Fabiano's performance rating was 3098. Karpov's Linares was 2985. Carlsen's top rating (not single tournament performance) was 2882, the highest yet recorded.

Fabiano's performance rating was more than 200 Elo points higher than the top-rated player. Karpov's 1997 performance was less than 200 points better than the then top-rated.

One thing the raw numbers don't take into account is ratings inflation. Look at Karpov for example. In 1979 he was the only player in the world rated above 2700. Now there are almost 50 players rated above 2700. So it's much easier to have a high performance rating now. For most of chess history it was simply impossible to have a performance rating of 3098.

The article doesn't take into account ratings inflation because it's more interesting to present your article about the best performance in the strongest tournament ever rather than a very, very good performance in a very strong event.

Well, the writing isn't news, it's magazine. Different communicative goal.

It was a good article and I'm glad I read it. The sub-headline (whatever that's called) does say, "One of the most amazing feats in chess history just happened, and no one noticed," clearly trying to get the reader to feel ashamed for not caring about Chess. Curious to hear what this news was, I kept reading and reading and reading... and reading and reading... and there it is. A guy other than Carlsen won an important tournament. Okay.

Just a bothersome sensational headline that really isn't needed on such a good article.

It is one thing that the headlines hide info to get a click, but what is with this whole style of articles not getting to the point? Is there a name for this atrocious style? Is it something being taught or just imitated lately?

It's called long form journalism and it's been a thing for a while; you should avoid Hunter S. Thompson if it's something you hate.

People poorly imitating Thompson is what do avoid.

It's called "gonzo" and most writers are bad at it, but it fills pages.

This is not long form journalism or HST's Gonzo style; it's Striptease.

I think I realize what it is now. It's this sites refusal to allow meaningful links. So we get crap like, "Faced with change, an all-female indie dev team evolves to a higher form" . This is a completely meaningless title for a link but I click on it anyway, find a wall of text, try reading a bit to see what it is about and...nothing.

It's not that I have a short attention span. I have multiple options and delving into an unknown article which has the only merit of being linked from hn just isn't good enough if they don't want me to know what it's about either.

At least if I have an idea what they're aiming for I can read it critically, but no luck there either. I despair that people can write so well and yet write such crap.