Is chess experiencing a weak era?

It’s an interesting concept but an argument without conclusion. The only “solution” is impossible, at least so far. You would need to take a young Bobby, Garry, Magnus, Capablanca, Morphy, et.al., and place them in the exact time period without their accumulated knowledge. Give them all the same technology or none at all and let them play it out. Who would be the best?

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here is the ID: 968 774 0868   and the passcode: JOIN

Their accuracy is far higher than the elite level has ever been in the past. Your argument is entirely unsubstantiated.

Honestly, Magnus even has the highest performance rating of 3001, and how do you know that Fischer wouldn't blunder? Yes, I think the transitive property somewhat applies here, so Magnus does have the ability to beat a lot of the chess players from the past, but will not necessarily always beat them.

Debating and offering different opinions will keep this tread rolling.
Name calling will get it locked.

Lifetime score against each other:

The Magster  11

Harry Potter    5

Drawn             37

The best way ro deal with the bold theory (to use an euphemism) of the OP is to disprove it. As it happens, an oft-quoted Fischer "masterpiece" was disenchanted today. This is just one example, of course there are many more.

Now show me only one game of Carlsen v Caruana wich was riddled with errors like this.

If we also consider that the players of the past had more time for their moves and even adjourned their games, we can only conclude that the level of play has clearly increased over time.

 I agree.

Oh IC. Thx for the info.

I think originality is confused with strength. Computers make it easier to refute new ideas and play stronger without needing to be original.

I mean yes Magnus level of play is higher than Fischers. It should be he has an extra 50 years of chess theory and massive amounts of computer analysis that Fischer never had.

Fischer is undoubtedly the greater player though. He was so much better than every other player of his era, same can be said of Kasparov. Whereas Magnus is only a tiny bit better than the comparatively very weak opponents he faces nowadays 

Conversely, "he has an extra 50 years of chess theory and massive amounts of computer analysis" to contend with.    

Players today are less romanticized but definitely not weaker than players of old.

Magnus is pretty dominant, too.

He has the highest Elo of any player in history, in an era where players are playing their most accurate chess ever.

He's been world # 1 for 10 years now. Nobody has been able to topple him from this top spot (yet).

He has 4 undisputed World Championship titles.

I'd say he's on pace to be considered one of the greatest players ever. But only time will tell.

WDYMM??? MAGNUS CARLSEN HAS A MUCH HIGHER RATING THEN ALL OF EM. BESIDES, CHESS IS HAVING THE BEST ERA OF ALL TIME. JUST LOOK AT THIS:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=chess&geo=US

Thanks for coming to my ted ed talk.

Ratings aren’t necessarily meaningful because of rating inflation.

Ratings go up when the size of the rating pool increases because of the math. Your rating goes up when you beat players, and goes up more when you beat people closer to your own skill, which is based on win%

Think of a pool of two players and one always beats the other. Player A always wins, but the win% of the opponent is zero so it doesn’t go up.

Now three. Player A always beats B, and B always beats C. A is 100% but he only beats a 50% and a 0%. The rating of A goes up more even if his or her skill is the same. 

As the rating Pool increases, you beat more and more players with higher ratings. Ratings inflation isn’t caused by players getting better, but by increases in the size of the pool. That’s why Naka’s online rating is so high. It’s because there are millions of players on chess.com.

Compare this to like the 1950s when there were far fewer rated players. The pool was smaller so the ratings were lower. Even if the players today got worse every year, but the pool increased, ratings would increase.