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0 pointsCalChris4y ago0 comments

Kasparov has the longest tenure as world #1 from 1984 to 2005, 21 years. Magnus is currently at 12. Kasparov has the most consecutive tournament victories at 15 and 9 years of winning every super tournament.

Comparing Magnus to Kasparov is kind of like comparing Steph Curry to MJ. Could it happen? Yes. But Magnus has to go out and do it. I think if he can beat Firouzja he makes a better case but tying Caruana and Karjack at classical wasn't all that impressive. Beating the great Anand was.

(Actually, MJ is probably a bridge too far for even Curry. Maybe LeBron is a better comparison.)

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AmericanChopper4y ago

Comparing ELO like that is silly. Kasparov had his final championship victory in 1995, and it was during the period in which he had left FIDE. Karpov won the FIDE championships (which of course Kasparov didn’t compete in), in ‘93, ‘96 and ‘98.

You could pick a similarly silly way to compare their careers by comparing their peak ELO. Which for Kasparov was 2851, and for Magnus 2882 (highest in history incidentally). Which is a rather large difference given the ELO system gets so wonky at that level that you can drop in ELO after winning an event (as I believe happened to Magnus after he won the Norway tournament this year).

noxvilleza4y ago

It's just "Elo", not "ELO" - it's not an acronym, but rather named after the guy who created it.

Dropping Elo after winning an event isn't really that 'wonky' - it's just a Bayesian update for underperforming your statistical expectations. The same thing happened when Carlsen won the Candidates in 2013, he went +5=7-2, but he was 2872 rating against a field of 2774, so 8.5/14 would mean he loses ~6 rating.

clairity4y ago

curry is easily the greatest shooter, but yah, no way he's gonna pass mj (or lebron) for the goat title. lebron is definitely the better comparison there.

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