The Reign of Ke Jie

[hyperpape]

On the other hand, pretty much all of Ke Jie's opponents are top 50 in the world, at least. Top 30 even. All of whom are probably at least as strong in absolute terms as Lee Changho at his best.

And with a full day to go, the hyperbole champion of the year is settled.

[dfan]

On the other hand, pretty much all of Ke Jie's opponents are top 50 in the world, at least. Top 30 even. All of whom are probably at least as strong in absolute terms as Lee Changho at his best.

goratings.org is not perfect, but at least it's a good starting point for discussion.

Lee Changho's top historical rating there is 3559; if someone today had that rating, they would be the #3 human in the world, behind Ke Jie and Park Junghwan. Ke Jie's current rating of 3634 is the highest that it's ever been, and is appreciably higher than Le Changho's peak rating.

Ke Jie has played 88 games that goratings.org knows about in 2016; the average rating of his opponents was 3433.5. Someone with that rating would be the #31 human in the world. 24 of his 88 games were against players outside of the current rating cutoff for the #50 human in the world.

[pookpooi]

Isn't this the same position as in Chess?
Lee Changho is Garry Kasparov (longer reigning time)
While Ke Jie is Magnus Carlsen (higher peak rating point, current world no.1 player)
I bet in Chess forums also have this kind of thread 'The Reign of Magnus Carlsen'.

[xiayun]

But aren't ELO ratings artificially inflated when there are a lot more pros and more recorded games? I raised a comparison in another thread where I found Xie He got to a higher ELO rating in 2006 than Cho Hunhyun ever had in his career, even though by that time Xie He's best result in international tournaments was a 3rd place finish, and he only made to the quarterfinals two other times. When there were only a few other worthy challengers and all you could do was consistently beating players 100-200 points lower like Cho and LCH did, you couldn't really improve your ELO much.

I'm not saying Lee Changho can dominate like he did if he were born 15 years later, but his ELO would definitely be higher even by winning fewer tournaments.

[hyperpape]

I think that's not a bad start, dfan. Like you said, goratings can't be fully relied upon.

I would point out that until Lee Changho got older and his level of play fell, only Lee Sedol (maybe Gu Li?) had a claim to be as strong as he was (and this was when Lee Changho had already been on top of the world for a decade, so I don't know if it was his peak). And Lee Sedol is still, at 33, one of the very best players. So unless you argue that Lee Sedol has been getting stronger as he enters his 30s, there's at best a few players who could match Lee Changho in his prime.

What is true is that today there is probably deeper competition than Lee Changho had.

[dfan]

But aren't ELO ratings artificially inflated when there are a lot more pros and more recorded games?

It is hard to say. There are both forces that could cause inflation and forces that could cause deflation, and one doesn't know a priori whether they will balance. There's a intuitive perception among chess players that Elo ratings have inflated over time (after all, today's players have higher ratings), but studies have shown that the relationship between rating and move quality (as evaluated by computer) has remained relatively constant over the last 100 years. None of this necessarily has any relation to historical goratings.org ratings, though.

[hyperpape]

Goratings uses the ELO scale, but whole history rating. I'm not sure if it's subject to inflation per se. As I understand it, the problem is that it introduces new players with a prior of 3000. So if you have a pool of players and the range of strengths increases, the top and bottom of the range will expand, even if the top player is no better. The converse happens if the weakest players get better but the strongest doesn't.

Sure enough, the pool of players included is much bigger than it was in 1990 (look at the historical ratings).

[xiayun]

Ke Jie had been sick the last few days and had to withdraw from Mingren quarterfinals.

[emeraldemon]

Could someone list some of Ke Jie's greatest games to look closer at?

Cheers

I don't know about "greatest ever", but in December 2015 he played against Lee Sedol in the MLily Cup finals. It's a best of 5, and it's a great series. You can find (long) English commentary from Mungwan Kim 9p here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Dqnctwl6L_

[anpd]

Could someone list some of Ke Jie's greatest games to look closer at?

Cheers

I don't know about "greatest ever", but in December 2015 he played against Lee Sedol in the MLily Cup finals. It's a best of 5, and it's a great series. You can find (long) English commentary from Mungwan Kim 9p here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Dqnctwl6L_

Thanks

[xiayun]

Ke Jie lost to Iyama Yuta in the first match of China Lunar New Year Invitational. Will play Park Junghwan next for a chance of rematch for the title.

[pookpooi]

Ke Jie lost to Iyama Yuta in the first match of China Lunar New Year Invitational. Will play Park Junghwan next for a chance of rematch for the title.

somehow this news can be post in both ke jie reign thread and iyama yuta reign thread

[xiayun]

Ke Jie lost to Iyama Yuta in the first match of China Lunar New Year Invitational. Will play Park Junghwan next for a chance of rematch for the title.

somehow this news can be post in both ke jie reign thread and iyama yuta reign thread

Yeah, thought the same thing. Guess we could discuss the game and its moves from their respective perspectives in each thread.

[ewan1971]

Ke Jie lost to Iyama Yuta in the first match of China Lunar New Year Invitational. Will play Park Junghwan next for a chance of rematch for the title.

When did Ke Jie get out of the hospital? I'd been worried for him for a while because he was playing to exhaustion. Sure enough, he was hospitalized earlier this month.

[kimidori]

Ke Jie just beat Park Junghwan in the 2nd game of CCTV Cup and will meet Iyama again in the final. I feel Park leading comfortably in the middle game, before the invasion in his right side. Awesome comeback from Ke Jie.