The chess rating system seems to be a good way to rank contemporary players against each other.
How can we compare players from history against players of today?
When I hear that Magnus Carlsen is the best player ever because he has achieved the highest rating it does not really make sense since the rating system only measures relative strength against contemporaries, not absolute strength.
In order to determine who are the best players from all of history would it not be possible to simply run the engine on all their moves from all their games and see who gets closest to the best engine move most often?
Players from across history could then be ranked against each other.
I would expect that chess playing skill levels generally improve over time since each generation has a greater database of opening theory etc than the last generation to study.
So even an engine-measured league table would be unfairly skewed towards contemporary players.
I would also expect that skill levels have increased rapidly since the advent of internet and engines.
Internet makes it easy to increase the amount of chess one plays (and practise makes perfect) since getting a game is much easier.
Engines make good quality post game analysis available to every player where in the past it was only available to proteges with a mentor.
Or maybe absolute rankings are meaningless since
1. Chess can be as much an art as a sport at the top level
2. Engines are too mechanical a tool to measure artists
Maybe this subject has already been done but I could not find the topic.
There are literally dozens of chess and other websites that have tackled this question.
Among them are:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/historical-chess-ratings-dynamically-presented
https//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_players_throughout_history
It has also been covered multiple times here on chess.com.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/strongest-players
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/who-was-the-greatest-chess-player-of-all-time
The chess rating system seems to be a good way to rank contemporary players against each other.
How can we compare players from history against players of today?
When I hear that Magnus Carlsen is the best player ever because he has achieved the highest rating it does not really make sense since the rating system only measures relative strength against contemporaries, not absolute strength.
In order to determine who are the best players from all of history would it not be possible to simply run the engine on all their moves from all their games and see who gets closest to the best engine move most often?
Players from across history could then be ranked against each other.
I would expect that chess playing skill levels generally improve over time since each generation has a greater database of opening theory etc than the last generation to study.
So even an engine-measured league table would be unfairly skewed towards contemporary players.
I would also expect that skill levels have increased rapidly since the advent of internet and engines.
Internet makes it easy to increase the amount of chess one plays (and practise makes perfect) since getting a game is much easier.
Engines make good quality post game analysis available to every player where in the past it was only available to proteges with a mentor.
Or maybe absolute rankings are meaningless since
1. Chess can be as much an art as a sport at the top level
2. Engines are too mechanical a tool to measure artists
Maybe this subject has already been done but I could not find the topic.