Chess Scotland Noticeboard

admin · Site Admin Joined: 09 Jan 2007 Posts: 1386

Alan's performance was an eye watering 2641. I've seen DMB's report on the front page where it has already eclipsed both Jacob and Jonathan when they won the British.

Can anyone else remember a performance better than this?

AMcHarg · Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 9:59 pm Post subject:

Chasky after the first two Sunday's of the SNCL last season. Laughing

Seriously though, outstanding Alan! =]

DMB · King Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 267

Well any previous GM norms will obviously be right up there arithmetically - as will the British wins. Something like an Olympiad norm there will often be a weaker opponent in the mix where you get too much credit but here the minimum was 2404.

It would be interesting to compile a historic list of best tournament performances over min 9 rounds albeit with the caveat that rating inflation will enhance more recent performances.

Andy McCulloch · King Joined: 28 Mar 2007 Posts: 280

Surely there can't be too many when the opposition was 100% titled players, 5 of them GMs.

Alan scored 2.5/5 against the GMs, and a very convincing 3.5/4 against the IMs.

DMB · King Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 267

Name Event Games Score % Av Opp Diff Perf
Aagaard British 2007 11 8.5 0.7727 2438 211 2649
Tate Croatia 2010 9 6 0.6666 2516 125 2641
Rowson British 2006 11 8.5 0.7727 2428 211 2639

There's a few to be going on with.

(Edit: I have adjusted the performance figures above and in post below since it seems FIDE just round to nearest whole number. So 6/9 is 66.6% so they use 67% on the chart for a +125 rather than the +122 I used earlier. eg a GM norm is a 2600 performance so a 6/9 requires a min average rating of 2475 ie 2475+125 = 2600. )

Andy McCulloch · King Joined: 28 Mar 2007 Posts: 280

All three are excellent performances, but are they strictly comparable?

I followed each event via the internet, and all were very good to watch.

In 2007 Jacob was rated 2467 and had 3 GM norms in the bank.
In 2006 Jonathan was an established GM rated 2579.
In 2010 Alan was untitled and rated 2234.

…................GMs.......IMs......untitled.......rating......performance........(perf - rating)
Jacob...........5.............3.............3.............2467...........2651.....................+184
Jonathan.....4.............4.............3.............2579...........2641.....................+..62
Alan.............5.............4.............0.............2234...........2638.....................+404

Each effort is meritorious, in different ways.
Jonathan won his third consecutive British title, playing at a level he had before.
As well as gaining his first British title, Jacob exceeded 2500 for the first time, to achieve the GM title. He played well above his rating, but at a level he had reached, or been close to, when earning his norms.
Alan, earning the FM title along the way, produced the tournament of his career so far. His performance eclipsed his previous high point when he won the Scottish in 2008. His opposition was, as stated earlier, 100% titled and slightly higher on average than for the other two. Remember this was his first norm performance of any kind.
His gaining 67 elo points is massive.

DMB · King Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 267

The comparison I have made is just the arithmetic of highest performance rating by a Scot.

Sticking with the arithmetic this one could be the winner - a 2679 performance by Jonathan Rowson to win Hastings in January 2004. The lowest opponent Gormally at 2471.

http://www.chessscotland.com/archives/hastings_2003.htm

http://ratings.fide.com/tournament_report.phtml?event16=37473

0.5 Kotronias, Vasilios CYP g 2626
1 Epishin, Vladimir RUS g 2658
0.5 Kunte, Abhijit IND g 2535
0.5 Nielsen, Peter Heine DEN g 2626
1 Hebden, Mark ENG g 2560
0.5 Lahno, Kateryna UKR m 2486
0.5 Cherniaev, Alexander RUS m 2476
0.5 Conquest, Stuart ENG g 2545
1 Gormally, Daniel ENG m 2471

(Edit: Have upped this performance to 2679 from 2674 earlier. 6/9 is +125. Average opposition 2554 +125 = 2679)

Graeme Kafka · Rook Joined: 21 Feb 2007 Posts: 75

Why does previous playing standard have any bearing on the objective quality of the performance? All three on the list are surely pretty much too close to call in that regard.
I don't think there can be much debate that Alan's showing represents the "best performance relative to rating" - for as long as I can remember, anyway...! An absolutely magnificent achievement.

Donald Wilson · Queen Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 143

Each year at the Grangemouth Congress the Brian Currie Memorial Shield is presented to the junior who has had the best performance relative to grading at the congress. Typically, it is won with a performance about 400 points above the player's published grade. This is not rare with fast-improving juniors graded around 1000 over the course of a five-round tournament.

But it must be very rare for an adult rated over 2200 to perform at +400 over a nine-round tournament. It would not surprise me if no British (not just Scottish) player had ever achieved this before Alan.

Is there a chess equivalent of cricket's Wisden that can be looked up to find a list of the best ever performances, or would somebody have to trawl through a myriad of tournament reports to find the best performances over rating for Scottish (or British) players?

HLang · Queen Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 151 Location: Oxford

In terms of rating performance vs current rating for a norm, then Jonathan's first IM norm must be up there (Aberdeen APA), as it was a very high % score.

Andy Muir's 3 IM norms in 3 months for the title must also rank highly, though on a different metric.
_________________
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GN · King Joined: 30 Mar 2007 Posts: 415

Craig Pritchett · Queen Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 114

Interesting! But do ratings tell the whole story?

Is the Scottish high(est) point (so far) not still Capt G H Mackenzie's phenomenal +13 =4 -3 at Frankfurt 1887? He finished 1.5 points ahead of a field that "except for Steinitz and Chigorin [contained] most of the world's best players..." (Oxford Companion to Chess). Tarrasch was well behind. Zukertort (who'd just lost the first official world championship match the previous year) and Gunsberg, who lost a world title match in 1890-91) were both well down the table.

Had Mackenzie not apparently developed tuberculosis in the 1880s and died tragically early in 1891, Scotland might have had a world championship challenger (quite possibly in place of Gunsberg, shortly after the first of Chigorin's two lost world title matches against Steinitz, in 1889).

Some claim MacKenzie as American and he was considered by virtually everyone to be the best player in the USA in the 1870s and 80s ... but he was born and bred in Scotland and did come back to pick up the Scottish Championship on the only occasion he competed in 1888. He was undoubtedly one of the world's absolute top players in the 1880s and would almost certainly have regarded himself as Scoto-American. He could do with a proper chess biography!