I was wondering if it is unusual that Carlsen dropped 40 rating points from his peak in May 2014? (2882 to current 2842).
I know that even Super GM's can have big swings in their ratings, but for a player who is considered one of the best AND most consistant and accurate players in history, is that unusual?
If so, what happened? thanks
TLDR: Not surprising, for a couple reasons that I typed way too much about below.
Read on if you'd like :)
No, it's not that surprising, especially in his case.
With the rest of the top 10 sitting around 2780-2800, pushing his rating to that peak rating required a run of very, very good results, which he had.
The trick is that everyone has their long-term level, and then in the short and medium terms perform sometimes above, and sometimes below that level.
In his case, that run of good results was above his level (do note, of course, that he's still been the #1 by rating by a decent margin the whole time); he simply couldn't sustain that sort of performance.
Also keep in mind that ratings are statistical measures, and have a degree of uncertainty.
The number of games played is the main factor affecting that uncertainty, and with humans that's exacerbated by the fact that so many other factors change our strength from game to game (sleep, focus, new knowledge/skill, etc.)
Humans play relatively so few games that the degree of uncertainty is rather large.
With a very conservative estimate, most top humans' ratings would be better expressed as their nominal rating plus-or-minus 50 points.
With that in mind, it's not even clear that Carlsen's strength has change that much, as he's basically bounced around within reasonable error bars of whatever his "true" rating might be.
Good points!
Also, I might add, I don't think it's a coincidence that he became WC not long before that. Once you're WC, I would suppose, keeping the title becomes your main focus. Hence the rating and the performance in tournament becomes somewhat a secondary priority.
Well I agree . That is What Vishy was doing but Magnus always said that If you are Wch. then You have to Prove it in tournaments :)