How bad were the old "GM's" really

thanks for the thread, PremiumDuck!

I got to do a lot of research, discovered a lot. It was good that at least a few good members like Smyslovfan responded. seems to be too much bad blood on chess.com though, not my kinda place.

It is a pleasure Harley-Rebel, unforunately there seems to be a lot of aggresion  around and at one point the thread was actually described as " a dumb troll thread" by a titled member no less.

Like you, I have learned a lot and appreciated the folks that made a positive contribution. I think sharing knowledge in a friendly and healthy manner  is worth so much more than simply attacking the next person on a personal level because their views differ from yours ...or writing your entire misguided post in red because you are a total moron.

John Nunn did research on it and found that new GMs simply play much better.  He not only used computer analysis but his own professional judgment. He also revised many great classics and added much needed corrections and is well-known for his thorough and accurate analysis.  

"If chess strenght were no more than the ability to avoid blunders, Ivanchuk would be a rather average player. Apart from that, you are much more likely to blunder when playing against a well-prepared 2700+ guy than against the average player from a 1920s tournament."

The avoidance of blunders is merely incidental at the top levels.  The best measure of playing strength is a player’s ability to handle strategic endgames.   

No. The best measure of playing strength is performance. And the best measure of performance is ratings. The work of Arpad Elo, Mark Glickman, and Kenneth Regan, among others, shows that official FIDE ratings and Intrinsic Performance Ratings are a reliable measures of skill.

I thought Edo historical chess ratings already settled this arguement a long time ago.  http://www.edochess.ca/

Morphy, Steinitz and Lasker all around 2800!? 

Guess all this modern technology stuff is a waste of time then.

This "argument" is never settled on this site, @LastMan.  Hundreds of threads continue replow the same ground.  Get used to it.  It won't go away.

At least some of threads entertain and inform, thankfully.  

You are misunderstanding what Edo historical ratings are, LastMan.

They are not trying to compare players across time, they are comparing players within given years to show their strengths RELATIVE TO OTHER PLAYERS OF THEIR TIME.

Paul Morphy in 1860 was 2785 in the Edo system. This indicates how much better he was then the other players. It is NOT saying that he is the equivalent playing strength of a 2785 player today.

This topic is not unique !!??

Edo's rating system is even more ridiculous than Sonas'! Read how Edo came up with Morphy's base rating.

Basically, he guesses what the top player's rating is, then plugs in the numbers of the rest to see how they match up. 

This thread is clearly unique.

"The problem" is only with some (pinheaded) posters.  

Throw data and graphs at everyone, then claim victory for your opinion ??  

Neat trick, but it doesn't persuade.

Performance is a given, but what determines performance?  

Well, if strategic endgame play were the be-all and end-all, Tal wouldn't be very special. He was world class, but not one of the greatest of all time. Even Kasparov, who was the best player the world had ever seen until Carlsen came along, wasn't better at strategic endgames than Ulf Andersson. 

If you were right, Speelman, Hubner, Andersson, and Seirawan might be world champions. 

It is an effective method if your goal is to figure out who the strangest players were in any given year.

It does not claim to be any more than that.

So much for the Edo ratings.

They mix up the time and place, in an effort to compare what can't be compared.

You're probably right!

The Edo rating is so broken that the author had to go in and manually adjust some of the more ridiculous results. But both Edo and Sonas start with the premise that a player who was acclaimed as a master must be at least 2200 strength, and a world champion must be at least 2700 strength. 

Amen to that -- all "Masters" get at least an ELO 2200 rating, starting around the year 1850.

Humans must decide "what to count," i.e. what kinds are allowed  into the count.  This happens before anything can be "counted," scientifically.

That why the Arts and Science (should be) joined at the hip, in a Rhetorical Sense.

But for many "modern thinkers" they are not so joined, unfortunately.