Comment by freetime2
10 days ago
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.
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.
I think motivation really is the key term here. Magnus is a five-time world chess champion, in a complete league of his own even when everyone else was literally only prepping to defeat him. He held the world champion title for ten years and eventually just declined to defend it. And that's relatable, if you're at the absolute top for ten years and no one manages to put a dent to it, what else is there? I think most people would look for new challenges and ways to fulfill themselves after that.
He declined to defend it because he disagreed with the way FIDE was organizing and managing the tournament. I believe this is around the time they threw him out of a tournament for wearing jeans, when he was not the only competitor present in jeans.
I think it's nearly universally accepted that his streak ended on a technicality rather than a legitimate decline/defeat.
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It's the ability to concentrate that starts to go.
Kasparov have talk about this. Older players can play at a world-class level for the first few hours, but their ability to maintain intense concentration declines as the game progresses. Most blunders by older GMs happen in the 5th or 6th hour of play. Older players also can't recover from earlier intense game next morning as well.
According to Kasparov older players get "calculation blackouts" and inability to visualize the board.
Can you link to the interview? Sounds interesting.
> 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.
For those out of the know like me, the tldr seems to be that it shuffles the positions in the first rank - symmetrically with your opponent, but not the usual rook/knight/bishop/royal both sides. So you can't study openings well because you don't even know the starting position.
https://www.freestyle-chess.com/fc-players-club-rules/
It goes to show my expertise in chess that I watched a whole encounter and it looked exactly the same as regular chess with castling and all.
I don't know if I would call the positions symmetrical, though, they seem mirrored(I just checked and regular chess is mirrored as well).
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Vishy's still a top player at 56
He does not play classical because it would immediately reduce his rating. Gelfand plunged. He would too.
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Yeah, I think the motivation angle is hugely underrated. At that level everyone is already insanely strong, so the difference often comes down to who's still willing to grind 6-8 hours a day on prep for marginal gains
For example, Anand did very well in a recent rapid and blitz event amongst youngsters. But Anand was drubbed by Kasparov in a recent Freestyle event.
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.
Top players who stay active tend to stay above 2600 for a long time. Short was continually active and while not at his peak was in the top 100 well into his fifties. Mickey Adams is still in the top 100 at 54. Korchnoi was world class into his 70s. Vasyl Ivanchuk, at 56, nearly won Tata Steel Challengers. If a player falls off hard in their fifties it’s generally in part “not wanting to try as hard”.
If you don’t play your rating stays the same. Pretty common for inactive 2600+ players.
"on average" doesn't mean some outliers don't exist
Well he hasn't played a classical game in a year or so.
Most players actually peak in strength around age 35 [1].
But Carlsen has been number one for more time than any player for him, safe Kasparov [2]:
- Kasparov 255 months at number 1
- Carlsen 188
- Karpov 102
- Fischer 54
Bonus nuance: Carlsen has the longest unbroken run of 174 consecutive rating lists
[1]: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-age-related-decline-in-che...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIDE_chess_world_numbe...
I think the question is different for the typical chess player compared to those at the very top. And at the very top we don't have that much data... going back to Fischer, he had a short career and disappeared by 32, but not really for lack of ability. For Karpov, his reign lasted about 10 years from age 24-34, but even after that he was in the top 3 or top 5 for another 15 years until he retired in his 50s. Kasparov reigned for 20 years, retiring at the top at age 41, and is maybe most impressive for defeating his same-generation rival Karpov while also holding the newcomers of Kramnik and Anand at bay. With Kasparov gone those two battled at the top for another 10ish years into their late 30s and mid-40s respectively (and I'd give the edge to the older Anand) before Magnus won the championship in 2013 and has been dominating for 13 years since. So to summarize, I don't think it's that "impressive" to still be winning at 35, he can probably keep winning for quite some time to come. He probably won't surpass his peak ELO though.
> his same-generation rival Karpov
Karpov is 12 years older than Kasparov.
Good point, it was sloppy of me to call them same-generation, I distracted myself with thinking about Kasparov's long reign at the very top which I view as defining a sort of competitive era ("generation") that was shared for the majority of Karpov's active career at the top levels as well, even though it extends past that and Karpov had his own period prior to the Kasparov rivalry. It's interesting to bring that back to the question of how much age matters though since Karpov kept playing and was also still very strong against the even newer players (Anand and Kramnik being 18 and 24 years younger) for most of the 90s too.
Kasparov remained the n.1 player until his retirement at 42, we can likely expect no less from Magnus
Magnus is in uncharted territory here. We won't really know the answer to this question for quite some time.
Forgive me if the answer is obvious (I don't follow chess), but what is uncharted about it?
Reading other comments like this one - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031715 - it seems like there isn't enough data for there to be typical expectations, but that it isn't uncharted?
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.
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
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.
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This is some fascinating data, thanks for pulling it together.
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.
There are a lot of confounding variables. Chief among them is someone at the top just wanting to get on with their life, start a family for instance, or basically anything other than study 12 hours a day.
It's hard to say it's cognitive decline for most of the people who just aren't working as hard at 40 as they were at 25.
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He just has to gain experience faster than he loses sharpness.
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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.
Magnus peak rating was on 2014.
But he lost motivation afterwards, so that was not necessarily his peak, maybe he just yoloed a little after that. In his own words he's way past his peak. In recent interview he said his bullet no increment (most taxing on reflex/fast calculation) peak was around 7 years ago. I would assume his prime physical form came after his rating peak, because classical chess rewards deep study and consistency, and he admits all motivation was gone once there were basically no challengers and he distanced himself too much of the pack after Caruana also peaked hard.
But regardless, safe to assume his peak was 10-7 years ago. Still good enough to surpass current gen easily.
> Is it impressive to be winning at 35?
No. Multiple world champions have been older than that.
I wouldn't be surprised if Carlsen remains competitive for another decade, especially in formats that rely more on intuition and less on memorizing massive opening prep
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.
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.
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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He relinquished the world champion title because he thought defending it was boring (and not paying well). So one can say he is already past his peak. Chess is a mental game after all. But it will take many years before his rating drops noticeably though.
Context helps. A lot of really strong players are 12 years old.
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...
He was not the youngest GM. But youngest to achieve 2600 rating. Point increse would not be so hard for him as he already can beat top 20 players.
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That context doesn't help me at all. Is a "really strong" 12yo in contention to win this particular competition that a 35yo won?
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.
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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George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.
> 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.
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+.
The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s. Hakuho, by far the greatest sumo wrestler in history, retired at 38 when he should have retired years earlier.
> The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s
Different faculties peak at different times. While MIT/Harvard research shows that raw processing speed peaks early, it highlights that social intelligence and crystallized knowledge don't peak until our 40s or 50s [I]. Specifically, the Whitehall II study identifies age 45 as the inflection point for initial reasoning decline [II], while research from Stony Brook found that changes in brain network stability—the metabolic cost of cognitive maintenance—typically don't begin until age 44 [III].
[I] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761456733...
[II] https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7622
[III] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2416433122
Yeah, it's hard to maintain physical performance as we are more susceptible to injuries which keeps us away from constant training, but our brain doesn't suffer by injuries, what allow us to go further. I think what makes people to drop at advanced age on "non-physical sports" it's to focus on other aspects of life over the sport because it's exaustive, if not impossible, to focus on both.
Like Lasker, Carlsen will still play with 60+.
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).
Can I ask the significance/reason for the "..." after "you"? Serious question - there may be an age or cultural divide between us and it's not a pattern of speech I'm familiar with. "You should watch him stream" on its own comes across as a friendly suggestion - and I just may do that. The "..." seems to change the tone, and I think possibly add a bit of snark, though I'm not sure if that's how it's intended or why it would be merited.