It's been a long time since this post was updated. Carlsen is now down at a relatively lowly 2832, from his peak high of 2889.2. This drop of some 57 ratings points has also been seen by Caruana and Aronian in recent years, highlighting the difficulty in maintaining such high ratings, when draws are so common at elite GM level.
While Kramnik has remained stable, and Caruana has become a stable low 2800 player we now have So and Mamedyarov nipping at Carlsen's heels. Shak may just be on a bender in form and could sink back down again, though who knows. It's a shame he won't be at Norway instead of Giri.
So is most likely to challenge Carlsen for #1 and got very close recently. It will be interesting to see how the ratings fight goes this year. Norway Chess, starting early next month will make the situation clearer.
Mamedyarov will absolutely sink back down again, no question. We've seen it before with every player at that level who gains a large number of rating points in a very short period of time. The gain simply cannot be reflective of a proportional increase in actual ability.
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It's been a long time since this post was updated. Carlsen is now down at a relatively lowly 2832, from his peak high of 2889.2. This drop of some 57 ratings points has also been seen by Caruana and Aronian in recent years, highlighting the difficulty in maintaining such high ratings, when draws are so common at elite GM level.
While Kramnik has remained stable, and Caruana has become a stable low 2800 player we now have So and Mamedyarov nipping at Carlsen's heels. Shak may just be on a bender in form and could sink back down again, though who knows. It's a shame he won't be at Norway instead of Giri.
So is most likely to challenge Carlsen for #1 and got very close recently. It will be interesting to see how the ratings fight goes this year. Norway Chess, starting early next month will make the situation clearer.