Unfortunately his early success seems to have made him lose some focus.
Carlsen can't have lost focus all that much though, he has performed 2815+ in all his nine latest tournaments. No other active player has ever been close to such a performance sequence.
You are kidding us.
The actual moves were 4.e5 Bf8 (against Arnason), first played by Lilienthal via the move order 3...Nf6 4.e5 Ng8.
This a bit bizarre, but positionally it makes sense.
I was wondering if Helltank could provide a reference. Petrosian often adopted ...Bb4-f8 in the Winawer. Notably 4. e5 b6 5. Qg4/5. a3 Bf8. The positions led to typical Nimzowitsch positions from 1. e4 Nc6 2. d4 d5, where black erects a cramped but solid game, with the intention of castling long and eventually preparing ...c7-c5 perhaps combined with ...f7-f5 and Ng8-h6-f7. Bronstein also utilised that build up on occasion.
Botvinnik, in that he played the Caro. Capa, as mentioned. Some possibles stylistically: Flohr, Seirawan, Nunn, Mecking.
But I also go along with those who point out the ferocious attacking side of Petrosian & Karpov (EG Karpov vs Korchnoi, the two most Key Yugoslav Attack wins of that century vs the Dragon), in addition to their fine positional skills; when they elected to pursue attack rather than some technical advantages.
I think Fischer was very similar to Karpov, both were very capable of winning due to seemingly 'minor' positional advantages.
Here's a very instructive game by Fischer where I sometimes get the impression that Black's game is pretty much lost due to 5...exf6?!, when White gets a longterm advantage (a pawn majority on the queenside):
So, when a player got a seemingly 'minor' positional disadvantage after a few moves in the opening, this could be sufficient for Fischer to win the game.
A similar example, a game which I admire a lot, by Karpov. Here after a few moves Black gets a 'bad' bishop, in the course of the game this 'bad' bishop gets even worse and it is amazing how Karpov finally realizes this advantage:
So again, both players, Karpov and Fischer, were really strong when they got a minor positional advantage in the opening, then they would play patiently and simplify the position to an endgame where they won.
Very similar in style. Also similar to Karpov, Petrosjan and Fischer - to some extent - is Smyslov, who was also very strong in winning due to seemingly 'minor' positional advantages. And of course Capablanca. The games of these masters are very instructive and beautiful in their very own way.
Capablanca was similar in some ways to Karpov.
Accdg. to modern GM's today and computer analysis, Capablanca always plays perfect, flawless and never seen a single weakness on his games. On the contrary to Karpov and kasparov admitted that they'd made a lot of errors during their match.
Well , you have to consider the fact that Karpov played a more than Capablanca and so is more likely to make mistakes at some point. Also I was really referring to their style rather than the quality of their play ( and I do believe Karpov to be better than Capablanca)
Was Emanuel Lasker also a positional player like Anatoly Karpov?
@knowthyself
Lasker was very well versed in the positional ideas of Steinitz (his "Manual" was one of the first books to present those ideas to a general public) but as is famously known, he often applied more psychological considerations to his choice of moves in order to egg his opponent on into rash play, in line with his philosophical view of chess and life as struggle. Karpov is a positional purest in that he preferred the -- in his opinion -- best moves meeting the position before choosing a move based on any psychological considerations.
Accdg. to modern GM's today and computer analysis, Capablanca always plays perfect, flawless and never seen a single weakness on his games. On the contrary to Karpov and kasparov admitted that they'd made a lot of errors during their match.
Capablanca was a very strong player but if he always played perfect and flawless chess he wouldn't have lost any games, and as it is he didn't only lose the match against Alekhine but had rather "human" results against some other Masters, for example 2 wins, 2 losses and 8 draws against Spielmann. Some GM's are much more critical of Capa than I ever would be though, GM Gormally writes:
"But what about Capa? How would he compare strength-wise to the players of today? I think he would come off rather badly. The difference in terms of knowledge and understanding between the players of today and the players of the 1920s and 30s is enormous."
http://www.pogonina.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1183&Itemid=1