Rating 2861

It was kind of obvious to me that Magnus Carlsen was about to surpass Kasparov’s best rating; it was just a question of time. The Norwegian chess Grandmaster and former chess prodigy is currently the number-one ranked player in the world. His peak rating is 2848, the second highest in history (after Garry Kasparov's 2851 set July 1999 to January 2000).

 Carlsen was also the 2009 World blitz chess champion.

Magnus's performance at the 2012 London Chess Classic means that when January 2013 FIDE ratings are published, he will officially surpass Kasparov to be the highest rated player of all time.

His performance at the September–October 2009 Pearl Spring tournament has been described as one of the greatest in history and lifted him to an Elo rating of 2801, making him the fifth player to achieve a rating over 2800 – aged 18 years at the time, by far the youngest to do so.

 January 2010 a new FIDE rating list was published, and at the age of 19 years, he became the youngest chess player in history to be ranked world number one, breaking the record previously held by Vladimir Kramnik, as well as the seventh player in history to be ranked number one in the world by FIDE.

Based on his rating, Carlsen qualified for the Candidates Tournament that will determine the challenger to World Champion Viswanathan Anand in the World Chess Championship 2013. He also previously qualified for the 2011 Candidates Tournament, but withdrew from it.

Since the announcement that he was coaching Carlsen, Garry Kasparov has repeatedly stated that Carlsen has a positional style similar to that of past world champions such as Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca and Vasily Smyslov, rather than the tactical style of Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Tal and himself.

Similarly, Viswanathan Anand compared Carlsen's style to that of Bobby Fischer, suggesting that both are "brilliant in simple technical positions". However, Carlsen has claimed that he does not have any preferences in terms of playing style.                                                                                                    

Kasparov and others have claimed that while Carlsen spends less time on opening preparation than other top-level players, his positional understanding more than makes up for it. According to Kasparov, "[Carlsen] has the ability to correctly evaluate any position, which only Karpov could boast of before him."Carlsen's endgame prowess has been described as among the greatest in history. Let’s look at one of my favorite Magnus games. When I saw this game for the first time it took me quite a while to understand the sharp lines of it, at the end I was completely convinced of the quality.

 …And as always, in the Chess spirit, have a nice game!

 Shadow_47