Quality of play in chess

I recently completed my latest study dedicated to determining the absolute strength of chess play.

http://www.chessanalysis.ee/Quality%20of%20play%20in%20chess%20and%20methods%20for%20measuring.pdf

It is divided into five sections. 

Section 1 introduces the subject and offers some theoretical background. Section 2 describes the methodology in greater detail. Section 3 provides detailed results of this study. Section 4 provides several miscellaneous conclusions. Section 5 concludes the whole work and gives some ideas for future.

The main conclusions the study provides are as follows:

1) In the middle of 19th century players were around 2200-2300 strength, by the end of the century they were already playing as good as modern 2500-rated players. 2600-level was first reached at the first decades of the 20th century, 2700-level in 1940s. Lasker may have been the first player to be comparable to modern GM strength.

2) Carlsen's TPR 3001 at Nanjing 2009 appears to be overrated due to his game with white pieces against Wang Yue being unusually inaccurate. But he played better than Fischer against Larsen and Taimanov in 1971, or Kasparov at Linares 1999.

3) There is no simple relationship between rating systems of humans and engines.

4) Since 1970, FIDE rating has inflated by 5 points per decade with respect to absoluute strength of play, whereas Chessmetrics rating has deflated by 38 points per decade.

5) Higher rated players have a relatively bigger importance of intuition and knowledge, on the other hand, stronger engines rely on search function more than evaluation function.

6) The biggest source of inaccuracies are errors around 0.20, not blunders.

Such projects have been my hobby since 2008, more papers can be found on my home page:

http://www.chessanalysis.ee/chessanalysiseng.htm

Good work. Tell it to those who argue there is no inflation in chess, or those who idolize Paul Morphy, whom I don't think was all that great.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. :)