Modern opening variations anyway. Not changes in opening principles. Nor in understanding of more viable endgame structures.
chess960: who would be the greatest ever and why?
Sort:
depends on time controls as well, kasparov would do better in longer time controls compared to lets say capablanca who destroys in blitz. remember, Tal beat Kasparov a couple days before his death in a game of chess (blitz clock i beleive)
I see so many threads discussing the quest for the greatest player ever and they rage on, month after month. At any one time there are a few different active threads comparing former champs. So I am going to hijack this thread:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/to-answer-the-question
Hijacking is cool, but is it hijacking if there is a link to another thread? Also, there were lots of words in the foreign thread. A few sentences in this thread may be a bit more hijackerative methinks, but I am no thread terrorist. I say Capablanca. He's Cuban you know.
From what I've heard Carlsen plays so-so openings and sometimes gets simply not as good positions, but plays the rest of the game so well he makes up for it. Nakamura has said he's most comfortable when both players are out of book and it's just two guys playing chess.
So they're good candidates, top players who like it best when it's just your ideas and technique vs theirs and not a bunch of memorized stuff.
Nakamura wiped the floor with Aronian's arse in the 960 championships, the same Aronian who beat world chess champ Anand in that competition.
That tells me that the real difference between Nakamura and both of those guys is book knowledge and not necessarily a deeper understanding of chess. Perhaps Nakamura is a better middlegame player than Kasparov and everything he said about Kasparov and openings is true.
Surely a better question would be:
xbox360: who would be the greatest ever and why?
My money is still on Carlsen.
For all the debates on the greatest players / champions in history, why aren't comparisons of all-time greats made in the setting of chess960, since it is all theorizing anyway? Instant elimination of the advantage of modern theory.