Magnus...the new chess prodigy
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Has anyone heard of him yet? Incredibly Amazing!
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Magnus Carlsen is the highest rated chess player of all time. I viewed his championship games against Viswanathan Anand and I must say I like his style. Very solid. His positions are sound. But with due respect to the current world champ, I still think Garry Kasparov (once a mentor of Magnus) is craftier than him. Coincidentally, I'm now currently viewing Magnus's annotated games that was built-in with PGN Mentor that I downloaded from pgnmentor.com. I will extract the extra files that I downloaded and view his games later. What's all these hype? I'm curious.
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I don't care much about a player's ELO rating. It doesn't make an impression to me at all. I look at how crafty a chess player plays and the strength of his/her opponents. Magnus Carlsen is great but I don't find him amazing. Garry Kasparov - the second highest rated player of all time - maybe is amazed. But like what Sir George Martin said: "Horses for courses."
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It's amazing how Magnus can play chess with 10 people at a time with his back turned to them...and be able to do this...'just' because...he has all of the positions of all of the chess pieces on all 10 boards...memorized!...at all times!
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Quite a number of masters can play blindfolded or handicapped, I think. Paul Morphy and Mikhail Tal are two examples. Anyway, I just want to return to the topic of ELO ratings. Don't get me wrong, I'm not discrediting the young champion, but ELO ratings are like fats in our body: We gain, we lose, we gain, we lose... and so on. A newcomer can be given a rating of 1000 or something and if he win games, more points are added. And if he lose - you guessed it - points are deducted. Magnus Carlsen started at a very young age and already has more than a thousand official games on his record, so no doubt he is an experienced and a seasoned player. Like a fine wine, he improved with time. Also he grew up in a computer era. Somehow, I believe, it improved his skills and knowledge. It aided him (and me) in difficult situations on the board. (Unlike in the case of the American great Bobby Fischer who had to play chess against himself wherever he can literally bring his pocket chess set. You know, the trial & error thing.) I believe Carlsen has inspired so many people to play chess and has inspired so many casual chess players (including me) to exert more effort to become great - and if we're lucky and fortunate, to become a world champion - like him.
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^ Good luck on your journey! Chess is a centuries old phenomenon, indeed!
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Thanks! But I won't sacrifice anything for chess. I just play it if I have time. It's a good pastime.
