One IM friend of mine, rated about 2400, told me fondly a few times a story how he first “held his own” against a 2650-rated GM, then got an “almost winning position” only to lose it in the end. The implied meaning of his glorious tale is that his true strength should be close to 2650. Typically, such a psychological mistake is typical of club players. You hear similar complaints all the time: “I have totally outplayed him, but…”. There is always this “but”! So, what’s wrong with this attitude? And why do we see so many rollercoaster games between Davids and Goliaths?

First of all, a lot depends on the strength of the opponents. For example, in a 1700 vs. 2000 match-up, both players are relatively weak by chess engines’ standards, so the computer is likely to find many mistakes for both sides. The one who makes the last blunder loses. 

In a nutshell, humans are terrible at chess by computer standards. If you revisit the books written in the pre-engine era, you will realize that many games there have this narrative of one player consistently outplaying the other, flawlessly executing his master plan. However, if you check the masterpiece with a modern engine, you will often realize that the opponent had chances to escape or even turn the tables with a brilliant tactical strike unacknowledged by the players and the commentators. 

Secondly, the stronger players often underestimate their opponents, which results in such undesired scenarios as playing superficially and waiting for the game to win itself; attacking too vigorously and recklessly in a position that doesn’t allow it because “it’s time to show the patzer who the boss is”. 

One experienced GM coach told me that the best way to play against candidate masters and below is to put your pieces on nice central squares, after which either the opponent’s position will fall apart by itself, or he will self-destruct. This recommendation is useful to some extent. You can often see experienced GMs not trying too hard against their amateur opponents. They quickly play the moves that are supposed to be “good enough”, and the amateur becomes excited, starts sweating, gets into time trouble, and blunders something silly. However, sometimes the rating favorites play too sloppily and get punished. There is a thin line between playing practically and quickly and making second-rate moves because you believe you can get away with them. 

Thirdly, the rating difference makes the favorites take more risks to avoid drawing the game; many of them overpress and end up losing.

Fourthly, there are fluctuations in form, especially among non-professional players. On a given day, a 2200 might play at a 2400 level, while his 2400-rated opponent might perform at 2200 level, basically reversing the roles in the match-up. 

Fifthly, nowadays, when you see the pairings, it is often not even exactly clear who the favorite is. I have briefly touched upon this topic in the post about rating inflation in chess. 

The ratings of some players haven’t scaled up yet due to them not having played an adequate number of rated games. For example, 16-year-old GM Rameshbabu Praggnanadhaa, one of the most talented chess prodigies in the world right now and the finalist of the recent Chessable Masters event, has an official FIDE rapid rating of…what do you think it is?

2700? 2500? What if I tell you the answer is 1927? 

Oh, how I pity the chess players who will face him in official rapid tournaments!

What is harder: to beat Pragg or to spell his name right? 

To summarize, it is essential to avoid the typical reaction of amateur players after such a loss. For them, the story goes: “At first the position was rather balanced, then complications started. At a certain point I was winning, but he GOT LUCKY, so I ended up losing”. The real story is that, as they say in Russia, “class has prevailed”, meaning that no matter how messy the game itself was, in the end, the more experienced player had the final say. 

So, the weaker players should focus on their own mistakes in such a case and try to make sure they don’t happen again rather than ridicule the weak play of the higher-rated opponents. 

Similarly, Goliaths who suffer a loss at the hands of Davids should also carefully analyze what went wrong and adjust their approach accordingly. 

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One does not simply win a chess game without making any mistakes! 

Why do Stronger Players Make Mistakes Against Weaker Players?

The question whether there is rating inflation in chess or not is one of the most hotly debated topics in the chess community. Some players accept it as a universally acknowledged fact that the ratings keep growing year by year and hence assume that top masters from the past would have been rated higher today than they were back then. This belief is further enforced by interviews of former world-class players who are currently inactive. Some of them like fondly recalling their glory days when there was a limited number of 2600s in the world, and only a couple of 2700+ GMs. By mentioning this fact, they proceed to make a claim about the ratings having inflated. But is this true if we consider objective playing strength, not ranking? 

Jose Raul Capablanca was a merciless chess machine who hasn’t lost a single tournament game from 1916 to 1924. 

In his article titled “Would Carlsen have beaten Capablanca?” , GM Daniel Gormally tried to explain to the audience that chess standards have risen a lot over time. As a result, if we used a time machine to bring any of the masters from the past into the modern day, they wouldn’t stand much of a chance. The article attracted an incredible amount of attention from the readers and was received rather poorly. Let’s see what Daniel opined about Capablanca:

But what about Capa? How would he compare strength-wise to the players of today? I think he would come off rather badly. The difference in terms of knowledge and understanding between the players of today and the players of the 1920s and 30s is enormous. I know people who think Capablanca would struggle to break a 2500 rating if he came back today. I'm not sure if I completely agree with this, because Capablanca's raw chess talent is much higher than a 2500 player, but chess is also a game of information. It's difficult to see how Capablanca would have coped with the greater knowledge and sharp chess theory of today's chess elite. Sure, give him six months, and he might be able to bridge the gap, but it really is a huge leap. It's like trying to compare Jesse Owens to Usain Bolt, he'd be left many yards behind.

Here is what Dr. GM John Nunn had to say about one of the participants of the Karlsbad-1911 super tournament featuring such legendary names as Alekhine, Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch, Tartakower, Spielmann, Marshall, etc. In fact, they were all contemporaries and rivals of Jose Raul Capablanca to one extent or another. The quote is from “John Nunn’s Chess Puzzle Book”:

In order to be more specific about Karlsbad, take one player: Hugo Süchting (1874-1916). At Karlsbad he scored 11.5/13.5 or 'minus 2', as they say these days - a perfectly respectable score. Having played over all his games at Karlsbad I think that I can confidently state that his playing strength was not greater than Elo 2100 (BCF 187) - and that was on a good day and with a following wind. 

Let me quote one more passage from the same source:

Returning then to the question as to how Süchting scored 11.5 points, the answer is simply that the other players were not much better. If we assume Süchting as 2100, then his score implies an average rating for the tournament of 2129 - it would not even be assigned a category today.

This assessment seems quite reasonable to me. I also had an impression that the winners of the tournament used to play at below IM level by modern standards. However, when you tell that to typical chess fans, they start puffing, rolling their eyes wildly and accusing you of blasphemy! The same people also love whining about the “overrated” top players nowadays and claiming that someone like Morphy would have beaten them all. They seem to fail to acknowledge the difference between the terms “talent” and “playing strength”. Paul Morphy was definitely an extremely talented individual who was miles ahead of his contemporaries in terms of chess skills. However, back then the overall level of chess in the world was so low that he had no chance to become a proficient player by modern standards. After all, our knowledge about all aspects of chess has increased tremendously since that time, especially in the last few decades of computer revolution. That being said, some ex-World Champions remain objective and admit that. For instance, when people start bugging Garry Kasparov who is the better player: Magnus Carlsen or Garry in his prime, Garry always points out that the next generation tends to surpass the achievements of the previous ones and offers analogies such as that modern students know more about science than Isaac Newton, but it doesn’t diminish his discoveries. It’s just that you can’t directly compare chess players (or scientists) who have lived in different eras. 

Another reason why people tend to overestimate the prowess of the players of the past is that we typically remember only the best masterpieces of their lifetimes. And if you check out all the games, you will realize that they have been blundering left and right on their offdays. Even with game collections, it is not that simple. I recall a funny conversation with IM Vladislav Akselrod on this matter. One of his students asked him whose games to study as an example of attacking chess. Vlad’s first instinct was to give him a tip of advice that dates to the Soviet days: “Study Alekhine’s games since he was an exceptional tactician!”. However, when Vlad himself opened a book of Alekhine’s selected (!) games…at this point he made a vivid grimace as if he had tasted something sour! As a result, he decided that, with all due respect to Alekhine’s greatness, nowadays there are probably better role models for aspiring competitive chess players. 

What about the statistical evidence? In the paper titled “Intrinsic Chess Ratings” by Kenneth W. Regan and Guy McC. Haworth (May 18, 2011), the authors posed two important chess questions:

1.     Has there been ‘inflation’—or deflation—in the chess Elo rating system over the past forty years?

2.     Were the top players of earlier times as strong as the top players of today?

They have arrived at the following conclusion:

…there has been little or no ‘inflation’ in ratings over time—if anything there has been deflation. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, but is predicted by population models on which rating systems have been based [Gli99]. 

The results also support a ‘no’ answer to question 2. In the 1970’s there were only two players with ratings over 2700, namely Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov, and there were periods as late as 1981 when no one had a rating over 2700 (see [Wee00]). In the past decade, however, there have usually been thirty or more players with such ratings. Thus the lack of inflation implies that those players are better than all but Fischer and Karpov. Extrapolated backwards, this would be consistent with the findings of [DHMG07], which (like some recent competitions to improve on the Elo system) are based only on the results of games, not on intrinsic decision-making.

Since Elo ratings were introduced in 1971, only three players were able to set new all-time records.

If you talk to players whose careers have spanned decades and who are still active, they will probably acknowledge that the standards have risen dramatically. In the past, Mikhail Tal used to say that he would have crushed his former self from the days when he was the World Champion since his understanding of chess has improved a lot. And that was before the computer age, which has revolutionized chess! To give you a more recent statement, last month I have stumbled upon an interesting quote by Sergei Tiviakov in the “Chess for Life” book by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, published in 2016:

What areas of your game have improved and worsened? 

In general, my level of chess playing has become better. I am playing a better level of chess than before. But the problem is that the general level of playing chess in the world has increased much more than my level of chess. In comparison, I am falling behind. Sometimes I look at my older games and I’m really surprised how poorly I played before. In general, I think I’m playing better than before.

Sergei Tiviakov, three-time Dutch Chess Champion. Image © ChessBase.ru. 

Sergei is one of the most experienced players on the circuit, who has played a few thousand tournament games, winning dozens of events and visiting a plethora of countries. At one point, he had a streak of 110 consecutive games undefeated. He knows what he is talking about, and I can totally relate to what he is saying.

When I and my friends were starting on “serious” chess and received ratings of about FIDE 2000, we had no opening files and could play pretty much anything we wanted from scratch. Our “preparation” was finding a scoresheet from the previous round and checking out what first move your opponent made. We were rather clueless about endgames, even very basic ones, such as the Lucena position in rook endgames. Our defensive skills were pretty much negligible. Nowadays, thanks to chess engines, databases and other modern technology, kids learn to play like engines from the very start. They know sharp lines up to 15-20 moves and have much more middlegame experience due to being able to spam online training games against a diverse field of opponents. They prepare carefully with databases, engines and opening trees, relying on statistics to pick the optimal weapons against the opponents. They are much more resistant since engines teach you how to sacrifice material for the sake of getting counterplay, or to defend stubbornly in general even when things look bleak. I could go on about this for a long time, but my informal assessment is that someone rated 2000, let’s say, 20 years ago, would probably be 1700 or so by modern standards. That is, if we are talking about a time machine type of scenario. 

COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on chess ratings as well. Namely, the improving players didn’t get much chance to compete during the last couple of years. As a result, nowadays in open tournament there are many kids rated like 1500-1600 who tear apart experienced 2000+ players. This, in its own turn, affects players with higher ratings as well, since if you were farming those 2000 guys before, now their ratings will probably plummet to 1800-1900, and you would be expected to score much more points against them than previously. I have seen GM discussions on FB on this topic, and we are talking about active professionals who are close to their peak in terms of strength, not some washed-up has-beens who need to come up with excuses to justify their poor performances. 

Anyway, no matter what the research findings, logical arguments and empirical experiences of the leading GMs and computer scientists are, I still realize that I am fighting an uphill battle here when trying to prove my case. The eyes of most chess fans will remain dazzled by the very best masterpieces of the good old times and by the scale of the personalities of the maestros. 

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Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you must have heard about “rating inflation” in chess. Is it a scientific fact or a popular myth that deserves debunking? 

Rating Inflation in Chess: True or False? 

Are you preparing for the New Year’s Eve celebrations? I definitely am!

As a control freak, I allocate a decent amount of time to planning what my goals and tasks will be for the foreseeable future. Here is a summary of how I keep track of everything:

·       I used to have a document where I wrote down my key long-term goals, answering the question, “Where are you going to be in five years?”. However, it didn’t work out particularly well for me. Maybe I lack focus, or perhaps my life is too diverse. Also, the pace of life tends to speed up, and there are all sorts of black swans flying around. For instance, imagine many of your plans getting shattered by COVID? Anyway, I try to foresee the future, but my focus is on what will happen over the next year. 

·       Yearly planning. Every year, I create a document covering the main areas of my life. Namely, “Health and beauty”, “Personal relationships”, “Career”, “Finances”, “Literature”, “Chess”, “Reading and movies”, “Household affairs”. Within each category, I write down the most important projects. If possible, I also mention the next step and the deadline for it. 

·       Monthly planning. For this, I have a nice-looking whiteboard. I use a marker to jot down 3-5 main goals for the current month. When working at my home office, I see this whiteboard all the time, and it reminds me of my priorities (“Come on, you are supposed to finish writing a fantasy book, so close that YouTube tab already!”)

·       Weekly planning. I prefer using an old-fashioned yearbook, writing down the key tasks for each day. I guess we have all heard stories about mega-productive guys like Elon Musk, who allegedly use every minute of their time efficiently. This doesn’t seem to work for me, though, because I tend to get burnt out and frustrated if I am under too much stress. Hence once I am done with my main objectives for the day, I either assign myself more tasks or relax whatever way I like. Why not do the planning on a laptop/smartphone? The truth is, I spend most of my time staring at screens anyway. Also, I love writing something with my hand. It gives a great, magical feel. 

·       Daily planning. Since some tasks are not associated with specific days and can be done more or less anytime you want, I write them out on a special sheet or post-it notes. My gamer background is handy because I am used to grinding dailies that can sometimes be quite tedious to complete. A way to make the process more entertaining is to put the post-it notes in a sack and draw two or three of them per day. This way, you will make sure that these pending tasks don’t get postponed over and over again as it often happens. 

This was a long introduction! Now let’s get to chess. As you can see, it plays a prominent role in my life and hence deserves a separate category on the yearly plan. It could be the same for you, or you could place it in the “Hobbies” tab. However, what is more important is WHAT you write inside the tab. 

When making chess New Year resolutions, try to follow the right training practices instead of goals. Here is a typical example of a widespread and dubious resolution:

“I want to be rated 1500/2000/2300/2500/2700/etc. by the end of the year.”

Why is it no good? After all, it probably (although not always!) meets the SMART criteria: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-related. However, the problem is that such a goal doesn’t specify how to work towards it and makes the person worry about not reaching the result on time. If you limit yourself to such a resolution, there are plenty of reasons why you could get disappointed since you have limited control over the outcome. What if you hit a plateau this very year? As you may remember, chess strength does not grow linearly but comes in leaps. What if you happen to play only underrated kids, not allowing you to progress at the rate you were expecting? What if you exceed the goal, reaching it too early? Will you get complacent after that and stop trying? I could go on and on. 

Another widespread and, in my opinion, quite unfortunate goal to set is to plan how you are going to perform in certain events. This approach is particularly popular with some parents. To get a sense of achievement and fulfillment, they urge their kids to earn medals at tournaments. Sometimes, there is also financial motivation, such as winning a prize or getting a scholarship. Still, I believe you should be thinking long-term instead of trying to reap the benefits here and now, putting extra pressure on yourself. 

For example, when working with Grandmaster Natalia Pogonina, we have never set concrete goals for any tournament. The idea is to prepare well, bring your best form, and then see what place it will be good enough for. As a result, she has a large cupboard full of all sorts of trophies: runner-up of the Women’s World Chess Championship, three Olympic gold medals, two golds at the Russian Women’s Superfinal, etc. But I would like to re-emphasize that we have never pondered in advance what place she was supposed to take in each of these events. 

Instead of setting rating/performance goals, please focus on your tournament schedule and training process. The latter things you can control quite well. If you play and train hard and smart, the results will inevitably follow sooner or later.  

In case my message sounds too vague, let’s look at some items that could be put down on the list:

·       Find a chess coach and/or training partner that you are comfortable working with

·       Lose weight (down to X kgs) to endure the tournament pressure better

·       Fix your sleep schedule (with specific points what should be done to improve it) – it is instrumental for performing well in chess

·       Play X classical tournaments next year, Y rapid events, Z blitz

·       Make a list of tools you need to purchase to train efficiently - apps, books, databases, engines, digital chess clock, etc.

·       Come up with a training plan. Ideally, you should have some chess training every day, even if you can afford to allocate only half an hour. 

The journey itself is much more important than the milestones along the way. 

P.S. There is a proverb: “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.” I do not claim that I am preaching the ultimate truth here. Instead, I am sharing an approach that has worked well for many of my chess friends and me. Feel free to try it out, and if you discover that you perform better under pressure and need specific competitive goals to enjoy the game, disregard everything you have just read!

If you are wondering how to make the most of your chess training, we got you covered! Check out the apps created by World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and his star-studded chess team and get ready for the year 2022! Make sure to use the promo code HAPPY2022 for an exclusive 50% discount on the Play Magnus Plus membership. 

What are you planning to achieve in chess in 2022? 

What are Your New Year’s Chess Resolutions?

If you check out chess forums where people enjoy bitterly arguing over such topics as "who was the greatest player of all time?", you will often see arguments about modern chess ratings allegedly being inflated. For instance, you will encounter claims that Bobby Fischer's 2785 rating points in 1972 were worth more than Garry Kasparov's 2851 in 1999 or Magnus Carlsen's 2882 in 2014.

However, what we are witnessing in open tournaments right now is gradual rating deflation. Barring bright juniors shooting through the roof, most of my friends and acquaintances are shedding rating points despite feeling like they have improved their game. Of course, one should take the latter claims with a grain of salt: as players age, they seem to better grasp the game's intricacies, but their practical skills deteriorate. Also, chess keeps evolving very fast, so, quoting the Queen of Hearts from "Alice in the Wonderland":

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

Still, whereas a few years ago, I more or less knew how a 1700, 2000, 2300, and 2600 were supposed to play on average, now you have no idea what to expect regardless of the rating of your opponent. For example, in one of the rounds of the recent Nezhmetdinov Memorial, I was paired against a 12-year-old kid rated 1747. Typically, this should have been a piece of cake for me, but this guy dispatched me quite confidently. He played the opening well and fast, and all his remaining moves in the game matched the first line of Stockfish. I don't even think he was cheating! You see such "miracles" left and right these days, so they are not something extraordinary anymore.

Another participant of the event, a Grandmaster aged 29 and rated 2462 who usually is quite consistent, lost in the first two rounds to players rated 1985 and 1925, then bounced back in a couple of games, drew a 2011, won a couple more matches, lost to a 2265 and withdrew from the tournament after Round 8. Over these eight rounds, he shed 26.3 rating points, which is quite a lot for someone with a K of 10.

A 40-year-old player from my home city rated 2147, who is considered locally to be quite strong and recently had a rapid rating of 2350+, lost a whopping 81 rating points in this tournament.

On the board next to me I overheard an amusing dialogue between a small kid (1784) and an experienced man (2012). Before the game, they started comparing their Lichess ratings in blitz, and it turned out that both of them were rated between 2300 and 2400 there. These numbers were actually higher than I expected. Guess what? The underdog won the game rather effortlessly as if the ratings were reversed.

I could go on forever bringing up similar examples, but I guess you see my point already.

What are the main reasons for rating deflation in open events?

First and foremost, FIDE has been gradually decreasing the rating floor. Initially, it was 2200. In 1993, the floor was reduced to 2000, then to 1600 in 2004, to 1400 in 2006, to 1200 in 2009, and to 1000 in 2012. On paper, this looks like a great idea: why not allow people of all skill levels to obtain ratings and see how they compare against the world's top players? Also, this is beneficial for FIDE, as they can report a larger player pool to potential sponsors and earn some money from the players themselves. However, in practice, this system has negatively affected both the newcomers and, particularly, the already established players. Here is how it works in a nutshell:

Josh is a 5-year old kid who diligently studies chess in a club and has a great personal coach. To start gaining tournament experience as early as possible, the boy plays a local event against other kids and gets an initial rating of 1038. Since Josh works hard and smart, he keeps improving rapidly and should have been rated about 1500 by age 6. However, his actual rating is, in fact, only 1176 since he keeps mainly playing against his peers, who are also improving quite quickly. By age 8, he is rated 1500+ and starts playing open tournaments, while his real playing strength is more like 1700-1800. As the adults facing him acknowledge quickly, he is much better than the rating suggests, so for them, it is by no means possible to score close to 100% against him, as the rating difference implies. The result is that the grown-ups keep losing rating points against the bright chess prodigy, while he is not gaining them fast enough to obtain an "adequate" rating.

To compensate for this phenomenon, junior players and newcomers in general rated below 2300 have a K of 40 (compared to 20 for most players and to 10 for players who were rated 2400+ at some point in their careers). Still, most of them don't play enough games to close the gap between their real playing strength and the official Elo.

This leads us to point #2: the COVID pandemic made things much, much worse. Right now, there are armies of promising juniors out there who are hungry for progress and who haven't had a chance to play live rated tournaments for the last year. By training hard and smart and playing online, they improved by a few hundred rating points, which is not reflected in their Elos. If you get sucked into facing such guys, getting only a couple of points for a hard-earned victory, and squandering close to 20 (10 for 2400+ players) in case of a loss, be prepared to kiss your rating goodbye.

Let's say we have 25-year old Jessica (2025) playing against 8-year old Mathias (1505). As the rating difference between them is 520, Jessica is expected to score 0.96 points against Mathias (see the table above). If she wins, she will gain (1-0.96) * 20=0.8 rating points. If Mathias wins, he will net 0.96 * 40=38.4 rating points. As you can see, Jessica is not motivated to face such an opponent because she will probably have to work very hard to earn that meager 0.8 points. And in the long run, she will lose a lot of rating points by taking on such opposition.

Of course, I am not the first person to raise this concern publicly. There have been other cries for help before. For example, in 2019, before the pandemic, Walter Wolf wrote a column for ChessBase, addressing this issue and advocating for a tricky mechanism:

To better account for the increasing playing strength of young players one could slightly raise the K-factor of the winner and slightly lower the K-factor of the loser in a game between two juniors. The winner then would gain more rating than the loser would lose.

A similar plus is necessary when adults play against juniors because the overall Elo level of junior players can only rise in games against adults.

In his recent FB post, GM Alexander Moiseenko estimated the average rating deflation to be somewhere around 200 points and suggested the following measures:

Assign the initial rating according to the player's performance. According to him, right now, FIDE uses a weird formula that takes into account the average rating of the opposition, so "even if you score 9/9 against 1200-rated players, you will receive a rating of around 1500."

Bring back the "350 points difference" rule and award 1.1 rating points (for K=10) to the winner if s/he is rated 350+ points above the loser.

Introduce the "350 points difference" rule in rapid and blitz.

One can come up with many other suggestions. It is a matter of acknowledging the problem and initiating an expert discussion within FIDE.

Since FIDE is unlikely to mitigate this issue in the nearest future, here are some of the possible options that my friends and I came up with during internal discussions:

• Play only events with a relatively high rating floor. For instance, 2000+. In such tournaments, the percentage of underrated kids is smaller than in open tournaments where, let's say, everyone, is allowed to participate.
• Stay out of live tournaments for a while and focus on playing online (a questionable decision since these are two very different formats).
• Find "chess reserves" where the players are relatively old. This is what some norm hunters do, by the way: prey on the overrated opponents in round robins instead of dueling underrated kids in open events.
• Quit competitive chess (haha…or not?!).
• Ignore your rating entirely for now and focus on chess improvement if you genuinely love the game.

Anyway, if you are frustrated about youngsters chipping your hard-earned rating points away, I want to let you know that you are not alone!

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Wondering why chess players are losing rating points left and right? Rustiness, old age, and poor physical shape might not be the key reasons! 

The only way to become smarter is to play a smarter opponent.

If you wish to improve efficiently, it’s better to play relatively strong open events with mixed opposition or round robins where the average level is slightly above your own. Why is that the case?

There is a peculiar category of players who hate losing, so they beat their lower-class opponents repeatedly and become “local champions” of their club/city/country. When you face less experienced and weaker opponents, it is tough to learn something new from them. The law of communicating vessels seems to work in chess: if you put a strong and a weak player in a room and force them to play each other over and over again for years, the better one will regress chess-wise, while the weaker one would usually improve. Prisons are an excellent illustration of this phenomenon.

“Local champs” tend to get stuck at a certain level. This statement is also true of many female players: they get accustomed to playing each other and earning prizes at the 2400-2600 level. As a result, they fail to progress beyond that threshold because they rarely face more demanding challenges. The same can be said about park hustlers: their opposition is usually inferior to them in terms of playing skills, so the blitz masters stagnate even though they keep playing chess day after day.

One of my friends was fond of playing blitz matches online. He would often pick a victim and crush him something like 9-1 or even 10-0 (they call it “adoption” these days), feeling very happy about himself. Then I would approach him, and our conversation would proceed along these lines:

I: So, you found another patzer and whitewashed him, right?
He: Sure! (smiles)
I: And what have you achieved by doing this?
He: Well, I gained some rating points…And it felt good to win! (sounds unconfident)
I: But do these online rating points give you any tangible benefits?
He: Not really…
I: Have you learned anything new?
He: Guess not. He is just a weak guy, so what can playing against him teach me?
I: Do you agree that it’s just a temporary boost for your self-esteem, but it is hardly beneficial for your chess in the long run?
He: Well, I know, but what can I do? The site paired him against me, then he sent me a rematch, and I accepted.

It was quite hard for my friend to get rid of this habit, and from time to time, a relapse occurs. Still, nowadays, he is more aware of whom he is playing and for what purpose.

As you may have already noticed, this post is written from the perspective of someone who wants to improve in chess but doesn’t necessarily have to make a living by playing. As a chess professional, you must reach a balance between earning enough money to make a living and remembering to invest in your future so that you can unlock your chess potential.

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There is a good quote by Michael Dell: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” Remember to reach for more once you are done with your previous goals.

However, it is essential not to become overconfident. Another typical mistake is overestimating oneself and taking only on players who are way more proficient. Such behavior results in a string of painful defeats, losing self-confidence, and a decline of interest in the game. If you are not strong enough psychologically, you may end up devastated to the extent of quitting.

Now that I have preyed on my unsuspecting friend, let me do some self-bashing. Back in 2010, I worked hard on chess and earned 29 rating points in a single event. This lured me into a trap of believing that I was fully capable of playing in a strong IM-norm tournament in Moscow. Apart from picking on a field that was rated about 200 points above myself, I performed all sorts of other mistakes there:
• Spent a lot of time traveling to the tournament hall for each of the rounds, tiring myself before the games even began.
• Played in a heated venue in summer (I can’t stand the sun; my brain starts to melt after some time if the temperature around is too high).
• Didn’t eat well before the game and forgot to bring snacks with me (very important!).
• Couldn’t switch to damage control mode and still went berserk on everyone. For example, in the last round, one IM from the US offered me a draw, but I declined it and lost.
• Made many chess-specific errors that are beyond the scope of this article.

Prior to this tournament, I had won some events in my life with a 100% score. Here the situation was reversed: I lost all 11 (!) games, learning a lot about how not to approach chess events. The findings were well worth the time invested and the 39 rating points that I shed there.

Optimally, you win some, you lose some, but you learn important things and improve along the way. One famous chess coach recommended to me the following ratio: roughly 50% of games played against more or less equal opponents, 25% games against weaker players, and 25% against stronger adversaries. I am not sure that there is any scientific research behind the numbers, so let these figures serve as food for thought for you rather than a dogma.

P.S. Since this blog post is being written in the times of the raging COVID pandemic, it makes perfect sense to say a few words about online chess. My recommendation here will be the same: if possible, set up a filter so that you get paired against opponents of more or less equal or higher skill. Unfortunately, as you climb the rankings, it gets increasingly harder to find a decent opponent, so you should be patient enough to wait for a good match and be prepared to face cheaters now and then. But this is a different story!

Interested in improving as a chess player? What opponents should you prefer to make the process as efficient as possible? 

Nona Gaprindashvili, five-time Women’s World Chess Champion, was the first woman to earn the FIDE Grandmaster title. At age 80, she is a remarkable example of longevity in chess, playing competitively as of this day. Nona was crowned the Women’s World Senior Chess Champion in 1995, 2009, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. She was mentioned briefly in the recent award-winning Netflix mini-series “The Queen’s Gambit,” where she was erroneously presented as someone who never competed against men. In fact, one of Nona’s biggest tournament successes was tying for first in Lone Pine International in 1977 in the USA, where she placed ahead of many strong male Grandmasters.

Last week we touched upon the subject of longevity in chess, discussing at what age chess players usually reach their peak. However, as you may have noted, the narrative was somewhat one-sided since we only used the World Chess Champions as examples.

This time let’s take a look at women’s chess and see at what age the Women’s World Chess Champions peaked. Before we go on, please make an intelligent guess of how the numbers are going to compare. Do you think women reach their peak in chess earlier, at about the same age or later than men?

Here is the breakdown, listing all the Women’s World Chess Champions who had a FIDE rating, and Judit Polgar, the strongest female player ever by far:

Nona Gaprindashvili, 2495, July 1987, 46 years
Maia Chiburdanidze, 2560, January 1988, 27 years
Xie Jun, 2574, January 2008, 37 years
Susan Polgar, 2577, January 2005, 35 years
Zhu Chen, 2548, January 2008, 31 years
Antoaneta Stefanova, 2560, January 2003, 23 years
Xu Yuhua, 2517, April 2006, 29 years
Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2561, January 2018, 33 years
Hou Yifan, 2686, March 2015, 21 years
Anna Ushenina, 2502, July 2007, 21 years
Mariya Muzychuk, 2563, March 2016, 23 years
Tan Zhongyi, 2530, August 2018, 27 years
Ju Wenjun, 2604, March 2017, 26 years
Judit Polgar, 2735, July 2005, 29 years

As you may remember from our previous blog post, most World Chess Champions reached their rating peaks somewhere between 34 and 43. With women, the situation is different; they seem to be relatively early bloomers, usually peaking somewhere between 21 and 37. Of course, this is a very rough assessment for several reasons.

First of all, the sample sizes for each group are relatively small and limited to elite players.

Secondly, quite a few female players on the list are still young and active. Therefore, there is a chance that some of them will come into full bloom later than the list suggests. Still, for some of them, this will be quite a challenge since they are far away from their rating peaks.

Also, it is far from clear why such a discrepancy between male and female chess players occurs. One of the common arguments that pop up regularly in interviews with top female players is that, at some point, family life, particularly kids, becomes a high priority for them, resulting in a decline in chess performance.

For example, here is what Judit Polgar told the Italian chess magazine Torre & Cavallo in 2011:

It is not easy with a child. I thought I would be back soon after my first child was born. It was strange to be off the list for a year, during which time my sister took my place. When the second child came, I felt that if I would continue playing, it would be impossible to reach the level I want – either as a mother or as a chess player. So I decided to take a break from chess. I am coming back now. The results are not the best. In the last year and a half, I realized I can play again but not at the highest level. After my kids, going to a tournament feels like having a vacation, having a full night sleep.

Moreover, in addition to family reasons, there are many other factors that can potentially hinder the chess career of any person, such as illnesses, focusing on education or migrating to a different profession, burnout, loss of motivation to play on, etc.

Image (C) wgp2019.fide.com
Kateryna Lagno earned her first Grandmaster norm when she was only 13 and went on to obtain the title at age 17.

In case you are wondering if it is even possible to strike the right balance between family life and chess, 31-year-old Kateryna Lagno, 2546, is currently rated #5 on the women’s list while being a mother of four! In 2010 she won the World Women’s Blitz Chess Championship shortly after giving birth to a son, while in 2018, she reached the Finals of the Women’s World Chess Championship just a month after giving birth to a daughter. That being said, she won the Women’s Rapid Chess Championship (2014) and three Women’s Blitz Chess Championships (2010, 2018, 2019). Curiously enough, her spouse is Alexander Grischuk, who is also a three-time World Blitz Chess Champion. So, as you may guess, they both have a very hectic schedule and have to travel a lot around the world, making it even more challenging for them to bring up kids.

To summarize, the range when female players reach their rating peak varies vastly when it comes to the world’s top players. It can be anything from 21 years (Hou Yifan, Anna Ushenina) to 46 (Nona Gaprindashvili). As long as you enjoy playing chess, you may as well hope for the best and try to make the most of your current form regardless of your age!

Are you curious to get a feel how powerful Judit Polgar, the strongest female chess player ever, was at her prime? Or maybe you want to have a more balanced match, challenging her at a time when she was much, much younger? Download Play Magnus to duel the Judit character and have Polgar herself tell you about her life and spectacular chess career.

Let’s take a look at women’s chess and see at what age the Women’s World Chess Champions peaked. 

At What Age Do Chess Players Peak? Part 2

One of the most famous examples of longevity in top-level chess is Vassily Smyslov reaching the Final of the Candidates matches against Garry Kasparov in 1984. Smyslov turned 63 during the match, while Kasparov celebrated his 21st birthday on the last day of the confrontation – three to one age odds!

Nowadays, when you're not a Grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it.

If you like following live top chess events, such as the Champions Chess Tour or other high-profile tournaments, you have probably noticed that the commentators often mention how old the competitors are. They draw parallels between the players' ages and FIDE ratings and make some conclusions on the participants' prospects. Professional chess is a tough race: you have to stand out from the crowd as early as possible to make it into the elite circuit of regulars who frequent all the most prestigious events in the world.

Having access to modern technologies, especially the top engines that are getting closer and closer to playing perfect chess, allows kids to progress more quickly than ever. Currently, the record for being the youngest Grandmaster is held by ex-challenger Sergey Karjakin, who obtained the highest chess title at the age of 12 years and 7 months. When the feat was achieved back in 2003, it seemed like it will hold forever. Now we can't be so sure. In May 2021, 12-year old American chess prodigy IM Abhimanyu Mishra earned his second GM norm. He still needs one more GM norm and a few dozen rating points to break Karjakin's achievement, but he is dangerously close, hinting that there will be other contenders for overtaking the record in the nearest future.

That being said, the older generation is not giving up just yet. Of course, nowadays, it is not possible to be a World Chess Champion at age 58, like was the case with Wilhelm Steinitz. Nevertheless, in 2012 the chess crown was at stake in the World Chess Championship match between Viswanathan Anand (42) and Boris Gelfand (43). Moreover, 44-year old Anand won the Candidates Tournament in 2014. Such motivational stories prove that certain unique people are capable of performing brilliantly at age 40+. Still, if we look at the current top-10 of the FIDE list in classical chess, all the players there are either in their 20s or 30s. The youngest is Anish Giri (26), while the oldest is Levon Aronian (38).

Anyway, at what age are you supposed to reach your peak in chess? The answer to this question depends on such qualities of the person as physical and mental health, motivation, tournament experience, and numerous other factors. Many chess experts believe that most top chess players peak somewhere around age 35-40. For instance, this figure is given by GM, Dr. of Science in Psychology Nikolai Krogius. However, as usual, a lot depends on the definitions. If we mean relative strength, e.g., becoming the World Chess Champion, then quite a few people have achieved this feat in their 20s. Some of the names that come to mind are Garry Kasparov (22), Magnus Carlsen (22), Mikhail Tal (24), Anatoly Karpov (24), Vladimir Kramnik (25). However, in terms of absolute playing strength, all of them kept improving their play even after winning the World Chess Championship. Notably, Mikhail Tal, the youngest ex-WCC in the history of the game, used to say that he would have crushed "Misha Tal-1960" had he played the young version of himself at a later stage. In other words, he was getting better as a chess player, but the competition was progressing at an even faster rate.

In case you are interested, here are the ages at which some of the Classical World Chess Champions reached their rating peaks (let's leave rating inflation out of the discussion since this topic tends to cause holy wars):

Mikhail Botvinnik, 2690 (unofficial, April 1968, 56 years)
Vassily Smyslov, 2630 (unofficial, April 1968, 47 years)
Mikhail Tal, 2705 (January 1980, 43 years)
Tigran Petrosian, 2660 (unofficial, June 1967, 37 years)
Boris Spassky, 2690 (July 1971, 34 years)
Bobby Fischer, 2785 (July 1972, 29 years)
Anatoly Karpov, 2780 (July 1994, 43 years)
Garry Kasparov, 2851 (July 1999, 36 years)
Vladimir Kramnik, 2817 (October 2016, 41 years)
Viswanathan Anand, 2817 (March 2011, 41 years)
Magnus Carlsen, 2882 (May 2014, August 2019, 28 years)

FIDE World Chess Champions:
Alexander Khalifman, 2702 (October 2001, 35 years)
Ruslan Ponomariov, 2764 (July 2011, 27 years)
Rustam Kasimdzhanov, 2715 (May 2015, 35 years)
Veselin Topalov, 2816 (July 2015, 40 years)

As you can see, with a few exceptions, some of which will be explained below, pretty much all the World Chess Champions peaked rating-wise somewhere between 34 and 43.

Please note that Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov, and Tigran Petrosian were probably past their primes when the Elo system was introduced. Also, we don't know what heights Bobby Fischer could have reached had he not quit chess at a young age. And Magnus Carlsen is an active player who has all the chances to improve on his personal best in the future. The easiest way to track his progress (or regress!😅) is to take on the reigning World Chess Champion in the Play Magnus app, where you can play against his AI clone at any age you like.

It is common for professional players to retire somewhat prematurely due to burnout, loss of motivation, financial problems, failure to progress, and other similar reasons. For amateur and semi-pro players, age is less important because most of them have by far not exhausted their potential for improvement. Hence, if you are a bit older than 35 and haven't played chess professionally since early childhood, your age should not worry you too much chess-wise. For example, compared to pros, amateurs usually build up experience much slower since they don't play as many games per year. Consequently, it is not unheard-of for some people to take on chess seriously and improve their personal bests even in their late 40s and 50s.

Last but not least, you can let go of the Elo trap at any age and enjoy playing chess! It is such a great game, after all, so good luck and have fun!

Are you interested in learning more about the World Chess Champions mentioned in the article? Download Magnus Trainer, where you will find interactive lessons about all the World Chess Champions and their challengers, allowing you to see whether you can play as well as them or even improve on their game!

"Nowadays, when you're not a Grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it." Viswanathan Anand 

Chess players are obsessed with ratings these days, even though, because of the COVID pandemic, there is an understandable shift from comparing FIDE Elos to boasting about conquering new heights on online chess servers.

Anyway, here is a typical question that is often asked by improving chess fans:

How many rating points should I try to gain in a year?

Let's talk about the different factors that affect the answer.

The lower your rating is, the easier it is to harvest points

For example, improving from Elo 1000 to 1400 in a year is an attainable feat for many people. A jump from 1400 to 1800 over a year is an impressive rate of progress. 1800 to 2200 in a year is an exceptional result. 2200 to 2600 in a year is not something I have heard of. And 2600 to 3000 in classical chess has never been achieved by any human.

What is your K-factor (not to be confused with the X-factor)?

In article 8.56 of the FIDE Handbook, you will find the following information:

K is the development coefficient.
K = 40 for a player new to the rating list until he has completed events with at least 30 games.
K = 20 as long as a player's rating remains under 2400.
K = 10 once a player's published rating has reached 2400 and remains at that level subsequently, even if the rating drops below 2400.
K = 40 for all players until their 18th birthday, as long as their rating remains under 2300.

If the number of games (n) for a player on any list for a rating period multiplied by K (as defined above) exceeds 700, then K shall be the largest whole number such that K x n does not exceed 700.

To avoid boring you with Math, let's say that with a K factor of 40, you will be getting 20 rating points per win over an opponent with the same rating as you. If your K decreases to 10, you will be earning only 5 rating points per such a win. Most FIDE-rated players have a K of 20, netting 10 points per win against an equally matched opponent. The higher your K-factor is, the larger the variance, i.e., the more rating points you can gain (or lose!) per year.

How many tournament games do you play per year?

In this post, we won't be discussing how many games it is beneficial to play for chess development. This is an important independent topic. Let's say that you can't expect to gain a lot of rating points if you play very few tournaments.

Previously, when the FIDE rating lists were published not monthly like now, but quarterly or even less frequently, a well-known lifehack for a quick boost was to squeeze in, let's say, 60 games in one rating period. By acting this way, you could take advantage of the fact that your rating was fixed, and the gains kept coming "for free". Nowadays, it is much harder to pull off such feats since you can play only as many tournament games in a month, especially if we are talking about the classical time control.

This is a crucial thing to know. Some people tend to think that improving players should be gaining rating points more or less steadily. For example, at a rate of 5-10 points per tournament or something like that.

Conversely, it usually takes a player some time to build up a leap to the next level before it takes place. During this stage, anything can happen, including tanking the rating a bit. A simple explanation for this is that as you acquire new knowledge and skills, you move away from some of the methods that benefitted you in the past and may temporarily become even weaker. However, once you master the new skills, you take a giant step forward.

Let's take a look at the rating progress of Magnus Carlsen and discuss it from our topic's perspective:

Unfortunately, the FIDE site doesn't display the whole graph. Carlsen's first published FIDE rating was 2064 in April 2001. You can view the data in hisFIDE profile, though.

Using the data from the FIDE profile and looking at the graph, we can determine how many rating points Carlsen gained or lost in a given year (starting from January 2002 for simplicity's sake):

In absolute numbers, Carlsen's best year was 2003 (+205 points), while his worst year was 2015 (-18 points).

From Jan 2002 to Jan 2014, Magnus was consistently accumulating rating points year by year. Since then and until now, his results have been mixed.

The median rating gain per year was 26 points, and the arithmetic average is about 39 points. The figures are something to keep in mind if you are rated above 2000 and ambitious enough to be thinking of progressing at the World Champion rate! Of course, you should remember that Carlsen's K was 10 most of the time, so you can aim for higher gains if your K is still 20 or 40.

Still, please don't be overly obsessed with ratings. Let this thought-provoking quote by Magnus Carlsen guide you on your path of chess improvement:

Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything.

Chess players are obsessed with ratings these days, even though, because of the COVID pandemic, there is an understandable shift from comparing FIDE Elos to boasting 

Why do Stronger Players Make Mistakes Against Weaker Players?

Rating Inflation in Chess: True or False?

What are Your New Year’s Chess Resolutions?

On Rating Deflation in Modern Chess

How to Choose Your Opponent in Chess

At What Age Do Chess Players Peak? Part 2

At What Age Do Chess Players Peak?

Your rating progress