Why Magnus Carlsen is so overrated?

I suspect that AlexandraThessa was GreedyPawnEater creating a new account. Who will be his next incarnation? 

How many of the top 10 players if asked to name the best player in the world would say Carlsen?

I don't know, but my guess is that more would say Carlsen than anybody else.

ELO ratings are a matter of calculation.  It is difficualt to see how anyone can be over rated if they have, like Carlsen, played a very large number of games against the world's elite players.  And Carlsen has been consistently the highest rated for a long time.

This is a post I made about the 1016 Candidates tournament on another thread.  I am just a chess fan wanting to see an interesting match, not a Carlsen worshipper.

"This tournament will take place this year to select a challenger for Carlsen.  I want to consider who could make a real challenge.

That Anand was the convincing winner of the last such event, but lost 2 matches with Carlsen, losing 6 games and winning only one, gives an insight into the magnitude of the problem.

Carlsen is well known to play long games and grind his opponents down late in the playing session with his youthful stamina and amazing understanding of simple positions.

This sort of tactic is going to work particularly well against aging players in a match, so I doubt the 3 oldest players, Anand, Topalov and Svidler would be capable of making the match close were they to qualify, which they may do.

Nakamura's record against Carlsen is very poor.  I don't like his chances at all.

Aronian is interesting.  However, Carlsen has consistently out-rated him for some years.  Could lead to some interesting games.

Karjarkin has again been consistently behind Carlsen for some years.  He is the same age and his solid style is well suited to match play.  Can't see him winning, could provide some intersting chess I hope.

This leaves the 2 players younger than Carlsen, which I think the person who takes his title is very likely to be.

Caruana could provide the most interesting challenge.  He is young, improving and can play very well indeed.  But he will have to overcome his tendency to get into time trouble, which is something much easier to say than do.  If any challenger keeps getting short of time against Carlsen ... I can hardly see the need to play the match.

And finally Giri.  The youngest and likely the candidate with the best chance if he qualifies.  My biggest question is it may be too soon for Giri to successfully challenge.

Thoughts of others?  "

I think more time spend on playing and improving your own rating and less time concerning yourself with top level chess is in order?

He's dominated everyone else for quite sometime now.

That one is easy. Because he is a kid. Fiderating is based on previous tournaments, and kids that are skyrocketing often are stronger than than they were a half year ago. Maybe 50 points, maybe 200, but very seldom as much as 400.

On the other hand. He is a Swede, and Swedes are usually overrated. Underrating is more common in India and China. I am not sure why the Swedes are underrated but I guess that there is a relatively older chesspopulation in Sweden.

I know I am pretty bad at chess but can someone please tell me " is Wei Yi the next Carlsen."

They would tell you " Carlsen is the best"  because it is politically incorrect to say he is not .  

Karpov, Fischer, Kasparov, Alekhine... and many others were the best player in their times  why?  Because they were bored of having beaten the game .   Anand is an exception to the rule , becuase the indian philosophy is different, but a wrong philosophy as we could see in the last world championship match.

thwre?

He fixed it. I guess he meant there.

I wrote this , 3 days ago.   Today i was watching the Wijk Aan Zee 2016, and the terrible blunder by Mamedyarov,  a big punishment to him .  So i was thinking,  who is gonna be the lucky guy who plays vs Mamedyarov the next round?   YEEESSSS, you guessed ,  Magnus Carlsen !   What a joke, unbelievle,  the norweigan is doing black magic 0r something  because the luck of this guy is not normal.

I can remember my last time when i lost a game similar to Mamedyarov made today ( a winning position and he gifted his rook) and  i lost 4 games in a row .   Sadly  you can expect the same fr0m Mamedyarov tomorrow  1-0 . 

I have previously stated that luck is very important in chess.

The best players in the world are best at creating luck.

If you creates the best luck, and executes it with the best presicion, you will win.

Chess is a lot about luck-creation. It starts in the opening. Building up a perfect structure makes luck. Precise positioning makes luck. When you have managed to put your pieces in the best positions, and they are supercoordinated there is a chance for luck. maybe a tactic.

Magnus is the best in the world to create luck on the chessboard. Thats why he is rated 2800+

You dont get luck before the game. You have to create it. And if you are very good, you can create quite much.

Another thing is that opponents can do mistakes that only the best GM´s can detect and punish. To grab that luck, that is skills.

Luck is skills. Skills is luck. Magnus is lucky. Very lucky. He executes extreme luck on the board. Luck at a level most of us can not dream of.

Carlsen is overrated? Okay.

delagarza1 wrote:

I think GM Grigory Serper said wei yi is the next WC in one of his articles. Probably Serper, I don't remember

He blundered against Adams...

I used to think Carlsen was kind of weak and underwhelming. So I did some statistical research to prove how much better Kasporav was. It turns out I "proved" the opposite.

I can dig up exact numbers if people want to hear them:

- Carlsen in his prime now loses less games, by percentage, than Kasporav did in his years as word champion.

- Carlsen's "disastor 2015" is not as bad as 2 - 3 Kasporav years in terms of W/D/L score. If you are curious, I will find which years these are. 

- Carlsen has less draws than Kasporav, and Kasporav is actually objectively more drawish.

This was very eye opening for me, and maybe if other people saw the hard statistics they would be more open minded to accept that Carlsen deserves his rating and his spot as world champion.

One of Karolsson's predecessors.

Sensible comments xman.

I think Carlsen draws ire because he tends to win mostly w/o sacrificial attacks.

I have heard him called an endgame specialist, but I don't agree.  He is way too good in other phases of the game for such a description to be accurate.

Scary thing is, a player like Nakamura would be called an aggressive, attacking, tactical player.  But I don't think he is any better in attack or tactics than Carlsen.

xman, do you know how Carlsen's tournament record compares with Karpov's?  Kasparov said in one of his books Karpov has the best tournament record ever.

Yes, I'm sure this would convince the OP, and there would be no more anti-Carlsen threads

pfren wrote:

CamelsOfYaQub wrote:

delagarza1 wrote:

I think GM Grigory Serper said wei yi is the next WC in one of his articles. Probably Serper, I don't remember

He blundered against Adams...

Who?

Ok since I m bad at chess I will let you do the honours in explaining why Wei Yi didn't beat Adams in the Wijk Ann Zee... He should of won. White s rook was in a terrible position!