Anatoly Karpov 1995 Amber Rapid
Karpov at the Amber Rapid 1995 at age 44 ran rampant, won his first 6 games and finished with 9 wins, 2 draws and 0 losses to finish with 10/11.
Amber Rapid 1995 game section on chessgames
He beat Kramnik, Nunn, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Ljubojevic, Polgar, Piket, Lautier and Shirov.
World Ranking of Karpov's opponents at the time (according to chessmetrics)
(1) Anand : world #3
(2) Kamsky : world #4
(3) Ivanchuk : world #5
(4) Kramnik : world #6
(5) Shirov : world #8
(6) Lautier : world #18
(7) Nikolic : world #19
(8) Polgar : world #21
(9) Piket :world #27
(10) Nunn : world #50
(11) Ljubojevic : world #64
And the last 2 players were former top 10 players.
This was like the Rapid chess version of what Karpov did in Linares 1994
Extra note:
Mamedyarov, Karjakin, Carlsen (x2) also have an impressive 11.5/15 (+8) in the World Rapid championship. Very good but not quite good enough to crack this list.
I also checked some of the Grand Chess tour events and I didnt see anything eye-popping.
If you guys have Rapid performance you think is better , please let me know.
There's about 15 years of opening advancements and newer technology that the GM of 2021 will have the advantage of. Computers weren't as strong back then. What do you guys think!?
Interview of the famous Dutch coach from 2018 shedding light on young Iranian talents, he used to coach the Iranian national team at that point. Interesting read, so thought I would share in light of Firouzja's recent gains on the FIDE ranking list.
SS: But why do you think Firouzja is world championship material? What did you see in him?
IS: I saw young Anand. I and Anand are from the same generation and I can tell that Firouzja has incredible similarities to Anand when he was young.
SS: In what sense?
IS: In the sense that he thinks extremely fast and sometimes that becomes a drawback for him, just like it was in Anand’s case. In those years, Anand was also suffering from this. Sometimes, he would take a decision too quickly but it was obvious to every one of us from this generation that Anand had something which we didn’t.
In the case of Firouzja, I think he has something special in him when it comes to chess. And given his young age, he has the potential to become a world champion. And other players will become very strong players but that is not exactly the same.
Ok, so /u/breaker90 has pointed it out in the other thread, but I felt, that it might get buried there, since it was the 3rd answer to a comment:
The FIDE Grand Prix regulations clearly states :"Only players who participated in the FIDE World Cup 2021 or played at least 9 rated games counted in the Standard FIDE Rating Lists from February to December 2021 are eligible." That is not the case for the players mentioned above, so if they don't play enough games this month, they will not be eligible for a rating invite. The next 3 players taking their spots in comparism to this post (https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/qoza9o/potential_grand_prix_lineup/) would be Wei Yi, Andreikin and Esipenko (at this moment; the European team championship might change things).
The way I read it, these restrictions are not there for the presidents and organizers nominees, so we might still get 2 of the players mentioned above into the Grand Prix.
https://preview.redd.it/gqmymbez83681.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6ee15593288aef3bd9d072b22513f630e21318ef
