How bad were the old "GM's" really

Although there were chess grand masters in the 1700's -1900 they cannot be compared to any GM today.

They were not bad for their day but looking at some of their games I believe they are not much stronger than about 1800-1900 max today.

Would this be an accurate estimate?

I had similar thoughts years ago. I still think the same.

What a messy game (above).

looking at that game I might even have been a little optomistic in my views about their ratings.

What the hell man??!!

I am sure you have a deep understanding of all you mentioned being 150 years old and all but I was not judging,I was merely pointing out they played like 1800-1900 rated players today.

looking at the above games I would say probably even worse

Greedy? Give us a rest, boy!

?

Guess you're right in some way and completely wrong in another. After 100 years of opening and endgame analysis a mediocre player today has access to knowledge accumulated by legions of grandmasters and unfathomable computer powers. In the early days they had to play chess largely from their intuition, so what now looks like a terrible novice opening at the time might have been a master piece. We know now that some openings are crap because 10 or 14 moves later something terrible is coming... nobody could have seen this without computers.

So I guess you're right: some of the moves, especially in the early game, are crappy by todays standards. The genius shows in some of the ideas that they brought to chess, things nobody saw before. Some of those moves still make us gasp today. I guess you just can't compare chess in the 1800's to chess in the 21st century, that's all. It's a different world and a different game.

I'm not sure you can conclude that they were 1800-1900 strength in those days from a game like that. The only thing I could say about that game is that it looked weird. It looks weird, therefore Steinitz and Paulsen were 1800-1900 strength?? Unless you can demonstrate why their play in that game was weak, that doesn't make any sense. Several strong players have respect for world champions; Kramnik (who can play a little) claims Steinitz was around 2400 ELO.

There might have been some that were a bit better than others but I could definitely have been a title contender 120 years ago.

USCF 1800 to 2200 is the GRAVEYARD of nearly everyone that (at one time or other) sees themselves as a "GOOD CHESS PLAYER," writ large.

That still leaves a very long tail, with many hundreds (if not thousands, globally) above that playing strength.

Having broken USCF 1800 at least 4 or 5 times, I'm confident I could be a "world competitor" (HA!), at Game in 30/5, by going back just a few hundred years in the past.  

Let's say around 1500-1700 CE.  

But they wouldn't have "bonus clocks" back then, so I would clearly be SOL, (shite out of luck) regarding my assertion above.  And I suspect players would insist that a minimum 5 hour OTB game was required to prove my case.

In that case, I conjecture those early competitors would still kick my butt !

It's all FANTASY, regardless.

But thanks for this thread.  It's provides relief from the massive foolishness that currently passes on this site.

Too many threads are just silly debates about "deep chess knowledge" -- like it's some kind of voodoo apprenticeship program that can only be learned after many, many, many years of intense study.

What I'm wondering--and forgive me if I'm the only one who finds this interesting--is what those minds of the past could do if they were born *today*, with access to modern lines, engines, etc. 

A guy like Morphy, born not in 1837 but 150 years later? Would he be a chess sensation? 

Yeah, it's probably just me wondering this. 

Best way to find out is to pack a current GM in ice, thaw him out in 200 years and set him loose.

Somebody should make a movie about that.

Defrosting Bobby Fischer ?

No, not close.  In terms of OTB tactics, the mid- to late-19th century players are fully equivalent to the modern GMs

No need to be rude pfren, not my fault you are Greek, or never made GM, or never got laid .ever.

the first game (Chigorin) was very interesting to me, does anyone know what the time control would have been ?

black playing h5 was kinda cocky, when g6 was safe, completely missing the back rank mate later. 

Standard looks above 2000, opening deficiencies not surprising and Rh7 was the only "serious" (fatal) blunder i noticed when going through the game quickly.

SeeHowYourePinned wrote:

I love it when people are so quick to judge something that requires a deep understanding of differences between social situations, game theory and tools available, life and playing conditions plus a lot of other subtle stuff... 

But hey, Giri has achieved a higher rating than Fischer, so we can easily conclude that he is a better player. I mean, it's so easy, just say it and it's true. Without looking at the nuances of such a reasoning. But people usually open their mouths before trying this cool thing called reasoning.

Morphy was a patzer. And he played patzers. And Wojtaszek could beat him 20 - 0. Just say ok.  

  I completely agree! Past masters were on their on, they invent, innovate and created opening and defense, they develop chess principles, middlegame plans, solve endgame over the board; they were the true masters: Chigorin was the first hyper-modern, Chigorin defense (1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6!), Old Indian defense ( 1d4 Nf6! { Chigorin played this first before Nimzovitch} 2.c4 d6! a profound move by deep thinker), his approach to the French was unique 1.e4  e6 2.Qe2! this move give black problems and cannot push to the pawn to d5 without consequence, and his approach to the Ruy Loez as black is pure genius 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 this Chigoin setup in Ruy Lopez and still is use today among the GMs. So, the past masters maybe were stronger because they rely on their talents not trainers, computer aid and data base games.

In the 2008 book, John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book, the grandmaster wrote about his decision to "analyse all the games in [the Karlsbad 1911 tournament and the 1993 Biel Interzonal] looking for serious errors. ... take one player: Hugo Suechting ... Having played over all his games at Karlsbad I think that I can confidently state that his playing strength was not greater than Elo 2100 ... - and that was on a good day and with a following wind. ... If we assume Suechting was 2100, then his [11.5/25 score] implies an average rating for the tournament of 2129". The book has much more detail.