Is Carlsen going to surpass Kasparov?

According to the latest updates of players' ratings from http://www.2700chess.com/, it is officially stated that Carlsen has reached a stunning 2841.6 rating after beating Boris Gelfand. After all, Carlsen was an international master at the age of 13. Will he achieve 2851 one day and surpass chess legend Kasparov?

Both the level of chess playing strength and the number of very strong players at the top have increased over the past couple of years or decades. Looks like Magnus achieving 2851+ some time soon could very well be possible.

Both Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian have been showing a great performance in Wijk aan Zee this year. Who knows, maybe Magnus even manages to surpass Kasparov's all-time best already in this very tournament, while still coming in second behind Aronian in this tournament? Nothing seems impossible

It's just a matter of time - could well happen in this tournament.

chrisr, I've read a few articles that claim rating inflation isn't actually occuring (in any significant amount), it's just the quality of the players that's increasing (as it should with the internet). 

Ratingwise probably yes. But Kasparov was World Champion for 15 years. If Magnus will be able to hold his title for at least 10 years, regardless of rating, I think he'll equal Kasparov achievements. 

The quality of player's didn't go up, we just have more good players. Top players now are no better than top players 20 years ago. Opening preperation is better, theory is different. Rating inflation makes it hard to compare players from different eras.

Never!!!!!!!!  I won't allow it!

WEll, Kasparov is teaching him...why not?!

the games of Fischer et al. are more enjoyable than the games nowadays.

Not any more.  The styles are so different I don't know how much Kasparov could teach him.  He did sharpen his opening repertoire, but I am not sure how comfortable Carlsen was with it.

 Ok I am going to have to call BS on the claim that you can examine a Fischer game, then a Carlsen game, and come away with evidence for ratings inflation.

Now if you want to try this with some rigor, you can do a comparison of a lot of games using a good chess engine, which has been done, and ceratinly does not support the claim for inflated ratings.

There are many ways to look at it, but I like the idea of looking at the strength of a champion by how far ahead of their competitors they are.  Carlsen and Aronian are young and may dominate in the future, but they're still barely ahead of the old guard.

In terms of pure playing skill, the next generation will have to surpass Kasparov, just as each generation does over the last.

It's just a distribution of players, not an absolute value like weight or height.  There are more world class players now, so there is a larger disparity from FM to WCC.

Just my off the cuff thought on it, I haven't read any of these studies.

BTW computers are an unbiased way of comparing players.  I don't think preping with an engine will raise your matchup rate significantly (e.g. maybe 1-2%).

So true, in term of pure rating, Anand today is  near to the best of Kasparov, however, we all know that, Anand, Gelfand, Topalov, Ivanchuk and all the other elite GMs who had a long period played with Kasparov were completely destroyed by him. The only elite GM today who has a good overal score against Kasparov was Kramnik, who always play the super dry and drawish openings against Kasparov.

Kasparov vs Anand: +26 -8 = 43

Kasparov vs Gelfand: +10 -0 = 9 (poor Gelfand)

Kasparov vs Topalov: +19 -6 =17

Kasparov vs Ivanchuk: +15 -6 =27

Carlsen is far from the domination the rest of elite GMs as Kasparov. May be he will, but definitely not now.

Compare Kasparov to Fischer is comparable but not the Carlsen today.

An interesting debate on player rating inflation. Wheather the objective evidence favors one side of the debate over the other, I can not tell. Whatever the ratings of the grandmasters, we can only hope they continue to play and give us beautiful games to study. Bobby Fischer left us some exciting games; but think of the games he left unplayed because of his absence from the world chess scene all those years. Would'nt it be rich to have those games to study?   To the topic question, yes, Carlsen will probably pass Kasporov in rating, eventually.

Yeah but who would you rather have to deal with in a bar fight?  Kasparov has a glowering presence and works out a lot.  At chess-boxing my money is on K.

There are too few real fighters in the chess elite today, and it may make Carlsen's progress beyond 2851 ELO easier. Grischuk, Kramnik, Gelfand, Caruana et consortes are just draw takers. The only fighters out there besides Carlsen are Nakamura and Morozevich. Maybe Topalov too.

Aronian? And Kramnik doesn't draw that much any more.

Even if we agree with your basic assumption that there are fewer fighters today shouldn't it actually make it more difficult to achieve high rating. After all, it makes draw more likely which will cost rating points for the higher rated player. In top level chess winning is much harder than avoiding a loss.

Of course the top players protect their ratings by only playing against opponents who are within 80 points or so of their ELO. Anand, Carlsen, Kramnik, Aronian etc never play open events where they might have an off day and lose to some 2500 player, that would drop them 30+ points in one game. Only the great Ivanchuk 'dared' to play the Gibraltar masters last year and he saved his rating by destroying the field. That leads to much more interesting games than the computer controlled super elite events where most wins are dry technical affairs.

You only have to look at the first graph in this article to see that ratings inflation has occurred, and that it started suddenly in the mid 80s. The best explanation I've seen (as discussed in the update to that article) is that the inflation is due to lowered rating floors for FIDE ratings.

People who think rating inflation doesn't occur need to come up with an explanation for why ratings were basically totally flat from early 70s through 1985, and then in 1986, practically overnight, they suddenly take off at a rate that has stayed relatively stable since then.