I was very intrigued at the "Fischer: overrated" post as I am new to chess.com and chess in general and have only recently been looking at chess's history and its famous players. I thought it very interesting how we figure out a way to talk about the "greatest" player, because after all playing chess is about "matching wits" or going against another person, and that would eventually lead to the question of who the best of the best is.

The Fischer post to me got interesting when people talked about how players devoted their lives to chess and how long one could maintain a strong standing in it. What I also got from this is that Fischer was all alone and figuring out chess himself. And that others had groups of people working with them.

It's also interesting to see that Fischer eventually promoted something called Chess960 which is meant to combat the opening moves memorization a lot of people are doing. Another great player, Kasparov, has promoted Advanced Chess in which a player and computer go against another player and computer. They're both going to two extremes to address the issue of computers and chess.

Now I know this is a long stretch, because there are many factors that affects one's health. But do you think Fischer... was not wanting or able to handle being at the top because he had turned away from rote memorization of opening moves (and computers) and that Kasparov had been able to stay on the top so long... because he has accepted computers and tried to work with them?

Sorry, just wanted to mention this... I don't know if it's been discussed before.

Fischer was a champion in the pre-computer era, though not having a team of seconds to help with opening preparation and analysis might have contributed to his leaving the chess world, one can only imagine the amount of dedication and time it must take to be a lone player doing all the work.  Working with computers must have attributed at least a little of Kasparov's stay at the top.  Being able to search millions of games on a hard drive is certainly easier than looking through hundreds of periodicals.

With each generation of players new technologies and innovations in the game are found, thus changing the way the game is played at the top levels.  The 19th and 20th centuries saw a few different eras of chess, Romantic, Scientific, Hypermodernism, New Dynamism, and then in the late 20th century you have computers to add into the mix.  Where chess goes from here who knows, there are some that believe that chess is on the verge of being solvable, like checkers where every game should be a draw if played perfectly.  The one thing that must be remembered is a very high percentage, 99%+, of us chess players will never have the time nor the mental capacity to reach even the master levels of the game, so why should we worry about chess being solved when we still have this journey of learning the game in front of us.

Computers have changed chess in many ways. As like any tool created by humanity, it can be used as a source of good or can be used in ways that were not intended by the creaters.

 For example, I have a Chess Station 2 in 1 chess computer by Excalibur that I like to take to work and play short games of chess against during my lunch period. It allows me to set it at various settings depending on my mood for a challenge. It comes with a board that attaches to the computer so that I can play the game on a traditional chess board.

This allows me to play a game any time that I want unlike say playing my friends where I have to find a day and time to see them and hope they are in the mood to play.

Chess computers can be used to help you with your analysis and chessbases allow you to search for similar games and provide you with the results of those matches. It allows you to record your own games and put notes to remind you what you were thinking at the time.

Chess computers however can also be used to cheat where someone sets the computer to the highest setting, sets a game time on the machine to match the time limit of the game and then does exactly what the computer tells you what to do. Therefore your play appears to stronger than should be considered what you are capable of. It distorts the game cause the other person is not expecting to have some sort of chance if your ratings are equal but when someone plays a computer, you have to be very, very careful since the computer is merciless on pouncing  on any little mistake.

Even worse is that chess computers are getting better and better at squeezing out better performance on their chess engines so the gap between human and computer chess is getting larger all the time.

So again, do you use it to assist you in your improvement in the game or do you use it to gain an unfair advantage?

Each person has to decide how they will use a computer. 

At the social level, computers will never have any effect, people who just want to enjoy the occassional game of chess with friends don't even bother to record the game let alone analyse it later.

For the more serious (tournament) players, computers do have an effect, the better you get, the larger the impact. This is because they are not only following the current favourite trends among the GM's, which is predominated with much analysis by computer engines but, they are also putting their own favourite lines through the computer grind and refining them.

I don't think I play a game at all that isn't put through computer analysis afterwards. I joke with my friends that it is just like having a GM coach at home, but it really is just like that. If you had a GM willing to go over all your games with you, you would do it.

Therefore by a combination of analysis and database comparisons, slowly we must drift toward playing more like a computer. I know that any 'new' innovation in any major opening will only be new for a day or two after it is played.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  I have asked several 'good' players if they find it frustrating that chess at the higher level is becoming more a test of memorisation than chess skill. The overwhelming response indicates that they accept it as part of the requirement to be a good chess player.

All I am thankful for is that at the level I am at, it is often just a battle of chess skills, and I do get annoyed when I am beaten by someone who remembered one move more than I did of an opening

Gary Kasparov is famous for his thorough preperation for opponents and computers certainly helped with this.  The use of the large database of games is the main tool the GM's use.