Radjabov Approaches 2800

Teimour Radjabov is now inches shy of the tremendous 2800 ELO chess rating mark. This is not new and has been long in coming.

But with his recent performance in the 2012 Chess Olympiad (biennale), his current 2796.5 makes this notable, due to his performance rating for the last four games of 3345, which is giving him this last push up to Mount Olympus. Of course, such things as the latter are short term in nature, but still.

{Monday 02 Sept, addendum:  2799.5 ELO after round five}



And now for my main point. Years ago, someone made a comment on YouTube that they thought he was very arrogant (the same has been said of Fabio Caruana) and I could not disagree more.

Let me explain. This was his explaining, not at a board, but standing with a microphone, explaining what went wrong, or in a win, how the game could have gone better. He was rattling off variation after variation... 'Ng4 then f4: f5, then Rc4, Ng6...' and so on, at lightning speed, and intricately, in detail, nesting all sorts of parenthetic thoughts, 'This could not be so. Because when a4, b5, Rc3, the Rook cannot get in time, Wht can a3...'


This is new? No. Anand can do this, Carlsen, Grischuk, all of them do it or can do it. But this guy is doing it in his, like third language, and doing it well, at breakneck speed. Fu_king genius.

This is not being a poseur. It is who he is. The speed, the detail, the force, in a third language. Amazing guy. I really respect him, these people are not normal, and I mean this in the most respecting way, or what is a better way to put it, these people are not ordinary.

Here is one more for the road, well, lets make it two fu_king geniuses: