The Highest Chess Rating EVER

ladies and gentlemen one of the most interesting metrics to gauge throughout chess history is who had the highest rating of their generation who has some of the highest ratings of all time now as you might imagine you're gonna find the all-time greats at the top of that list magnus carlson being the one who had the highest live rating ever at 2889.2 gary gasparov is second on that list and in this video i am going to show you those ratings and the game in which they occurred i hope you enjoy timestamps on the video player let's get into it um obviously rating fluctuates as the years go on and there are periods of time where the players have massive gaps between number one and number two in the world uh we are going to begin with magnus's conquest uh of achieving two eight eight nine point two it is april 21st 2014 the players are in their second round in uh in shamkir it's a tournament in an azerbaijan and it is the vugar gashima memorial and hikaru nakamura you might recognize that name is the opponent magnus begins with d4 and we have a slav defense with e3 now normally white can play knight c3 in this position and it's it's kind of considered a little bit more common than the move e3 but okay e3 is obviously very reasonable as well and that allows black to develop the bishop to f5 we have knight c3 and now hikaru doesn't close uh the the door kind of for this bishop by playing the move e6 inviting knight h4 hikaru as far as i know plays a pretty big sideline and plays a6 uh but this is 2014 so slav defense theory is a little bit it's uh it's a little bit different back then um magnus now plays something really fascinating he plays bishop e2 h6 bishop d3 you know left unnoticed this looks like a mouse slip but actually this is a really hilarious idea first of all if magnus just goes bishop d3 originally hikaru is going to play bishop back to g6 and maintain this tension and bishop takes hg as an advantage for black because black just opens up his rook magnus makes a waiting move and when hikaru commits his h-pawn then he plays bishop d3 which makes you wonder why didn't he carve play e6 again i think hikaro is trying to avoid variations where this knight will capture this bishop so very interesting idea by magnus who even though he wastes a move uh with the bishop actually gets kind of a nice position it's a little bit more spacious for him uh computer thinks it's completely equal but in pure magnus style even eight years ago when this video is being recorded now uh he gets a very playable position both sides castle magnus plays rook fd1 with eight pawns on the board you're constantly looking at where the trades are going to occur and how hikaru trades off his dark squared bishop finishes his development and says magnus you have a slight space advantage you have bishop for night but i'm very happy i'm chilling also i'm like 2772 myself so not so shabby uh b3 magnus just makes a waiting move brings his rook to the middle and slides back with this queen what is magnus planning like what is actually magnus's game plan his queen and both rooks control each a file c d e but what's gonna happen in the middle what's he gonna do so hikaru comes forward and also brings his rook now magnus begins the unwinding process drops back with the knight the point is that he is going to play f3 by kicking the knight out knight d3 or knight c2 and then he is going to activate this bishop on the long diagonal bishops are very powerful pieces and that bishop needs to support so knight c2 might be one of the ideas and he notice how nobody's touched the pawns nobody wants to give way in the middle of the board hikaru anticipates that f3 is coming but here is the most questionable decision in my opinion knight d6 allowing bishop a3 obviously f3 was coming nonetheless maybe he could have played for a5 i don't know you know a5 f3 still knight d6 probably required because if you go back this way white might just very freely expand in the middle of the board but okay hikaru seems unconcerned right he just takes some space himself that bishop on a3 is strong but there's no real way for magnus to actually do anything with this diagonal but he plays bishop b4 and he's just ever so slightly inconveniencing the black pieces queen c7 queen f3 and it's clear that the dark squares are a liability when six of your eight pawns are on a certain color that color is stronger than the opposite right so the light squares are strong but the dark squares are not so strong and the dark square bishop for white is looking very nice so now we have a trade and magnus continues expanding on that side of the board hikaru builds up a nice little resistance and magnus here very chill trades the queens you might think why is he trading queens i mean he might have a slight advantage the queen is the glue of the ba of the black position and black is now left with these three pawns that magnus will mercilessly build up pressure against and hikaru correctly tries to liquidate right he plays b5 takes puts his knight back confidently into the middle of the board and e5 hikaru trying to solve all his problems by throwing the pawns forward and trading them off but magnus is right there e4 strikes in the middle as well knight back to b6 magnus has taken a pawn right he's taken a pawn knight to d8 rook slides over to g6 uh oh bishop h6 looking quite nice the rook is ready to bully the king and two pawns but hikaru just in time with a little bit of counter play to get one of the pawns back but now all of a sudden we take a deep breath and we see even though these pawns have stayed on the board it's magnus who has the three on two but more than anything else he's got all the activity the bishop is still the killer the bishop has become the glory piece with permanent pressure on hikaru's position and uh what ultimately ends up happening is magnus gets a second pawn and it takes a little bit a little bit of time because you know obviously you know hikaru is not just gonna resign the game because he's down a couple of pawns he can still create some counter play but look at magnus i mean controlling everything everything the black rooks trying to get onto the second rank together right they're trying to get over here knight c5 he closes the door a rook trade is beautiful for magnus now he has to worry about a lot less hikaru still creating some counter play but it's simply not enough and move 61 rook g4 defends everything and hikaru decided to call a day he could have honestly played on a little bit more decides to call it a day magnus gets the win and his highest rating of all time at 2 89. i believe he went on to win this tournament with six and a half points out of ten uh there was a three-way tie for second place including hikaru uh with five out of ten and magnus won it by a point and a half uh but he didn't lose points afterwards he actually i think the very next day or two days after loss to caruana so that's normally what happens they get their highest rating ever then they draw and then they lose uh but this is it two eight eight nine this is the closest he has ever come to reaching uh and let's go and see how gary kasparov has the second highest rating of all time now we have to go 14 years back the year is 2000 the year that kasparov lost the world championship match but in many people's eyes was still the best player in the world this is linares so in the year 2000 they didn't publish ratings every month they published them twice or three times a year that's it nowadays they publish new ratings every month and the the live rating changes throughout the month as they play but it doesn't update for the month your rating stays the same for 30 days whatever it is at the end of the month that's the official rating for the next month but in between if you're playing games uh your rating does change now this is linares the strongest tournament at the time played in spain best players in the world including vishwanathan anand five-time world champion the second highest rated player in the world january 20 in january 2000 second highest rated player two seven six nine caspar of two eight five one and here's their game let's look at it from gary's perspective uh it's a sicilian defense and as always it is kasparov going for the night or sicilian the one of the most imbalanced complicated openings in all of chess bishop e2 not the most aggressive line kicks the knight out of the middle and plays bishop e7 we are also going to be seeing bishop e6 very soon as the night orf is ultimately all about that d5 square uh anand decides to attack with f4 kasparov plays queen c7 and anun plays an interesting move a move that i've never seen uh really much of nowadays and that move is knight d5 settling on that square forcing a trade out of black and knight d7 looks to defend the middle white has to choose between taking and pushing or just leaving the pawn there taking isn't so good because you just give a lot of activity to black uh d take c5 is also reasonable pushing also doesn't make any sense in fact it's far worse than taking because you keep your rook shot and the bishop doesn't get any activity so you've done nothing successful for yourself right you bought a nice house and you built it and there were no windows not very smart so castle's king h1 and you'll notice that the tension is staying here kasparov decides to relieve it because that opens up some active lines for his own pieces he plays bishop back to f8 to open up his rook that looks really nice and juicy he also have long term perspective of g6 bishop g7 and rerouting over here we're going to see that in a moment there's the move g6 very complicated game you let stockfish think it thinks it's zero zero zero which basically means i don't know you guys play figure it out i got no clue um so g6 right bishop to f3 and kasparov plays rook c8 bringing his other rook into the action knight back to c1 and now one step back one sign of weakness and gary kasparov smells blood he's like knight c1 what are you trying to do reroute magnus can reroute remember last game magnus went back to e1 and then out to d3 magnus can reroute because it's a slow position you're going back in the middle of a war knight e5 all right go ahead and take me go ahead and take me rook takes is good i even like d takes and just marching forward right b3 b3 stabilizes the queen side h5 attacking with the pawns that are supposed to be defending his king and winning control of the g4 square anand doesn't like that very much another forward move by kasparov bishop g7 ever so slightly improving his position three forward moves knight to e2 another forward move taking on f3 getting rid of one of the bishops inching forward five moves rook c1 b5 six moves now all right six moves in a row we're targeting this what happened to the position over here i mean everything is falling apart queen d2 taking forward seven forward moves h4 eight forward moves knight h5 i mean do you understand nine moves he's made going forward forward forward forward foot on the gas nine moves now this move still counts as going forward but it's a side shuffle the rook doesn't stare into the back of the queen geez rook what are you doing so inappropriate rook on b8 goes down to b2 still in my eyes an initiative gaining move knight g1 the rook bulldozes in rook c2 and now a beautiful tactic look at this queen takes on c4 if you take my queen i take yours and i've got the second back i got this look at this the queen hits everybody everybody if you take on b2 i could even go this way if i wanted to but i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna take the rook and then i'm gonna obviously attack i mean queen c4 anand resigns he's down a pawn and the position is falling apart all his pieces have been reduced to absolutely nothing anand is one of the strongest players ever and kasparov just said i'm done this game is ending now one move backwards and the attack just did not stop it just didn't stop he literally never took his foot off the gas the one move that he played that is the the side shuffle was basically the knockout punch and it just drove the rook into and this is how kasparov winning his second game of the linnaras tournament he ended up tying for first with vladimir kramnik who took the world championship from him that year got the rating of 2856 now we actually go forward again to the year 2014. that was a big year for gaining your highest ratings ever fabiano caruana that man challenged uh for the world championship in the year 2016 carawana was 2851.3 he touched kasparov's highest rating ever on the official list on the official list kasparov's size rating was 2-8-5-1 uh unofficially his highest rating was two eight five six if you're confused about the rating system in chess i don't blame you chess has never made it easy for the general public to understand anything anything at all all right ever and it's to this day which is why we have this channel hopefully i can break it down for you 2851 how did this happen uh these players are playing the grand prix in baku azerbaijan same same uh country as the shamkir challenge magnus 2014 but now we're later in the year it's october 8th 2014. it's the sixth round caruana is playing a very strong player from russia uh peter svidler uh and uh the game begins with svidler going for his favorite grunfeld defense so fabiano plays an antidote he plays f3 f3 is not something that greenfield players like to see because it all it forces them to either play a silly looking grunfeld or a king's indian defense and svidler doesn't play the king's indian defense right normally the entire purpose is to have a knight ready to chop on c3 okay but when you play it like this there is no knight to chop white just gets a built up center but this is fine this is fine okay everything is okay karwana right confident playing this position with both colors he actually plays this with white and with black now you could see white's point white gets a very big center queen d2 bishop e3 looking this way and if you had to take a 50 50 shot at where you think white is going to castle where do you think white is going to castle this way and boom boom boom now there are many lines here nowadays people are playing knight c6 in this position uh and after long castles they are playing e5 so they are attacking the center right away and then shoving their knight in white's face but back then svidler played queen d6 okay that's also a reasonable move but it's very provocative because white slides the king out of kind of the danger of the c file cuddles behind the pawns and is ready with h4h5 now rook d8 here is played all the time i mean just simply all the time but svidler at the time wanted to play a new idea so he played the move a6 a6 is preventing the move knight to b5 and bishop to b5 but usually knight b5 right uh and black will move the knights out of the way and boom boom the pawns will come forward knight a5 knight c4 etc fabiano here says i don't know what this is but i'm gonna go attack you on two squares so he plays h4 now we have rook d8 attacking the middle d5 shoving the pawn forward winning at connect four and forcing the knight to move into the middle and queen f2 waiting to crawl forward getting the queen off the middle and looking at that c5 square that c5 square is looking really nice to make that queen feel uncomfortable there is a car alarm going off that's terribly annoying somebody trying to break into a car outside i really hope the owner turns that off it okay it stopped i was ready to like cut this video and then but it was only like two seconds uh and the mic only picks it up when i talk because it has a noise gate yeah anyway we had a two second interlude there uh anyway so white is ready with h5 bishop c5 etcetera southern plays h5 and it seems like the problems are solved i mean white isn't going to play g4 obviously because you just take right so bishop c5 queen f6 and we're still harassing the queen now we're obviously not going to repeat moves karwana plays g4 now folks if you build up a defense in your position that prevents your opponent from playing a move and then they play the move anyway one of two things is possible you're the idiot or they're the idiot we're about to find out that's the beauty of the game pawn takes g4 fabiano shoves the f pawn forward oh that was his idea he wants to remove the knight from the middle of the board and when it moves he is going to continue the attack now fabiano here has an incredible choice he can take on g7 and play h5 that looks incredible he can take on g7 not play h5 and slowly build up his attack he can play e5 which looks unbelievably tempting he can also play knight e2 and then h5 and not take and apparently 92 is the best move because corona gets a little impatient plays e5 it looks so good but that allows svidler to sack the knight and now for the cost of three pawns right three pawns one guy has a piece all right caruana has won a piece he's up at night but for three pawns and where's his attack okay he wants to play h5 i understand but black is quick he gives a check and now he's he's building up that center of the board and i'm not so sure that h5 is gonna work but you can bet your life that well don't do that but you can that if h5 gets through at some point and black is not ready the game is over the game is just simply over so knight c4 h5 there it is now everything is gonna the entire like safety of the black position will be determined he plays queen b6 this is exactly what a player who wants to get away from an attack wants to do if you trade queens here then after this there is nothing there is no attack you can take on g6 where's your attack you have one rook the rook is not the rook needs the queen the rook is a baby he's the backup in a group of people trying to go to a fight the queen is the boss all right instigating fighting you know uh walks to uh talks the talk walks the walk rook it won't get in a fight unless the queen's there so queen b6 no queen trade knight goes into e3 rook has to avoid now king g7 and it's actually svidler who is looking like he's gonna fight back on the h-file right so he does but unfortunately it's all for not because rook d3 and this knight is a little bit stuck that knight gets kicked out goes back and now he takes on f5 and all of a sudden uh-oh uh-oh and it's not just that if you take with the knight i could also take g4 right so that's what i'm gonna do and now if we count the material one of your pawns for the piece has fallen and the more pieces that fall off the board the more value your piece has so knight for three pawns is three equals three but three is not always equal to three in chess especially if there's not a lot of other pieces on the board pieces get stronger with the more unity of other pieces they have knight takes e4 and once fabiano consolidates everything rook g1 is coming knight f4 is coming and he has two of these and his opponent has one peters fiddler calls it a day he resigns and fabiano carawana back then still representing the country of italy as he did for many years gets the rating of 2851.3 very very interesting here i mean uh incredible stuff beautiful game by karwana refuting this new idea by svidler you know i got to tell you back then that a6 move was a new idea by svidler it never it never caught on there's to this day maybe 10 games played that's how chess goes sometimes sometimes you try a new idea everybody plays it sometimes you get pancaked nobody plays it fourth highest rating of all time belongs to levon ranyan still representing the country of armenia in the year 2014 february so we go back to 2014 2014 was the year that it was magnus and everybody else battling for number two and three and you're reading that right his opponent is actually hikaru nakamura uh this was played in um in the zurich challenge uh if if i'm not mistaken um in uh in switzerland in uh february 2014 it was a six player tournament uh and uh yeah levon beat hikaru to get 283 5.5 he was dominant he was world number two powerhouse back then uh and this was the game so we have a uh we have a king's indian defense right so knight f3 c4 g6 and uh like this so both sides castle and um yeah i mean the position is uh is is you know it's uh it's very theoretical the second that white plays the move d4 um white is going to be uh going back to just a standard king's indian defense there you go and black plays the move a6 i think icaru's rating at this time is like 2 7 90 by the way it's like 27 90. so even he has gained a ton of points that year everybody was gaining everybody was in good shape so rook b8 and black is ready to play b7 b5 right there it is so something's gonna happen here all right something's gonna happen levon attacks the knight in the middle hikaru says no way you want a knight i'm gonna get a knight by myself knight drops back this knight has to go somewhere it goes out to a5 and actually this looks really nice very complicated position here in the king's indian defense as both these knights are attacking the pawns in the middle this defense this attempts to fight back on the c file we have a trade levon takes like this because it's important to win the battle for these squares if you take with the c pawn also okay but maybe hikaru plays e5 maybe he attacks on the c file which is now open so for that reason we have this but we still have an unbelievably complicated position lebron takes on poisson and here something really funny happens you would think black wants the opening of the queen side right bishop faces that way the rook is very powerful on the b file a3 a3 uh is hilarious that this works because if pawn takes which is what happens you would think you're going to take back hold everything together but why would you open up this that's not the point levon goes bishop d2 and the threat is to take take and play knight c6 and it's not easy to stop it's not easy to stop levon finds a very nice idea almost completely counterintuitive to the position and while kikaro can still kick around the white pieces they're going straight forward knight c6 black has an option play the world's ugliest retreat or sacrifice the rook kind of hard to sack a rook i mean i'm not gonna lie for a knight so he moves it out of the way but here he the knight drops back and we're gonna we're gonna lose this pawn okiecaro tries to save it now another very nice idea queen a2 look at this the forces are ready to line up knight goes to c6 right bishop f5 check and that pawn is still looking real weak b4 continuing to punish the queen side for the cost of his own pawn by the way rook b1 i mean levon if it's not clear is playing on one side of the board every one of his pieces faces that way right rook b2 takes bishop c6 hikaru trying to defend the knight is now also going that way the bishop is going folks have you ever seen a a set of chess pieces just so focused on one side of the board i love these games when these players are at the top of their you know at the top of their uh categories a6 rook b7 look at this move sacrificing the rook you can take it and white will continue to bulldoze knight takes e4 dust is settling levon is now upon with the past a pawn he takes the knight takes rook back to b3 and even though hikaru was able to win the pawn on d5 uh the game is over because rook takes g7 and there is just too much at the end of it it's not just upon freezing the rook in the corner it's the check the queen comes to e3 the king is hunted out and it's a mating net and levon wins uh one move before mate a couple moves actually queen g4 hunts the king into the middle of the board combining play on one side of the board with the other side of the board 28 35.5 a very nice victory and i think he won the zurich challenge most of these players ended up winning these tournaments it's very hard not to win tournaments when you're at the top of your literally career ever uh but uh maybe he didn't because any tournament that magnus carlson plays in yeah you know that's uh you know that's the thing um so one funny nugget of information as i was doing research vessel into pallav who was a world champion contender and a world champion himself has the fifth highest rating of all time at 2826.5 the craziest thing is he achieved that by also beating hikaru i'm not kidding when i was doing my his second round sing field cup 2015 in st louis he defeated hicaro in like a 70 or 80 move end game to get that rating but the round before that he beat magnus magnus's world champ and he beat magnus with a move no one's ever played before and it was like a insane game so i figured i would show this game it was a lot more interesting than the other game but that is insane three of the i mean three of the five games in this video hikoru played people who were at the absolute top and they were in the peak of their careers and they just so happened that it was against the car like in the middle of a tournament or something insane i mean poor guy geez it's like it's like when uh i mean i don't know it's like tragic i mean you're trying to go up and up and everybody's like 28 for like what are you gonna do so this game was was was was totally uh chaotic this is the first round of the singfield cup 2015 and we have a sicilian defense uh bishop b5 is um an interesting variation where white delays the move d4 so white doesn't play a traditional open sicilian knight f6 rookie one and we have this very weird position uh very weird don't play like this don't ever try this at home point is that white wants to play c3 so let me just show you c3 push up c2 and then play d4 so just a very non-traditional sicilian just wait a bit of a long time maybe turn the game into sort of like a real opus or something but okay b5 b5 is obviously trying to play c4 so white plays c4 himself now up until this moment i think there had been a handful of games following uh rook b8 b4 a lot of natural looking moves even as crazy as this looks right takes takes and the bishop on d3 is under fire um to paul of here in 2015 played a move no one had ever played before he played a move that had never been seen he uncourt the novelty against the world champ g5 oh yes pawn to g5 what ha hello excuse me well here's the point if you don't take it i'm gonna go g4 but the thing is there are head spinning complications whether or not you take that pawn okay you could play e5 you could bring the bishop out of the way and allow g4 try to outmaneuver them i mean it's just totally insane lines magnus the sides i'm gonna take slide my bishop back and you can take the pawn on c4 but i'm going to play knight a3 and try to win it back but hello this is the entire purpose of sacrificing the g-pawn right target g8 uh target the knight target the pawn that is the entire purpose magnus not scared he's like this looks dumb your idea looks stupid i don't care that you have engine analysis it's 2015 computers are not even that strong takes takes and now magnus doesn't even look at this he gives up a knight he doesn't even win it back he plays d4 what he doesn't even take the knight back he what because this is still hanging but if you move it the bulldozing continues and magnus goes bishop h5 now if you count the material blacks up a piece magnus seems to think that doesn't matter because he is magnus he it doesn't matter it just doesn't matter like normal principles don't apply he's playing knight takes h7 he's going to take on a fate again like for example he's going to take on f8 he's got bishop h6 he actually has even worse it's even worse like magnus's attack is ready it's right there he's going to refute this entire thing make the paulov look silly for even trying it what is this position this does not look if if you gave me this position and said what are the players white and black i would say like i don't know 1100 this just looks ridiculous this is two two guys average rating 28 30. huh queen d7 takes takes e5 queen c6 we're threatening a mate f3 queen g6 that was the eight that was the key idea magnus here had to be precise i think for one more move and take the bishop that was what he had to do um and then uh queen h3 followed you can't take because of the pin something like this g3 and uh you can't take the knight but apparently the game just goes on like you just leave this night here this is what stockfish wants just leave the knight trapped in a cage and you laugh at it but you don't take it because then this would have been possible so you go rook c6 and then you win it back not very human-like so that doesn't happen and instead tepalov gets a queen trade and still has an extra piece he just has an extra piece he wins the battle of the complications vs magnus now magnus you know he's got six pawns versus four and he still is i mean at the end of the day he's still magnus carlson so he's more than capable of creating counter play he does have a good position problem is white has the type of position where even though he's one point down that's it two pawns for a piece remember the svidler game if you if the the more pieces that get traded the better it is for the guy with the extra piece so tapalov is not only he has that advantage of trading the pieces which is why magnus has to play passively tapalav is staring at the king so magnus can't move anything forward anything he moves forward creates a weakness the pieces don't all get to go together they get to go one at a time so tabalev does a good job slowly infiltrating look at his bishops look at this inching forward right okay it doesn't repeat moves very nice tactical shot if bishop takes e5 there's bishop f3 with the pin and hits both rooks and now he trades bishops moves his king out of the way of the night fork and um i told you the more pieces that get traded the more powerful the person with the bishop has of position and on move 40 magnus carlsen resigned understanding that there is nothing left to be done everything is defended topalov will slowly trade off a rook and win a very long and brutal end game and with this win the paul have claimed the fifth and highest the fifth highest i should say rating of all time only point three points by the way higher than mamitjarov but five highest ratings of all time sounds better than six but yes shakri or mami jrf has a 2826 and it's very close unknown 2820 wesley so i got all these ratings by the way from 2700 chess folks i hope you enjoyed this video i was inspired uh because i don't think i ever saw a video like this and i really like to brainstorm unique content here on youtube if you made it 30 minutes in with me thank you appreciate your support as always any other videos you want to see in the future that i haven't made that are kind of like this one something unique about the chess world let me know i'll see you in the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 413,237

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: RklFRkmQ3ug

Length: 31min 4sec (1864 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2022