Nice work.
How to dig up numbers like this?
Carlsen's dismal 2015
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The numbers are all there in the databases, but one will have to do a bit of adding :-) It's funny though how negatively Carlsen's reign routinely is described, he is said to have struggled in every event after having won the title, scored unimpressive results, been quite drawish etc. People writing these things are usually not even trolls, but rather lacking knowledge about Carlsen's results and just repeating what others keep repeating.
One of the things that started as a troll thread was the stuff about no World Champion ever having lost as many games as Carlsen in 2015. This "fact" has now been repeated by many "serious" sites and posters just because it has been posted on the Internet and it is practical to just repeat it. Anand lost more games in 2013 than Carlsen has lost in 2015, so it's not as if one has to bring up Tal, Alekhine, Euwe and Steinitz. Finding World Champions that won 27 games and 4 tournaments in one year is considerably more difficult.
As World Champion Carlsen has played ten super tournaments, winning six and finishing second in three. He has also participated in the four strongest rapid and blitz World Championships ever, winning three of them, and defended the title in classical chess. On the whole Carlsen's results as World Champion have been quite good, and I think many will realise just how good first when he no longer holds the title, and his successor is supposed to show how much a "real" World Champion is supposed to win.
Dec 25, 2015
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#4
fabelhaft wrote:
I think many will realise just how good first when he no longer holds the title, and his successor is supposed to show how much a "real" World Champion is supposed to win.
Not so sure. People have short memories.
Maybe I should say, relative standards. It seems he was becoming a legend in his own time.
Dec 25, 2015
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#5
fabelhaft wrote:
The numbers are all there in the databases
Do you own one or do you use something like chessgames.com?
0110001101101000 wrote:
fabelhaft wrote:
The numbers are all there in the databases
Do you own one or do you use something like chessgames.com?
Chessgames is practical for this type of quick searches, even if it isn't always correct. One nice resource for some older stats is
http://members.aon.at/sfischl/stat.html
Interesting to look at some numbers from the past and compare with today.
Dec 25, 2015
0
#7
Who has had a better year? He is the best player by quite alot and will remain that for the foreseeable future. Since he is a very active world champion it is only logical he will lose more games in a year than say Kasparov did. The only disaster was really Norway chess, but he still won overall.
"Who has had a better year?"
Carlsen won four tournaments also in 2011, but it's hard to find someone doing better than that as World Champion. Kasparov won four both in 1988 and 1989, but that was rare also for him. And even if Carlsen won't win Qatar in the end he has also won the rapid World Championship this year, so finding World Champions that won more events in one year isn't easy.
That's five classical tournament wins in one year, one of them the strongest open ever, and add to that the rapid World Championship and it's rather decent :-)
Chessbase previously summed Carlsen's year up as worse than a flop, but have now moderated it a bit into him having "a very bumpy start to the year", in their vote for best player of the year. And still he started 2015 with three top tournaments in five months, winning all of them :-)
I can only guess that the reason they don't even mention those tournament victories is that the whole vote is quite boring a year like this. Not easy to make a case for someone else than Carlsen as the best player of 2015.
He's simply unreal. I can't believe there are some people who can't/won't see that.
Anish Giri.
Surprisingly many votes for Eljanov :-)
Pyrandus wrote:
Anish Giri for the Leko Chess Oscar Award
Fixed it for you :P
Where is that poll from? Internet polls are worse than useless.
Giri had a good year, but Chessbase repeats that it's a vote for best player, not favourite player or most improved player or something like that. And on the question Who was the best player in the world in 2015 it is difficult to pick a Giri who won only one event, and that was the weak Dutch Championship. Wei Yi also has quite a few votes, but he just wasn't better than Carlsen in 2015. And neither was Eljanov :-)
"Where is that poll from?"
http://en.chessbase.com/post/best-of-2015-best-player
Carlsen's year a bit more in detail:
He won Tata after scoring six wins in a row (including a nice positional game against Aronian), and in Grenke he won an exciting Dutch with black against Anand when picking up his second super tournament win of the year. Then in Gashimov Memorial he scored his maybe best result, +5-0=4 in a very strong field, beating for example Kramnik, and MVL in a pretty game.
Then came the disaster in Norway, where everything that could go wrong went wrong and Carlsen dropped over 20 points, while second place in Sinquefield Cup (where he won a great game against So) was OK. Then he was back to winning ways with first place in London (after a memorable endgame against Nakamura) and Qatar.
Picking Carlsen's best game is difficult, a couple of obvious candidates have already been mentioned, but my favourite is his win against Li Chao in Qatar. Carlsen is usually very self critical when discussing his games, but called the one against Li Chao "quite spectacular" and hard to disagree about that.
In all Carlsen scored +18 over the year in classical, and also won the World Championship in rapid chess.
alexm2310 wrote:
I have no numbers to back this up, but it seems Carlsen has simply been less dominant this year. Still the best player in the world, and still worthy of world champion, but surely his 2014 and 2013 were better?
I don't know, there were similar discussions those years too. Many said Carlsen hadn't deserved to win the events he won, was overrated, etc etc. Or maybe it's just me finding such articles entertaining and saving them :-)
Carlsen felt rather dominant halfway through 2015, until he lost that won position on time against Topalov in the middle of June. Having won the title match in November 2014, he had started 2015 with wins in Wijk, Grenke and Shamkir. Then came that loss against Topalov and some for him indifferent results before the double triumph in December, but he did play very much for a World Champion.
Carlsen’s 2015 has been described as “disastrous”, “very disappointing”, “lacklustre” etc by journalists at various chess sites. Chessbase claimed that it would be an understatement to call Carlsen’s year a flop. Others have been even more negative, and statements about Carlsen not living up to the standards expected by a title holder have been repeated numerous times. This sort of assessments being so common, it’s worth taking a look at some stats for the allegedly dismal year.
Carlsen has in 2015 scored +27-10=31 and won four super tournaments. This can be compared with his predecessors: Anand won 6 games in 2009, 3 games in 2012, and went five years in a row without winning a tournament. In 2002-05 Kramnik scored +26-17=96, winning one event (and in that one he drew most of his games in 23 moves or less).
Carlsen’s draw percentage has been as low as 45 and he has beaten many top players during the year: 3 wins against Caruana, 2 each against Aronian, MVL and Grischuk, and 1 against Kramnik, Anand, Mamedyarov, Nakamura, So, Li Chao, Radjabov and Leko. With the year being described as worse than a flop, one wonders which results that would have been needed to make 2015 worthy of being called a flop :-)