only 7 points difference now.

From the tournaments I've watched, the last few rounds are when Carlsen starts beating everyone. So Aronian can't lose any of his last few games, even though he has a one-and-a-half point lead now.

Oops! Skip that thought, Ivanchuk just passed Carlsen for second place. So Aronian is only ahead by one point! Pretty neat tournament

But it wasn't so unreasonable until this tournament. Until now, Carlsen was able to get ahead of everybody by a good 30 points or so. That's quite a lot. I don't think any other player had managed to get past 2810. So Carlsen for a while was the only one who appeared to be anywhere close.

Now, of course, more eyes are put on Aronian, who is getting a lot of wins. If Aronian can have more good tournaments like this, he will have just as much attention as Carlsen.

Maybe. Aronian is also pretty strong.

Oh yeah, Carlsen recently beat Aronian.

21 points now.

I don't care as long as we can get someone with a pulse in the next WCC.

What do you mean, Anthony?

Aronian is a bit late to be able to surpass Kasparov, who played his first World Championship match at age 21, and was the highest rated player in the world for a total 255 months at the time of his formal retirement - that's more than 21 years, only Lasker was as dominant but he often went a year or even two without playing at all in those days where master tournaments were rare occasions and there were only Championship matches when an opponent could raise his share of the prize stake.

Aronian is a great player and deserves to be considered among the all-time greats, but so far he is in the class of greats like Rubenstein, Keres, and Reshevsky who never played a title match.

"Is Aronian going to surpass Kasparov? "

Yeah, that'll happen.  lmao :)

cough.

Aronian had a particularly nice tournament last year at tata steel. But Carlsen is able to consistently have tournaments like that.