11/23/2018 Baseball and Chess have their
similarities in terms of planning and
strategies. In both you look at the
current position and you plan for the future. The players in both sports have
similarities as well. It's called
the 5-tool concept. In baseball its hitting with power, hitting for average,
running the bases, fielding, and
throwing. When a player is excellent in all 5 disciplines, he is a 5-tool player.
According to
Statcast
there are currently 8 5-tool players: Mike Trout, Andrew
McCutchen, Carlos Gomez, Yoenis
Cespedes, Lorenzo Cain, Hunter Pense, Ian Desmond, and Marcel Ozuna.
Chess players have similar disciplines. They are the
openings, middlegame, endgame, rapid play, and blitz play. A player who excels
in all 5 is a 5-tool player. In order to be considered a 5 tool chess player,
you must be in the top-10 in classical, rapid, blitz rating charts or you must
be in the top ten in two categories and less than 1 win away from being in the
top 10 which equates to less than 5 rating points. As of Novemenber 2018, chess
only has four 5-tool players: Magnus Carlsen, MVL - Maxine Vachier-Lagrave,
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Levon Aronian.
| Name | Classical rating/rank | Rapid rating/rank |
Blitz rating/rank |
comments | |||||
| Magnus Carlsen | 2835-1 | 2880-1 | 2939-1 | One of the best of all time. | |||||
| Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2817-3 | 2794-8 | 2804-9 | ||||||
| Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2778-6 | 2786-11 | 2937-2 | His rapid rating is within 4 pints of the number 10 rating slot. | |||||
| Levon Aronian | 2765-10 | 2802-7 | 2884-4 | Classical rank is tied for 10th. |
| Name | Classical rating/rank |
Rapid rating/rank |
Blitz rating/rank |
Comments | |
| Fabiano Caruana | 2832-2 | 2789-10 | 2762-18 | World Champion Challenger Blitz rating is too low. | |
| Alexander Grischuk | 2771-9 | 2722-28 | 2935-8 | Rapid rating is too low. | |
| Wesely So | 2765-10 | 2808-6 | 2771-16 | Blitz rating too low. |
For Carlsen as the game speeds up, his rating increases
significantly.. For Caruana his rating decreases as the game speeds up,
Both these playes are playing for the world championship in London. This is an
ominous sign for Carunana should the match have to go into tie breaker.
With todays world championship match rules where the champion no longer has draw
odds, it pays to be a 5-
tool player so you can excel and defend yourself at rapid, blitz and Armageddon
matches.
Its not surprising that
Hikaru Nakamura is rooting for Magnus. His reasoning is
"To me it would seem a bit odd
to have a world champion who is not strong in all the formats. (...)
Historically it would a bit off if Magnus
doesn't win." Nakamura was a 5-tool player, but his classical play has fallen
off considerably. His ranking is
17,2,3 with ratings of 2746,2844,2893. In October of 2018 Nakamura was a 5-tool
chess player. Nakamura broke
the
2800 classical chess rating
barrier in June of 2015. Chess. like in any
sport, you must stay in shape and
keep your skill levels up.
Fide just started caluclationg rapid and blitz ratings in 2012.
A good place to look for 5-tool chess players is at the list of world champions.
Tal, Petrosian, Fischer,
Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, and Carlsen.