Its like combat, war, technology. Each have their pioneers, champions and masters, but everything is evolving past the point of interaction. Men fighting with fists and clubs has evolved into a suit pressing a button for a missile to destroy a country. Computers have gone from room size machines to microscopic touch technology. The more the something is practiced, the more it purifies - if you 'boil it down', the ultimate purification becomes nonexistance. The destination becomes more important than the journey, and the journey is lost in development.
Super Grandmasters not as strong?
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I am not sure because you never see games like this one anymore...
Or this one...
This is a neat example...
@ChristianSoldier007, any strong attacking player would easily see those lines. Nothing like my third example game...
This is an example of what happens when you have a transcendant talent like Kasparov dominating the scene for two decades.
It appears, in retrospect, that all of chess history was leading inexorably up toward that magnificent crescendo, and all that follows is just pale imitation...that we're past the peak of the greatness curve, never to return. Probably looked like that to outsiders in the post Capablanca era as well.
But that's not really how progress goes. Transcendant talents don't appear on the scene all that often, and when they do, they tend to rewrite the history books. But the next one eventually does come along, and makes people wonder what they were ever thinking in writing off progress in the first place. It's the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. Long periods of ho-hum punctuated by brief, stellar leaps forward. A graph of peaks and valleys where the peaks in one era may be higher than the valleys that follow, but the next peaks will just as certainly be higher still.
All of which is to say that yeah, I agree with the premise that a Kasparov would stand out even in today's field. But that's not evidence Taimanov was correct. Kasparov lumbered above that field like a giant as well. That's progress for you.
haha, youre complaints about no 'action'? chess is a game of skillful calculation my friend, the action isn't happening on the board, its happening in the future; potential moves, threats and mates thatre invisible if all you wanna look at are the pieces that move and get taken. I side with the greater exspanse of knowledge and theory accessible to super GMs today knocking any Titan fossil you wanna reserect right back to thier grave -fierce matches aside, I can't promise they'd all be terribly action packed ;) (bear in mind too, all those games of the greats that youve probably seen are the ones thatve stayed in circulation, all the boring ones have been mostly filtered out by time as the things they show are either seen in contemporary play -thus giving more updated game play through out in that choice of keep or toss- or been bested by now)
I am just wondering if Super GMs aren't as strong as they use to be. I mean it seems like there is no action in strong games, everything is won in the endgames... If you ask me, I agree with Taimanov, "The golden age of chess ended with Kasparov." Please tell me if you agree or not.