July 9, 2014
#1392: Dominant Players explain
**Dominant players **
over time
[Below this heading there are three panels with charts showing different players career paths - that is their rating a function of the year. Most of the paths are grey, but some are red (there will be a note for these). Some parts of several paths are dashed. Somewhere on each path the players name will be written curving along so it follows the path. Several places an event or some information is noted and points to a given time on the path. If it is not clear where it belongs an arrow will point to the correct place. Each chart has a heading and for the two last charts there is an explanation. There is no scale on the y-axis (rating) but the x-axis (time) has the years given in ten years interval. A thin line indicates these decades. The years are all written at the top, except the first for the first chart, which is written below, and this year is missing in the bottom chart.]
[Below the transcript for each chart will follow this order: Heading/sub heading, explanation, time scale, player names with any information for this player, in the order their name appear on the time scale.]
[Basketball chart:]
Basketball (NBA/ABA)
Player Efficiency Rating
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
[Red] George Mikan
[Red] Bob Pettit
Neal Johnston [Neil misspelled.]
Elgin Baylor
[Red] Wilt Chamberlain
Becomes the first and so far only player to score 100 points in a game
Jerry West
The Guy in the NBA logo
[Red] Kareem Abdul Jabbar [Missing hyphen between the two last names.]
Airplane
Bob Mcadoo
Julius Irving [Erving misspelled.]
Moses Malone
Magic Johnson
HIV announcement [A part of the path is dashed after this.]
[Red] Michael Jordan
Baseball career [A part of the path is dashed after this.]
Space Jam
Second retirement [A part of the path is dashed after this.]
Larry Bird
Karl Malone
David Robinson
[Red] Shaquille O’Neal
Kevin Gariett
[Red] LeBron James
The Decision
Dwyane Wade
Kevin Durant
[Chess chart.]
Chess
Elo Rating
The modern Elo rating system dates back to about 1970.
Computer analysis (like Kenneth Regan’s) lets us rate historical players, but this has only been done rigorously for a few tournaments.
Dashed lines are rough estimates only.
[All paths are dashed up until the late nineteen sixties:]
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
[The first player has no path, as his time was before 1940. An arrow points toward the left to these earlier times:]
José Capablanca
Terrifying chess God
[Red] Alexander Alekhine [His path ends in a starburst.]
[Red] Mikhail Botvinnik
Tigran Petrosian
David Bronstein
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Tal [his name is written twice on the path, the second time above Boris Spassky when their paths intertwine.]
[Red] Bobby Fischer
Vanished… [Text under a starburst.]
Reappeared then vanished again. He had problems. [Text under two starbursts connected with a path. This appears much later than the first starburst.]
Boris Spassky
Boris Spassky [his name is written twice on the path, the second time below Mikhail Tal when their paths intertwine.]
Victor Korchnoi
[Red] Anatoly Karpov
[Red] Garry Kasparov
Loses to Deep Blue
Judit Polgar
(See below) [The text is written beneath her name.]
Vladimir Kramnik
Levon Aronian
[Red] Magnus Carlsen
[Chess (women) chart:]
Chess (women)
Elo Rating
For a long time, sexism, a lack of role models, and institutional hostility largely kept women from pursuing serious chess careers.
With the expansion of women’s tournaments and prizes starting in the 1970s, this has begun to change.
[All paths are dashed up until the late nineteen sixties.]
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
[Red] Vera Menchik
Died in a missile attack on London [next to a starburst.]
Sonja Graf
Rating particularly uncertain
Olga Rubtsova
Elisaveta Bykova
Kira Zvorykina
Kira Zvorykina (born 1919) continued playing in tournaments into the 21st century [Text above Elisvetas path, no arrows.]
Zvorykina [Written on top of the path when her path reappears much later.]
Alexandra Nicolau
[Red] Nona Gaprindashvili
Alla Kushnir
[Red] Maia Chiburdanidze
Pia Cramling
Pia Cramling [her name is written twice on the path, the second time below the path of Xie Jun after their paths have intertwined.]
Xie Jun
Xie Jun [her name is written twice on the path, the second time above the path of Pia Cramling after their paths have intertwined.]
Susan Polgar
Sofia Polgar
[Red] Judit Polgar
Sisters [The three Polgars are linked by a thin dashed line, snaking between their names.]
Wins a game against Kasparov, making her the first woman to beat the world #1
Becomes first woman to rank in the overall top 10
Antoaneta Stefanova
Anna Muzychuk
Koneru Humpy [In western style the name should be Humpy Koneru, but the comics version is the native form.]
Hou Yifan