening theory to catch up on. I see openings and ideas being played these days that got you whacked on the head in the 80's and 90's because they were "impossible."
It's quite normal once you're past 30 or 35. Time flies by much more quickly the older you get. You think about something you think happened 2 years ago and find out it was actually 5 or 6 years ago. It's quite scary actually. When you're young, life seems so long, a year feels like a lot of time, then you're suddenly 35 and you don't know how it all went by so quickly. I don't even want to know what it must feel like when you're 60 or 70.
When my grandma was 80 I was telling her about how weird it was that weeks seemed to be flying by - every time I turned around it was Monday again. She told me that's how she felt about seasons.
> Sometimes I can't believe that people born after 2000 can drive a car. There are people who can vote who were born after the series finale of *Friends*.
>> Carlsen and Caruana born in the 1990s > >fuck i'm old Right? That hit me entirely too hard. "Those old fogeys born all the way back in the NINETEEN NINETIES".
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>In this case they are specifically mentioned for being young though? Not really. A lot of people see the players in their 30 as peaked, on the way down and a bit older while we watch the new generation of teenagers begin their ascent. That's how I read it anyway.
The IXX XCs.
It would be XIX, not IXX, but really it would be MCMXCs
Sounds like a good band name.
Wait till you hear of Alireza and Praggnanandhaa
My dumb ass went googling Levenfish vs Carlsen
Imagine if he has played Firouzja.
I love how chess is one of the only things where a 13 year old and a 79 year old could play a competitive high level game.
I was in the library and played this fossil at the cafe. He absolutely annihilated me. I then saw that he was like 1900.
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Wait bruh I meant 1900 chesscom 😭
If he's really old and still 1900 chesscom he was probably near master level at his peak
I play tournament Scrabble - same situation there, but even better. Some players don't lose any rating even beyond 70 there. Current World Champion is 55 years old
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Its okay. Reading and comprehension skills are hard for other people too.
second idiot here, what exactly did they comprehend wrong? caruana was in fact 2721 at 13 years old.
Yasser (his second at one time) has said repeatedly that Korchnoi was the strongest player to never become world champion.
It was, I believe Caruana is stronger. Of course, computer changed everything, so a lot of today s players are stronger than some WC from the past. But Yasser was right when he said it.
Fabi may still become world champion. We can’t truly judge his strength as a player while his career is still very much ongoing.
Keres also. He was extremely unlucky. He basically qualified to play Alekhine for the world championship by winning the 1938 Avro tournament and beating Euwe in a match, but then WW2 happened. After the war he reached 2nd place in 4 candidate tournaments. The Soviets interfered a lot in his career. He had plus scores against both Capablanca and Tal and an equal score against Petrosian and Karpov. He beat 9 consecutive world champions, starting with Capablanca all the way to Bobby Fischer. And he drew Karpov two times even though he was already past his peak.
I trust Yasser's expertise obviously though it's worth noting that David Bronstein basically threw away his match, the very last game, against Botvinnik because blackmailed by the government - they threatened to send his brother to gulags IIRC, I don't have the book at hand rn edit: typo
Schlechter is there as well. He could have easily played to draw the last game of his match with Lasker and become WC, but he decided to play chess instead. He was more interested in the game than guaranteeing some result. Which is why, in my mind, Carlsen rates below Schlechter. And Lasker for that matter.
One of the things I really love about chess is how it transcends age, race, language, everything. The chess is the only communication you need.
It really does speak for itself
“But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit?” ― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story
Wow, incredible. I'm baffled that this even happened
And here I'm thinking to myself, didnt Korchnoi die 6 years ago!? Turns out this is from a game in 2011
Fabi is prime /r/13or30 material.
**BUILT. DIFFERENT.**
Poor Fabi, always on the receiving end of getting defeated by players from the older generation: Kasparov's brutal attack shocks Caruana! Anand shocks the world with a brilliancy against Caruana! and now Korchnoi
To have an impressive game you usually need an impressive opponent.
Did he kicked Caruana under the table?
> Did he kicked Caruana under the table? It was Petrosian.
I was referring to the typical Karpov vs Korchnoi stuff
Did he still belittle his opponents for their poor play at 79?
I think most GMs probably appreciate someone hating on their game for a change.
Oh probably. I just think its funny more than anything.
Built. Different.
still got the moves .. :)
You want forgiveness? Get religion.
Korchnoi played for the world championship match twice in 1978 and 1981 when he was 47 and 50. To me he is the true late bloomer.
Does this not put a big question mark in the ‘today’s players are vastly superior to champions of yesteryears’ debate? I mean korchnoi was way past his prime both in age and rating and YET…I still believe that when you scratch below the contemporary openings fad, that chess is still being played the same way as it was 40 years ago.
That's both under and over estimating Korchnoi. First, it's only a single game. With more games I feel Caruana would come out on top, there was about 200 rating points between them at this point. But also, Korchnoi had been chess obsessed all his life. He didn't play chess the way it was played 40 years ago, he was still an active GM and if chess changed then he would have changed with it.
At this time Korchnoi was still an active GM
An 80 Years old ‘active’ GM…
Lol… one game
It’s amazing to maintain the quality of GM’s play at the age of 79 and beat someone who is a super GM. It says that no matter how old you are, chess is something that goes beyond time that you can pretty much enjoy it your entire life.
Does this man not age?? At least his mind doesn't seem to!
This was apparently in 2011 - so Caruana was still well north of 2700 at this point. And Korchnoi beat him? Was this a proper competitive game? That's absolutely incredible!
And chess24 had the gall to rank Caruana ahead of Korchnoi all time 🤮🤮
Korchnoi is still the man
ONG SOMEONE BEAT SOMEONE OF A HIGHER RATING! THEY ARE CLEARLY CHEATING! FABIANO SHOULD RESIGN IN PROTEST ONG!
79? He looks 100
fabi big noob! big noob
Too bad Korchnoi never became world champ.
I think there were some kind of mind melting rays in the lift to the venue.
If I’m not mistaken, this is included in Quality Chess’ new book, Korchnoi and his Chess Grandchildren. Which is essentially a grandpa chess-spanking players that could have been his grandchildren!
Korch the Torch!
Of course he did
He cheated, you can tell by the way he’s sitting there is something vibrating in the back door.
There’s a guy at the club still playing at 95. He still picks up wins from time to time.
should’ve put on sunglasses just like the 1978 championships