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Cover Story / 2014 Sinquefield Cup


In arguably the best tournament performance of all time, GM Fabiano Caruana starts with seven victories against the world’s best, paving his way to the 2014 Sinquefield Cup championship.


Story by FM MIKE KLEIN Game Analysis by GM IAN ROGERS


T


he usual expression is “Fire and Ice.” This summer, top-level chess experienced them in reverse order. Prior to round one of the 2014


Sinquefield Cup, GM Fabiano Caruana whimsically acceded to the pressures of the social-media-driven ALS [Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis] Ice Bucket Chal lenge. When he dried off and put on his work clothes, he was all business, turning his enemies into cinders in a performance that left many making bold predictions about Caruana’s future. Literal fire also came down—a lightning


storm in the middle of the opening round pervaded the playing hall with proximate and repeated booms. The host Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis suf - fered damage to seven television monitors from power surges. Back on the board, a changing of the


guard might be somewhat presumptuous, but the frenzy over Caruana’s decimation of the field caused announcer GM Maurice Ashley to let slip the malapropism “Magnus Caruana.” GM Magnus Carlsen’s re - sponse? “That's high praise.” Organizers of this second edition wanted


the strongest tournament in history, so they invited six of the world’s best to St.


20 November 2014 | Chess Life


Louis for 10 rounds of nail-biting chess. They only got 80 percent of their wish— Caruana’s annihilation of his peers decided the event after a mere eight games. Caruana just kept winning. In the dou -


ble round robin, August 27-September 6 tournament, he swept the first cycle to start 5-0. He essentially decided the Cup before the calendar flipped to September. Then he won some more. Every round, pundits had to delve deeper


into historical archives. Ivanchuk’s M-TEL 2008 rout only started 5-0. Topalov’s FIDE World Championship in 2005 began with merely 61


⁄2 /7. Karpov’s 11/13 in Linares,


1994 might be close in overall performance, but a few draws sprinkled the wins midway through the tournament. When Caruana’s mark reached 7-0 after treating GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s king like papier-mâché, flummoxed journalists ran out of chess comparisons and began looking to parallel streaks in other sports. The blitz of the field ended with a draw


to the world champion from a better posi - tion. When Caruana split the point with Carlsen in round eight, the Italian had not only clinched clear first place, he also finally gave spectators a chance to calcu - late his performance rating.


Perfect scores do not compute in the algorithm, so for the seven-game demoli - tion the standard estimate of opponents’ ratings plus 800 made his silly number hover near 3600. For comparison, that’s the world’s strongest computer with 300 more rating points stacked on top. After the draw, Caruana’s performance


rating “plummeted” to 3273. Two more draws closed out the undefeated achieve - ment of 81


⁄2 /10 and a final mark of 3103


(and this against the strongest field in history—average rating 2802). Without one or two imprecisions in games eight and nine, he could easily have reached 91


⁄2


/10. Ratings inflation may have contributed


to this second Category XXIII ever (Zurich 2014 averaged 2801). But 3100 is 3100. Maybe only Fischer’s 20 consecutive wins leading up to his title run compares, but that was over the course of several tournaments and matches. For a single event, Caruana’s 2014 Sinquefield Cup stands up to any single event in chess’ 1,400-year past. “In my history, it’s my best performance


by far,” Caruana said. “I'm not sure about the rest of history. Maybe other people can decide about that.”


PHOTO: CATHY ROGERS


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