If Capablanca played Carlsen for the world champion match, who would win?

I think that the present world champion would win because chess has come a long way since Capablanca.

I also think that Usain Bolt would beat Jesse Owens in the 100 metres. At the same time they are both great champions of enormously different eras.

What's the good of having chess engines if we have meagre chess intelligence and little desire to work out how to use them?

Good luck.

right colin what good are eyeglasses to a blind man, or a hot chick to a gay man, or shakespeare books to an illiterate,  or religion to A RAT

Magnus Carlsen
My coach Peter Heine told me that he saw me play as a ten year-old, and gained the impression of someone who knew a lot of theory but couldn't play that well on his own. So, it has been a long process and gradually I have learned more and more about the game.

 I can say this much about Magnus, he would probably be champion for awhlie and he is mentally more balance than Fischer.

 Without a chess coach Carlsen would probably not be world champion but Capablanca never had a chess coach and became world champion on his own talent!

Yes, good point. It's interesting to take the top 50 ratings from 2700chess.com, paste them into a spreadsheet, and make a line graph of it. 

Yes, you really have to be amazed at the older chess masters and the level of play they were able to achieve with far fewer training resources. 

Here's a computer analysis that attempts to compare players across history. Capablanca does extremely well:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132380754/Chess-Player-Analysis-by-Rybka-3-14ply

Do you really believe this?  One of his former coaches, Garry Kasparov, would disagree with your evaluation.

"Carlsen’s greatest chess strength is his remarkable intuitive grasp of simplified positions and his tremendous accuracy in them. I coached Carlsen for a year, in 2009, and I was amazed at how quickly he could correctly evaluate a position “cold,” seemingly without any calculation at all. My own style required tremendous energy and labor at the board, working through deep variations looking for the truth in each position. Carlsen comes from a different world champion lineage, that of Jose Capablanca and Anatoly Karpov, players who sense harmony on the board like virtuoso musicians with perfect pitch." Garry Kasparov, Time Magazine  Nov. 2013

I believe Carlsen has natural talent. More importantly, the dilligence to use that talent. The will to work hard to improve his game, unlike Capa, who obviously relied on his tremendous talent alone. Which, to be clear, in my opinion was/is vastly superior to Carlsen's at this point in their careers. But that's about it. It's only a matter of time before he (Magnus) surpasses my idol, Fischer in achievements. Sad, but inevitable.

Onwards n upwards as they say!

8)

Any grandmaster now or before would beat carlsen. I hate his style of playing.

Gravity doesn't exist, because I hate it.

This - and no joke. Civilized humans stripped themselves of natural selection. Disasters like Nagasaki and Chernobyl happened, plus increasing pollution and ozone depletion.

My bet would be Capa. In my opinion, Carlsen is very good, but not that extremely good. His complete dominance comes from relative drop in top GM play due to computers. He is just less affected by mind laziness from increasing computer use than others.

A note: There is no reliable method to compare past and current masters. Everyone is free to claim anything.

All you have to do is get a medium to channel Capa. Since Capa will probably be able to read Carlsen's thoughts, I'll go for him too.

If Capa has reincarnated as a bus driver or something, I'll go for the Norwegian kid.

Good one.

OH, and you gys just wait...

Anand will beat Carlsen so badly,that Magnus will never play chess again.

Anand may already be regretting winning the candidates, perks aside.

WCC second place still receives a big fat cheque.

That was more like 1 000+ years ago, and I doubt the ability to play chess was genetically favored before then.

Oh, and if you have a clear causal link between nuclear explosions / pollution /ozone layer that causes lesser intelligence, your Nobel prize in medicine is waiting.

Who cares? They are the same person, reincarnated.

capablanca will win because he is an outstanding player ofendgame