Carlsen joins the 2800-high club after dominating in China

Who would have believed that anyone could have won 'the Clash of the Titans' by such a margin! He has now gained enough rating points to be World number 2 and is well on the way to overtaking Topalov!

Carlsen continues to advance up the rankings list and will now be second, hot on the heels of Topalov, with a 2800+ rating on the 1st of November, when the new ELO ratings will be released. The ELO ratings list is the internationally recognized way of comparing the relative strength of players and from now on will be updated every two months. Only a handful of players have ever reached 2800, indeed I estimate that he is only the fifth.

NameCountryELO highestVirtual ELO Period above 2800
Garry KasparovRussia285128121990-2009 with two small breaks
Veselin TopalovBulgaria281328102006 & 2009
Vladimir KramnikRussia281127722001-2003
Viswanathan AnandIndia280327882006, 2007, 2008
Magnus CarlsenNorway2801?2801?2009?

The result in Nanjing was exceptional and certainly one of the best performances in recent years. According to my calculations Carlsen's performance was about 3000! How many times has that been achieved?

placenamenationalityratingscoreperformance
1Magnus CarlsenNOR277283002
2Veselin TopalovBUL28135.52790
3Wang YueCHN27364.52733
4Teimour RadjabovAZE275742693
5Peter LekoHUN276242692
6Dmitry JakovenkoRUS274242696
A more restrained two wins and eight draws in Moscow.
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How far can he go? For example 2814 will take him to second highest in the all-time list. Maybe the real question is how long will it take him to make 2852, perhaps someone should ask what his trainer thinks!


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