Out of interest is it possible to calculate the maximum rating possible for either fide or some other system of ratings?
I'm sure you could do it for a game of 1 king and 1 queen each, so it should be extendable for a normal game right? Or would you have to work it out empirically by making a perfect engine first?
I'm sure there is no maximum rating.
Ratings will go on climbing higher and higher until someone works out a better rating system.
There's a linear correspondence between the quality of moves from a player and his elo rating. Hence there's probably a maximum rating. According to some researchers it's 3571.
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/papers/pdf/Reg12IPRs.pdf
Yes! He's the best player in the history of the world and machines don't know how to plan. He can steer the game into channels where human thinking trumps brute force calculation. While he can't calculate nearly as fast a an engine engines have a horizon effect of 20 moves whereas Carlsen can see deeper than that, resulting in a more accurate assessment.
Not trying to diss the guy, but how on Earth could Carlsen see deeper than an engine?
I understand the difference between the human thinking and pure engine, but there's no human that can see 20 moves deep.
Alekhine sometimes looked 30 moves ahead as shown sometimes in his best games collection.
There is absolutely no way that anyone can look 20-30 move deep.
10, I can believe, but even that is extremely rare.
If you're talking 20 move deep, you're talking thousands of lines and variations.
No human can see that.
If you give them a pen and paper and a few hours, fine, I'll buy it.
But not without those.