Sinquefield Cup 2014

Congrats Caruana. Good tourney, you finished with +7... Whaaat?! :D

He was the star of the show without doubt. :)

I didn't watch the games today, seems like I didn't miss much.

I missed the post-event press conference...anyone know where I can find a copy online?

3097 performance by Fabi... just imagine if he hadn't missed those wins in games 8 & 9, he would have had 9.5/10 and probably a 3200+ performance...

It's already up on Livestream (at the end of the Round 10 video). I'd expect it to be on YouTube sometime tomorrow?

http://new.livestream.com/chess24/sinquefieldcup

Thanks.

How does this compare with history's highest TPRs?

I'd imagine it's probably the highest, considering he scored 8.5/10 in the strongest tournament ever.

Sofia Polgar's 2928 tpr was quite remarkable since she was 14 and rated below 2300 at the time.

Kasparov's 3043 was in a rapid team match and Fischer's scores were in matchplay also rather than tournaments.

Chessmetrics came up with this list, using their own tpr formula, which values longer events (easier to score sick tpr's in 6-10 round events than in 30 rounds and fixes for time) in 2009:

No clue where Caruana would rank since I don't know the formulas, but surely they'll post an update on this sometime soon.

At the press conference the GMs were asked to sum up Caruana's performance in one word...

Carlsen: Depressing

I like his honesty. He must be pretty pissed. All great humour is the truth...when Carlsen said 'depressing' after Naka and Topoalov used more conservative and complimentary words ,the room roared with laughter.

Good press conference...except for that woman who asked the first question and could have shown a tad more class by first congratulating Caruana

Did Carlsen mean Caruana's wins depressed the other players or he thought Caruana somehow played poorly?

I'm sure Carlsen meant that Caruana's wins depressed Carlsen, and probably the others too. There were a handful of humorous comments made by some of the players; I enjoyed watching it.

Yeah Magnus probably meant it as a joke -- he is remarking on how unimpressive Caruana's result makes Carlsen's play look (just for this tournament).

If Karpov's Linares 1994 used to be called the greatest tournament performance ever, I'd say Caruana now should get the nod for this tournament. As Topalov said, Caruana scored +7 in ten rounds without even being lucky in any way, and it was closer to +8 than +6. All Caruana's opponents were also ranked higher than tenth, while Karpov had several opponents ranked considerably further down the list. Karpov also had some "luck" as in for example Bareev's inexplicably playing a one move self mate in an even position, and he didn't beat #1 as Caruana did. Still of course an incredible achievement, and over 13 rounds, but I rank Caruana's Sinquefield Cup 2014 first.

Well Carlsen was speaking purely from his own point of view when he said 'depressing'. He certainly has gone on record giving full credit to Caruana. When he said 'depressing' it was an honest answer. Totally. If I was Carlsen I'd be feeling down about someone else outshining me. Carlsen is number 1 and world champ...it's got to hurt when someone a year or so younger than you comes out with a winning streak like that. I just hope, and I'm sure he will, feel equal parts determination and desire to better Caruanas awesome performance in the future.

Does anyone know if there will still be live coverage of the after-events?  The relay-race-style game and the Chess960 match...I am curious how a game where 4 GMs and 1 patzer are making the moves in sequence will turn out...

I'm going from memory (which could be faulty), but I think they announced during Round 10 that the Ultimate Moves team event would be aired Monday, Sept 8 at 2PM Saint Louis time, and the 960 game the next day, same time.

Caruana's opponents GAVE him free wins, he just got extremely lucky this tournament. Look at all his other tournaments where he consistently plays much weaker than Carlsen. 

It was aknowledged by other participants, that  Caruana played simply better in this tournament.