Are Older Chess Players Bitter? Is the Grand Era of Chess over with the Advent of Computers?

I was reading Peter Doggers' report of the Old Masters tournament in Leiden, Netherlands:

https://www.chess.com/news/view/old-masters-leiden-huebner-nikolic-karpov-timman

And this excerpt struck me:

"Chess has lost its romance" (Timman).
"The creativity is gone, now it's all about memorization" (Nikolic).
"It's very obvious that we were better endgame players" (Karpov).

These were some of the remarks made by the "old masters" (as the organizers had called them) during a public post-mortem after the tournament had ended.   ...

Chess has changed so much under the influence of the computer and the increased availability of information for anyone interested in the game. Whether these are better or worse times depends on your perspective, ...."

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Now I have an older friend, an "A" player at his peak, who recently quit chess.  Just didn't want to do OTB any more.  Understandable.  In contrast, while I'm in the same age bracket, I still want to play, and am a Rip Van Winkle returnee to the OTB scene after many decades away.

I must say, imho, that it's quite challenging to come back as a returnee.  So much more to absorb, and the old CPU is not quite the same, lol.  But the joy and competitive juices have roared back from the embers!  It's still fun to make good moves and win games!

Anyways, whatever your age, what do you think of older chess players and their thoughts and attitudes about OTB chess, or chess in general in 2020?

Older people always consider that things were better 'in their day'. 

Kinda depends.  As an older guy, I think toys are way better today than the toys I played with when I was a kid in the 1960's and 1970's.

Yes, but you know the chocolate bars are smaller... 

What was your favourite toy as a child? 

Probably a ball.  Just bouncing it or throwing it or catching it.

Ha ha times were hard... In the late 80's I was the proud owner of a large grey spaceship, which opened up to reveal 6 or so smaller spaceships inside. There were little men of different colours and it fired plastic missiles from guns mounted on top. That was great. I also had a Scalextric, but it was only a small figure of 8 and I spent some time running a coin around the track to try to make it work better. 

Chess was a lot more creative and romantic though before the advent of computer analysis 

In the "old days" there were adjournments. Today, even with rapid play finishes, the top players still often outperform the old masters. 

There was recently a few endgames where the old masters such as Polgar, Seirawan, and Karpov complained that today's players don't have a feel for where the pieces belong the way grandmasters from the 1980s did. But when confronted with concrete variations, it turned out in most cases that the GMs from today were playing just about the best moves in bad positions. They still lost, making the "mistakes" seem worse. 

I'll try to dig up a concrete example of an endgame where some GREAT old masters criticized young players for making "terrible" moves that turned out to be no worse than the "natural" move.

To be clear, I trust the great endgame virtuosos of the past when they say they knew where the pieces belong better than today's best endgame players. But today's best endgame players are excellent at calculating long lines and knowing theory that just wasn't settled until relatively recently.

One example is Rook and 4 pawns vs Rook and 3 pawns, all on the same side. It was known that such endgames are *usually* drawn, but it wasn't exactly clear until strong computers came along just how drawn such positions are. Today's elite players not only know that it's a draw, but they also know the best ways to create practical chances as the side with the extra pawn and to quell all chances as the defender. 

"The old wine is better." - Does that sound familiar? I agree with the advent of computers memorizing seems more important because those with great memories may be able to play into a won middle game through memory alone. But, either way, top players, must master middle game strategies and tactics and end game techniques. They must memorize openings as well.

Perhaps the Golden Age of Chess is long gone, but computers keep expanding chess theory, so it's now the Modern Age of Chess.

I don't thing there is a specific date to the modern age of chess, but there were notable dates.

The first time a master lost a game to a chess computer. Circa 1980's

The first time a grandmaster lost a game to a chess computer or engine. -not sure of the date.

The day chessbase 1.0 went on sale.

The day Chessmastee 2100 was availabe. It was the first master level chess engine at an affordable price.

When Kasparov lost a chess match to Deep Blue.

When the first internet server launched. There was no graphical interface. I was ascii only.

When Fritz 5 launched. It was the first grandmaster level chess program that was clearly as good or better than a grandmaster.

When Rybka 4 chess engine launched. It was the first super chess engine. Later it was proved that it ripped off large chunks of code from another engine called Fruit.

When Stockfish launched. It drove an arms race to create the world's most powerful chess engine... that is stll being waged.

Google's Alpha Chess Zero. Set a gold standard on AI chess engines, but also exposing weaknesses to artificial intelligence with chese engines. (Mainly it's complete lack of creativity. Programmers had to force it to use a chess opening book, or it would play the Catalan every time: Leela Chess Zero had the exact same problem, right down to using the Catalan opening)

Vast quanties of engine-to-engine games continue to advance chess opening theory, with no end in sight.

   ---   Yep the bars are smaller plus they also cost more as well  lol.

A good example is Fine's Basic Chess Endings.

It was eventually revised and re-released, but even the revised version had issues. In defense of Pal Benko who revised the book, most agree he did the best job possible on a book decades past it's prime. 

Even before computer engines and tablebases, Fine's Basic Chess Endings was already known to be rife with errors.

Hikaru Nakamura has made a similar observation a few months ago. That outside the immediate top level, players nowadays seem to have a much worse grounding to their game.

Personally, I find today's top level chess less fascinating, and that's probably because the top events have almost turned into closed shops where roughly the same set of players play each other again and again and again - this is a serious issue since qualification for the world championship is no longer genuinely open to all (as it used to be). Thankfully, more of the top players have started participating in big opens.

As useful as the analysis engines are, they've eliminated those fascinating theoretical and analytical discussions of old which could rage for months and years. Today, we just bung the computer at it and minutes later we have the answer.

Having said that, I have a feeling that everyone is falling into the trap of taking a 'Best Games' view of players of today as well as of yesteryear. Human beings are human beings, and we make many mistakes in our games.

Yep.  I've heard that one before.

I'm also familiar with New Wine needing New Wineskins.  It's a parable of Jesus and can be found in Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, and Luke 5:33-39.  

Chess played in the Computer Engine Age is the New Wine.

I believe Amateur Chess U2200 is thriving. And old players vs vs modern players games are very interesting. Specially if the old players take advantage of computer chess.

My answer would be that they are bitter and want to be seen as in some way better than present players so that there legacy can live on. Other than Karpov the players quoted may end up being forgotten by a large majority of the chess community when there aren't many people who remember watching there games.

Today, they have huge prep in the openings, but are on their own in the endgames. Years back, there were adjournments, where a player like Karpov got tons of help (it was not the same for western players, though) and were able to play perfect endgames. Maybe that is part of the explanation why current GMs look a bit weaker in endgames (whith remarkable exceptions, like Carlsen)

Today’s top players train far more efficiently and with better endgame knowledge. If you doubt that, take a look at the YouTube video of Magnus taking de la Villa’s endgame challenge.