How great is Ding Liren?

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karolmatta5

Very 😅

theChessBlackPanther

To start, the list is already flawed as Carlsen should be #1

theChessBlackPanther

Fischer #2.

fabelhaft

It may take a while before people get used to having a World Champion who is ”just” a ”normal” top player and not a Karpov, Kasparov or Carlsen. Many have too high expectations, call him the best player in the world, and expect results on that level over the upcoming years.

The truth is that Carlsen style World Champions are very rare. Even now, when there have been many complaints about his recent form etc, he has a lead on the live rating list of 65+ points. The distance between Carlsen and #2 is bigger than the distance between #2 and #25.

Ding’s peak rating (35 Elo higher than now) was five years ago, and it is far from certain he will reach such numbers again. I think he would do well if he would stay in the top 5 of the rating list over the following years. 

psychohist
fabelhaft wrote:

It may take a while before people get used to having a World Champion who is ”just” a ”normal” top player and not a Karpov, Kasparov or Carlsen.

It seems some will easily get used to having a World Champion who is "just" a "normal" top player such as Karpov, based on your posts in this thread.

Perhaps the key error in this thread is the choice of a top 50 list put together by players inferior to world champions. Better would be to use a list based on a player superior to world champions, namely Stockfish, as was done in the Markov analysis published in 2017:

1. Carlsen
2. Kramnik
3. Fischer
4. Kasparov
5. Anand
6. Khalifman
7. Smyslov
8. Petrosian
9. Karpov
10. Kasimdzhanov
11. Botvinnik
12. Ponomariov
13. Lasker
14. Spassky
15. Topalov
16. Capablanca
17. Tal
18. Euwe
19. Alekhine
20. Steinitz

https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg0012

Note that this ranking is based on each player's peak year. See the article if you care about longevity independent of how well the players actually played. However, including longevity makes no sense for this thread, since we have no information on Ding's longevity as world champion yet.

The interesting thing about this list is that the analysis could easily be rerun for Ding's peak year to date, providing an objective minimum placement of him. A guess based on Ding's peak FIDE rating being one point short of Anand and Kramnik from the same era suggests that Ding would place no higher than 6th on this list based on results to date. That said, peak FIDE ratings tend to be achieved around age 40, so Ding still has a few years to improve.

fabelhaft
psychohist wrote:
fabelhaft wrote:

It may take a while before people get used to having a World Champion who is ”just” a ”normal” top player and not a Karpov, Kasparov or Carlsen.

It seems some will easily get used to having a World Champion who is "just" a "normal" top player such as Karpov, based on your posts in this thread.

Perhaps the key error in this thread is the choice of a top 50 list put together by players inferior to world champions. Better would be to use a list based on a player superior to world champions, namely Stockfish, as was done in the Markov analysis published in 2017:

1. Carlsen
2. Kramnik
3. Fischer
4. Kasparov
5. Anand
6. Khalifman
7. Smyslov
8. Petrosian
9. Karpov
10. Kasimdzhanov
11. Botvinnik
12. Ponomariov
13. Lasker
14. Spassky
15. Topalov
16. Capablanca
17. Tal
18. Euwe
19. Alekhine
20. Steinitz

https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg0012

Note that this ranking is based on each player's peak year. See the article if you care about longevity independent of how well the players actually played. However, including longevity makes no sense for this thread, since we have no information on Ding's longevity as world champion yet.

The interesting thing about this list is that the analysis could easily be rerun for Ding's peak year to date, providing an objective minimum placement of him. A guess based on Ding's peak FIDE rating being one point short of Anand and Kramnik from the same era suggests that Ding would place no higher than 6th on this list based on results to date. That said, peak FIDE ratings tend to be achieved around age 40, so Ding still has a few years to improve.

If you think Khalifman is greater than Karpov, and Kasimdzhanov greater than Lasker, based on objective playing strength is one thing, but ranking the greatest players by their achievements is something else…