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

Carlsen has been "extremely overrated" since the first time I heard of him. He would never reach top 100, beat a top player, reach top 10, win a top tournament, reach #1 on the rating list, stay #1, pass 70 points down to #2, qualify for a title match, win a title match, keep the title, etc. But people never give up about how overrated he is :-)

I can't help but wonder which results he should have scored not to be overrated. In his last ten tournaments he has won seven and finished second in the remaining three, and if he beats Anand again he will win the Chess Oscar for best player six consecutive years, that's a first, and not bad for a player who turned 23 just a few months ago. At least not compared to all the not overrated players out there.

I see then as separate questions.

Everyone agrees Fisher was a great chess player.

He was always at least eccentric and difficult and after he left chess went completely round the twist.

He held some very anti-semitic views, like real Nazi stuff, he publicised on his web site.  This is probably even more loony from someone with some Jewish ancestors like Fisher.

Capablanca understood any chess position presented to him. He might not be the most accurate, but he understood. That was what made Capa a legend. He beat his contemporaries with effortless ease. He saw what others couldn't.

On the other hand, Carlsen plays a highly accurate chess and typically steers the game towards an increasingly difficult position to entice the opponent to err. The style somewhat resembles Kasparov, but -unlike Kasparov- Carlsen prefers to do it slowly ala Karpov's boa constrictor style.

Against Capa, I would say that Capa should be able to read any position that Carlsen might throw at him (regardless of any gap in chess knowledge between past and present). I would expect many draws, but Carlsen might come up slightly ahead due to Carlsen's better precision. Capa might know what to do, but in carrying out the plan he might err.

In order to beat Carlsen, Capa would need Carlsen to commit some strategical errors (no matter how slight). Carlsen typically plays safe. However, in the games against Anand, we saw Carlsen taking risk and making some close calls in a couple of games. Anand couldn't win them, but if it was Capa playing Capa could have scored. However, if Carlsen sticked to playing safe, there is no way Capa could have won.

That's what I think would happen in a Capablanca-Carlsen match. I know it's pointless and kinda stupid to predict a match that would never happen, but it's fun to hear what others have to say about it.

100 years from now someone will be asking if the current world champion could beat Carlsen.

Here are a few quotes I think you could expect to hear: (for example sakes, lets say the world champion 100 years from now is named KLEELOF)

"KLEELOF would win. Back then computers only had 8 cores."

"Carlsen would win. He had innate talent.", "yeah, but his opponents were weaker than now. KLEELOF would crush him today."

"Carlsen was just a pretty boy. KLEELOF is the strongest player to ever live."

"Carlsen was OK, but KLEELOF solved chess."

"Who the hell is Carlsen? Now, Bobby Fischer vs. KLEELOF, that would be a game to see."

veryb nice!

I think the standard of chess has generally risen over time.

And I think the standard of the best players has also gone up.

If we could magically get all the world champions together at their peak, the older ones would do surprisingly badly.  And i think the same would also be true if we could magically remove later players advantage in openineg theory and preparation assisting computers.

So I say Carlsen would win easily.

Depends... Are we playing it in the early 20th century or the early 21st century?

Carlsen has Capablanca's experience and Capablanca had not Carlsen's knowledge. In my opinion Raul taken 90 years forward will lose, but 90 years ago the same will happend to Magnus.

Once someone comes up with something new and improved in chess, everyone near the top picks up on it and eventually becomes technique.

So I guess we can't test or know any of this.

But I am convinced if we could bring the old greats to the modern day and allow them to bone up on 2014 opening theory... they would do surprisingly badly.  Because the top players of now have all absorbed the ideas of the past.

I don't think so.

Capablanca in his prime was unbeatable and his chess knowledge was superior to all opponents, he dominate all his opponents. He crush Lasker without losing a game and never was in danger of losing. This not so with Carlsen, in the world champion against Anand in two games Magnus was losing. Remember Anand is number 8th in the world while playing Carlsen, Magnus should NEVER been in danger of losing, but he had two lost games. And Magnus played SOOOO passive and safe, look at his two weak opening tries, come on 1.Nf3 the Reti or the King's Indian Attacking against Anand it is like giving the first move advantage away. Capablanca would crush Magnus easily. 

Which two games were Carlsen even losing? Can you support what you say with variations? This is beginning to seem like obvious trolling now. Kudos on the great jokes.

As this research proves CAPABLANCA would be toasted
http://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/how-strong-were-fischer-and-morphy 

"GM Smerdon predicts a 6-0 Fischer-Nakamura whitewashing once Bobby has incorporated computers in his preparation."

How does a GM of all people say something so irrational?!  Not even Carlsen defeats Nakamura 6-0!  Also Nakamura has a higher peak rating. 

Romanticism for past greats nothing else..

"Much of this discussion reminds me of the famous gender issues in classical music. Until auditions started being done "blind," women were never succesful in auditions. As soon as auditions were done blind, women qualified at an equal rate. The judges were unconciously (hopefully) biased against women. I think chess aficionados bring similar biases to the discussion of playing strength because of the great (and justified) respect we have for the name of Morphy and Capablanca. I think there would be alot of value in doing a blind study where you took a few thousand lesser known games of the chess greats mixed in games between modern 2000 and up players and replayed them at a quick pace (say 0.5 seconds per move) for different GMs and had them guess the player's rating without knowing the player. You would need to control for a lot of factors, but I would be interested to see the outcome."
-Sam Copeland 

Irontiger:  I'm not just talking about these forums but the opinion of all experts on the ranking of chess champions.  Fischer was clearly the best but some people hold his irrational behavior against him.

Carlsen could give Capablanca pawn and move odds and still win... Carlsen is by far the strongest chess player in history already, and hasn't even hit his peak yet. Silly thread.

Pointlessly hypothetical. Carlsen potentially hasn't hit is prime yet either. Considering the time different and the undoubtedly superiour knowledge Carlsen has of the game it would be a blowout for Carlsen. Most current GM's would wipe the floor with anyone who lacked computers/knowledge of modern chess. 

Either utter nonsense or at least unreliable.

Regan's research has some value for catching computer cheats, but that is all. It says nothing about level and evolution of play, only what computer "thinks" about it. Not how it actually is.

And who is Sam Copeland?

Not only Capablanca. Marshall, Tartakower, Maroczy, Duras, Rubinstein, Chigorin, Blackburne, Tarrasch, Burn or Spielmann would beat Carlsen too.

It is often talked about how much Capablanca dominated the opposition in his day, but he did after all finish behind Lasker in every single event they played until Lasker was almost 70, with one exception. The match was impressive enough, but Lasker was 20 years older and entitled to have one bad event after a long break. In the following tournaments Lasker finished ahead as usual. Capa was a great player of course, Lasker and Alekhine were difficult opponents. But one can't describe the relation in strength between Capa and Lasker by only pointing at their match any more than one can do the same thing with Capa and Alekhine.

As far as Carlsen is concerned, he has been a dominant #1 for years. Just take someone like the previous challenger, Gelfand, who drew the match against Anand in classical chess. In his six latest games against Carlsen Gelfand has managed one single draw. 0.5-5.5. That Carlsen would be beaten by Burn and Spielmann isn't even good trolling :-)