>> E.T. will get a sequel

Sweet! Maybe he'll arrive with a queen that lays eggs. E.T. aliens can't be mammals, right?

Magnus won't lose 1st place as he just won't play and he's miles ahead of other players.

Getting points above 2800 is really tough. But I don't doubt he will be semi-retired, similar to Kasparov.

Kasparov still played extremely well 10 years after he was semi-retired.

Why would apple release a backpack?

I would be surprised if there's ever a GPT5. o3 seems like it'd be superior in every way

I haven't been following chess much, is there anyone in particular he would love his ranking to?

To be honest, the answer is probably "whoever happens to be in second place when Magnus falls off". Magnus has openly stated that he finds classical chess boring, stopped playing in the world championship due to the immense amount of prep required, and has started pushing for other formats (more blitz, Fischer random). I could see him just prepping less and losing his 20 point advantage by the end of the year.

The 2024 world champion Gukesh Dommaraju made a pretty huge leap this year, is only 18 years old (youngest world champion of all time), has a really unique playing style, and is likely to continue improving next year, so it's possible he'll run away with it, but I think it's unlikely. At the top levels right now, a lot of the ELO distinction comes down to finding ways to consistently dominate players that are slightly worse than you, and Gukesh doesn't seem to be optimizing for that.

> consistently dominate players that are slightly worse than you

How do they do that :-) At those levels

Appreciate the detailed response!