How long do chess players typically remain at their peak for? According to wikipedia, Magnus is currently 35. Is it impressive to be winning at 35? Would we expect to see his performance drop off in the next 5-10 years?

Even if he is still capable mentally and physically, I would think the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.

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somenameforme an hour ago | parent | next [-]

On average players start declining in their mid to late thirties, just about the age of Magnus (and Hikaru). But even with that decline, it's not like they simply can't play anymore. Drag Kasparov out of retirement and he's still going to be an extremely strong player, even in his 60s.

And a lot probably comes with environmental rather than physical issues. Staying at the highest level in chess requires never-ending opening preparation and study. This same is about the time that kings of the game have made their dominance clear to the point that there's just nothing more to achieve, start having families, and so on. It's going to be very difficult to maintain motivation.

The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

	▲	mgfist an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Vishy's still a top player at 56

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porphyra 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anand reached world #1 ranking at 38, managed to win a world championship and defend the title for a decade in his late 40s, and remains in #13 in his 50s right now.

	▲	akkartik 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Well he hasn't played a classical game in a year or so.

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flaviolivolsi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kasparov remained the n.1 player until his retirement at 42, we can likely expect no less from Magnus

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bmurphy1976 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Magnus is in uncharted territory here. We won't really know the answer to this question for quite some time.

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simbleau 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there really a decline with age when it comes to chess? I’m not sure he will really decline until he reaches his retirement age.

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traes 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For some concrete numbers, there are only four players over 50 years of age in the top 100 at the moment by live ratings[0]. They are ranked #13 (age 56), #89 (age 53), #95 (age 54), and #97 (age 57). In their primes these players were ranked #1, #10, #4, and #3 respectively.

[0]: https://2700chess.com/?per-page=100

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dehrmann 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't he playing Chess960 because he started finding standard chess boring? And wasn't that why Fischer worked on it in the first place? Experts might get bored of it by the time they're 50.

	▲	peter422 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The reason the top pros like chess960 is because they don’t need to spend hundreds of hours of opening preparation, they can just sit down and play. Caruana (the guy who lost to Magnus), mused in a podcast that chess960 feels strange as a competitor because he doesn’t really prepare (because there are far too many openings to study) and said it feels like he’s getting paid for much less work.

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Taek 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is some fascinating data, thanks for pulling it together.

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Trufa 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a sharp decline with age. Magnus himself says he's not as sharp as he was younger, even if he can compensate with experience.

	▲	bee_rider an hour ago \| parent [-]
		He just has to gain experience faster than he loses sharpness.

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jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For most people there is a cognitive decline with age, and chess is clearly a cognitive effort. Like with everything else: experience really matters, but you will simply be a bit less sharp over time and in a game where a tiny mistake can compound to a loss it really matters.

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xmprt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Magnus' longevity has more to do with his willingness to continue competing than his actual skill. He's been pretty vocal about his issues with FIDE so I can see a world where he stops participating in FIDE events to focus on non-FIDE events that he enjoys more. He's already withdrawn from the Candidates which qualifies you for the World Championship.

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gpm an hour ago | parent [-]

Magnus not participating in FIDE events seems to have absolutely nothing to do with his longevity, it just means that FIDE is no longer meaningfully hosting THE world championship because they failed to attract the talent.

	▲	bad_haircut72 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah if FIDE crowns some other champ without Magnus people wont think oh wow Magnus lost the spot, people will think oh wow FIDE lost the spot of being the kingmaker. chess.com is probably the more credible org for global rankings anyway

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nilslindemann 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Like Lasker, Carlsen will still play with 60+.

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chilicat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.

The stress of elite competition clearly has a shelf life, but Magnus is not overly old. Cognitive performance typically hits a plateau at 35 years old and begins a sustained decline after 45 years old.

The current youth wave of GMs is likely a function of compressed training efficiency. Modern players reach the 10,000 hours threshold much earlier because they had greater access to better training material and had better practice.

	▲	somenameforme an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The youth wave of GMs is also going to be driven by a general increase in the popularity and image of chess. There's probably way more parents competently teaching their children chess than there have ever been. This may be playing an even bigger role than the training itself. For instance Gukesh's coach was actively running an experiment on him, and as a result he did not use engines in his training until he was already 2500+.

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lethologica 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Context helps. A lot of really strong players are 12 years old.

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somenameforme 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The best young player today, by a wide margin, is Erdogmus. [1] He's not only the youngest grandmaster in the world, but showing an arguably unprecedented level of talent. He's 14 and his rating is 2669. Magnus is 2840. Chess ratings are difficult to explain, even to chess players - who might not appreciate how much harder improvement becomes at higher levels.

Suffice to say that 50 points is considered a major edge, and it increases exponentially so 100 points is much more of an edge than 2x a 50 point edge. Here [2] is a rating expectation calculator. If Erdogmus and Carlsen played a best of 10 match, Carlsen would be expected to win 97% of the time, draw 2% of the time, and lose less than 1% of the time.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C4%9F%C4%B1z_Kaan_Erdo%C4%9...

[2] - https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#rating1=2669&rating2...

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smt88 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That context doesn't help me at all. Is a "really strong" 12yo in contention to win this particular competition that a 35yo won?

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traes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, even the best prodigies typically aren't winning super tournaments until 17 or 18, and we haven't really had one of those since Gukesh won candidates last cycle. The youngest player in this event was a 20 year old who placed last. (Though to be fair to the youngsters, 3rd and 4th place are both 21 years old.)

Generally speaking it's expected that chess players will peak around their late 20s and slowly decline from there, with sharp declines around age 50. It's unusual but not unheard of for players in their 40s to win major tournaments. 42 year old Levon Aronian won several last year, but it was considered a notable example of longevity every time he won.

In terms of raw numbers, there are currently 30 players in their 30s, 15 players in their 40s, 4 players in their 50s, and no players older that in the top 100. The youngest is 14-year old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, who is considered the greatest chess prospect of all time.

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lethologica 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry, I thought you’d be able to make some logical inferences and I assumed you knew a little about chess.

In chess there’s a concept of strength, and ELO is used as a rough estimate of this. Further there are FIDE rankings like IM and GM that have certain requirements to achieve.

In most sports, there’s never such an age gap. Think of basketball or football. You don’t see 12 year olds hitting the equivalent of GM in those respective sports (going pro?) and being able to compete with the 35 year olds, do you? In most sports, they wouldn’t even be allowed to enter but in chess they could.

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traes 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Obviously a board game will be easier for a child to compete at than a physical sport. Tons of Rubik's cube world records are held by 9 year olds. I don't see why any of this is relevant in answering the question "is it impressive to be winning at 35 in chess?"

Is your point that young kids have an advantage in chess, making it harder to keep up as an adult? They clearly don't. No 12 year old has ever been able to seriously compete with top players, at best they can hold a few draws or win a blitz game here and there. As far as I'm aware Judit Polgar was the only 12 year old to even break into the top 100, and she's an outlier among outliers. Right now the top 3 players in the world are all in their 30s, and there's only one player in the top 50 who's younger than 18.

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glenstein an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chess isn't like most sports so it's hard to extrapolate from them. The existence of ELO in and of itself doesn't help explain whether the super youngs are competitive at the highest levels unless you are saying they should be manually looked up, and you didn't say any of that so it's ridiculous to treat that like it was implicit or an obvious logical inference.

And they were right that "a lot of really strong players are 12 years old" doesn't by itself help clarify where they are relative to elite competition at other age bands let alone clarify what age band perform bests at the end of the day. Even now I still don't understand how "a lot of 12 year old are good" is to supposed to answer that even implicitly. If anything the natural reading of that would be an implication that they are among the most competitive, yet your elaboration says the opposite.

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dufhfhrirjt an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You have still failed to clarify whatever the hell you were attempting to communicate, all you’ve communicated is that you’re an asshole

	▲	lethologica 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh no. Anyway.

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jibal 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

There have only been 5 12 year old GMs in history, and none of them are competitive with Carlsen.

There's a lot more wrong with your comment that someone capable of making logical inferences can readily see, so I won't go into them.

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p-e-w 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Is it impressive to be winning at 35?

No. Multiple world champions have been older than that.

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TheRealPomax 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You... should watch him stream. That'll pretty much answer your questions. Age is far less relevant to chess compared to keeping up with the current "meta" (in gamer parlance).