What on earth happened to Peter Leko?

Some of Leko's better tournament results from back in the day, Dortmund 1999.

Linares 2003, won on tiebreak (most wins)

Wijk 2005

Going really far back is almost scary. In Leon 1993, 25 years ago in May, before So and Giri were born, Leko scored +2 together with Karpov and Topalov (Yudasin won). He was then only 13 years old.

Yeah, Leko was so good he played for the World Championship!

And he's been lapped by the new crop of great players. Imagine how good those guys are now!

It's funny how well the players that competed in the top events in the middle of the 90s in general have stood the test of time. The top eight from Linares 20 years ago (apart from retired Kasparov and Polgar) are still top 30. And three of them will be 50 in a year or two. A very strong generation. I wonder if Carlsen, Caruana, Giri, Karjakin, So, Ding Liren, Wei Yi etc will be top 30 in 2037? It's getting more and more difficult to stay in the top for a long time.

Kasparov suggested something about it not being good to play too many top events too early. Carlsen has been "accused" of being given early invitations, but he was #21 when he played his first top tournament. Leko reached the top 30 in 1998, but then he had already played Dortmund three times, Wijk twice, Groningen twice, Tilburg twice, Leon twice, Horgen 1994, Belgrade 1995, Vienna 1996, etc. But then no one would have said it was a bad thing 2002-05 when Leko scored great results.

This is kind of interesting with regards to generations. The top of the rating list from July 1988. Many strong players obviously, but apart from from Kasparov and Karpov the list doesn't really strike you as filled with contenders for the greatest ever discussions.

There were no official rating lists in the 1960s, but compare the list above with the top of the Chessmetrics list from December 1964

never really took him too seriously, though once he was going well but i think that's because there were so few good grandmasters at the time, like after Fischer (only one good grandmaster at the time) there were 2 good grandmasters in Karpov and Korchnoi and then there was Kasparov and Karpov, but eventually there were a whole bunch of them once the Internet started sucking diesel and the programs like Fishstock etc. yeah he was a victim of the change in the times plus he should have changed his name like David Bowie did so he could have been taken more seriously. Also it didn't help that he was too tall, being hunched over the board during play, lucky he didn't go all hunchback.

1. 2670 is not low, if he were 2500 or something from a 2700 peak that would be a different story. His live peak was 2763 and his live rating is ~2670ish, that's only 90 points lower. I literally know thousands of people on online chess whose current rating is more than 90 points lower than their peak in certain categories. This is a non-issue. 

After Kasparov retired, Leko was #4 on the remaining rating lists in 2005. Only Anand and Topalov were ahead of the active players. Tough competition around then, Anand had won the Chess Oscar for best player of the year both 2003 and 2004, and Topalov peaked in 2005. Leko had been #4 previously, so it was no flash in the plan, he was stable top ten throughout his 20s. Back then #74 in 2017 would have been considered surprisingly low. Not many players have won all top events when 20-25 to drop so low the following decade. I can't think of any similar case from the past, actually.

This is a very interesting thread, should be titled: The Curious Case of Peter Leko. 

I don't think he could be considered as part of the elite. He dropped out of that circle a long time ago. The prestigious "elite" tag shouldn't be used so generously, it should be reserved to designate the highest class, and Leko is definitely not on the same class with say, Carlsen, Kramnik, So and the like.

Agreed, calling him elite today is to make the term too wide. Players like Amin, Sadler, Kryvoruchko, Vidit, Howell, Duda, Mamedov, Short etc are higher rated, but placing them in the same elite group as Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura, So, Caruana, Aronian etc would feel wrong. It's not even obvious that #18 Yu Yangyi belongs to the elite, or #22 Dominguez, #31 Matlakov, etc.

Right now I would say that the top 13 are elite. On the current live rating list there is a 20-point gap between #13 Giri and #14 Wei Yi. And considering that Wei Yi's current rating is 14 points better than his previous best (which he achieved last month), it is likely that he will drop back down a little in the short term.

lol, his previous best was at 16, he ain't stopping.

Not over the next few years. But at this level, when your rating shoots up all of a sudden it's going to go back down a little afterwards in the short term. It happens to everyone.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that Wei Yi's current rating is probably a little bit over where he actually is in terms of skill, just like Nepo was slightly overrated at 2767, and Caruana at 2844. He's not quite on the same level as the likes of Giri and Karjakin yet.

Stuzzi, if you're arguing that being married adversely affected Leko's chess, fabelhaft has already addressed that.

somehow that doesnt follow logically looking at all those clips of a guy with his better half.

Nepo does not regularly play at his best, he is more comfortable at very fast speeds, maybe chess is a bit slow for him.

He got to that rating by merit of his performances, just like Wei Yi, who is only 18.

Naturally ratings fluctuate in the short term, thats the nature of it. i would not say he is overrated, if you dont like the Chinese, fine.