Carlsen and the quest for 2900

Wei Yi just beat the top rated Chinese player, Ding Liren, and is now up to 2729. He's now rated higher than Grand Chess Tour player, MVL!

If you look at your figures, you will see that there has been two much oscillation (from +83 to -79 to +5 to -25) for any significant conclusion to be drawn.
For quickly progressing young players, a huge part of those differences can be attributed to tournaments dates. Take an exemple : if Yi had not been invited to Tata Steel B, he would have crossed 2700 maybe one month later. The dates of the tournament defines the profile of the rating progression.
You need to take the average over one year for this to have any signification.

 

Carlsen's quest for 2900 resumes in Norway this month. Given the strength of the field, and with his average opponents being at Elo 2771, he has an outside chance of reaching this milestone.

Realistically, he will be doing well just to retain his current rating of 2876. The following results for Carlsen will see his rating shift to the following:

6.5 would be significant as that would mean he breaks his highest official rating score. Realistically a score of 6 is expected, but with MVL out of form, Topalov not playing much, and therefore potentially weak, and Nakamura being Carlsen's bunny, it's entirely possible for him to achieve 7/9.

PDubya, your posts are very interesting. Keep them up!

Fingers crossed for 8.5/9  Pretty impossible, since that would be a performance of ~3200, but you never know (Caruana!). 

I, too, hope Caruana will score 8.5/9. :D

MSC, you are only 100 points higher than me in tactics now!

Hey, I'm in a good shape today, maybe i get away a lil bit later :P

Here are my predictions for Norway Chess:

Does anyone else foresee different results? I think the results will fairly closely follow the current live rankings. A shame Kramnik and Karjakin aren't playing here, and maybe So in a 10-round event. That would be right up there with AVRO 1938, or Linaires 1994...

you think hammer gets better score than MVL?

You made one mistake : you assumed that the results should be consistent with what the players have done during the last few months. But almost all top players today are highly irregular - Carlsen beeing the only exception. They can all play an excellent tournament one month and have a terrible performance the next.

I definitely think Hammer can beat MVL in this tournament. Last year, Agdestein drew 7 of his 9 games, and is rated lower than Hammer. 

MVL could potentially have a total disaster and plummet below 2700, or he might have found some form and bounce back. Regardless, I think it's evident he is not quite in the league as the other players here (barring Hammer). 

In some ways, perhaps it's too much to expect Carlsen to win here. He doesn't seem to do well in Norway (e.g. Chess Olympiad). 

pfft. carlsen will win easily

Carlsen's bizarre loss on time to Topalov has put a major dent in his quest for 2900, at least for this year. 

Coming into the Norway even he was sitting pretty on 2876, and with a forced win in 32 moves he was projected to move to 2879.9 in the Live ratings. Now, however, he has dropped to 2869.9, and will struggle to get back to his pre-tournament rating (he'll need to go 6/8 to maintain it). 

Topalov, meanwhile has now almost certainly clinched a Candidate's spot based on ratings, as he'll be unlikely to drop much below his current 2798 rating. 

The World Rapid and Blitz Championship starts soon in Berlin. Carlsen is currently sitting on 2914 for Blitz. He reached a peak of 2948 last year. 

What are the chances of his rating exceeding 3000 in this tournament? It appears Blitz/Rapid has a different K factor as ratings can fluctuate wildly for each game. Does anyone know what they are calcuated at? 

Blitz K factor is 20. If I'm not mistaken that means their rating just change twice as much as in normal games. I highely doubt Carlsen can cross 3000, because he would just have to finish with 19/21 or something like that (no facts, just guesses). Even for getting a live 3000, he would have to start with 10/10 for example.

Thanks for that. That is correct. 
 

Carleen ended the Rapid with 11.5/15 and improved his Rapid rating to 2873, reclaiming the #1 spot from Nakamura.

The World Champion now moves on to Blitz. His rating is currently 2914. Based on this it's hard to say exactly what he would need to obtain a 3000 rating, because his opponent's average strength is not yet known. Assuming his average opponent is 2750 he would need 19.5/21 to obtain 3000. 
To maintain his rating of 2914 he would need approximately 15/21, so he will be doing very well to keep his rating above 2900.

Carlsen began the Blitz Championship with a raging 9/10, rocketing his live Blitz rating up to 2940.8, before an 11th round loss to Karjakin dropped his rating 14.2 points, back to 2926.6.

Had he won his rating would have been around 2947 and he would have potentially been able to push into the 2970s on the final day. 

Through 10 rounds of the 2016 Tata Steel tournament, Carlsen is back up to 2850. The past two years have proven just how difficult it is to approach a 2900 rating. 

Curiously, his current TPR is exactly 2900, so he's definitely capable of it. 

It would be an interesting exercise to calculate Carlsen's performance in the first half of tournaments vs the second half. One would have to assume the latter would potentially be over 2900, while the former somewhere south of 2800...