The Classical championship is more of a team sport, that requires financial and political backing, and depends solely on memory and prep.
l did not just read that
Its what Anna Cramlings GM mother said, and I agree with her. Read her wikipedia article. ITs very political, and there are alot of resources that go into helping a player prep. Its why Russians called Dubov a traitor for helping Magnus in the last world Champs. Its why Russia has dominated for so many years, the full power of their government helps them.
I'm not disputing the fact you need a decent amount of money to be able to hire a team of strong GMs to prep a bunch of lines for you, but saying that it "depends solely on memory and prep" is complete nonsense.
Thats exactly what Fischer said, word for word. When players like Capablanca, Fischer, Wesley So, Hikaru, say chess is really just all theory and will probably be dead in 80 years, that is what they mean. When people say they are playing for the "correct" or "accurate" moves they are pretty much admitting this. Like saying the perfect game leads to a draw. Its just simply not sporting because Human errors are what make a game sporting. Without that we might as well be robots and computers. Thats why i like blitz so much, I never considered chess to be a sport until I learned you can play with a clock.
I'd like to see a link to that quote "word for word" from Fischer. He did say you need a strong memory, but to say that the WCC depends solely on that is absurdly ludicrous. And even if he said that, which I doubt, it's a known fact that he was as much a lunatic as he was a chess genius. And you'd have to take the context that he was paranoid and didn't trust anyone to help him with his prep (possibly one of the reasons he ran from Karpov) while the whole SU was teamed-up to beat him. But he still managed to outplay Spassky, Petrosian and other strong masters even after being "outprepped" by them and losing the "memory battle", thus going into middlegames with inferior positions.
People have been saying that opening prep is going to ruin chess for over a century and it still hasn't happened. That would only apply to the elite of the elite, and barely... and even then you still have a bunch of classical GM games being decided on blunders and human errors - as you like to put. Look at the very last WCC where Magnus tilted Nepo with that spectacular game 6 win. I can assure you no memory alone can play that endgame. In game 2, Nepo fell for Magnus prep, but Magnus blundered and was in a lost position, then was able to come back because Nepo is human and prone to human error, made mistake and wasn't able to capitalize the advantage. "solely on memory"... yea right.... In fact, Magnus's prep was not necessarily to get better positions, what he wanted was to try and get out of Nepo's prep but not necessarily with lines where he gets advantage. He just wanted equal-ish, imbalanced, positions with practical chances in the middle or endgame where he can pose problems for Nepo and simply play real calculating chess. If possible but not necessarily, in types of positions and pawn structures that gets Nepo uncomfortable. Even if that meant being down a few centipawns according to stockfish's evaluation. Sometimes he was able to do that, sometimes he wasn't and played safe. But he was actually trying to avoid the "memory battle" as much as possible.
There's only so much you and your team can do with stockfish and Leela at home. But once you're on the board on your own, relying in only your memory and calculating abilities, anything can happen. For example, if you were to face Magnus you could have the prep of the top 100 GMs combined, and play with the aid of the whole Cramling family and consulting a dozen NMs (without engines during the game, obviously) and you wouldn't be able to beat Magnus. Pia Cramling, as strong a player as she is, wouldn't be able to outplay Magnus either once he got her out of her preparation.
So yes, to say that it depends "solely on memory and prep" is ridiculously preposterous.
No offense, but it seems you don't know what "solely" means.
i'm not going to go searching for links bud. Its his most famous interview. He is in his bedroom i think an old guy with a beard. Hikaru even played the interview on his twitch stream in one of his videos. Its very well known that fischer resented and hated chess in the end and said it was all memory and theory prep and creativity was down on the list. He said computer engines ruined the sport.
I didn't read the rest of your thread, because you probably think you are arguing with me, when you are arguing with what many GM's have said whether you believe it or not.
But it is my opinion that classical chess will die long before speed chess ever does. As is the case on this very website.
So because a GM said it, it's correct? Not on any evidence or argument, just that a great player said it.
Knowing they're the better player, seeing that the entire game you were losing, just to come back from a blunder someone of their skill wouldn't normally make that is satisfying? As with any sport, winning isn't always good, having your opponents only lose because they made a mistake they shouldn't have isn't good. In sports one should always strive, not to win, but to be better than before. Cheap victories, born from a blunder, are not victories at all, but a flimsy win, a point in your name, meaningless because it was not earned.
In the same way one can lose a game, but not actually lose overall. The first classical tournament I played, I was worried I would be horrifically beaten and would lose because of my impatience, instead, in the first game of the tournament I was paired with the person I play against the most at my club, a player at a much higher skill level than me, in this game, for the first 20 or so moves, I played near-flawlessly, I had the advantage towards the late-middlegame. All of this was thrown away on 1 singular move, I blundered a piece, and, of course, he found it, being down a piece, I went on to lose. In this game, I technically lost, my opponent got the point, but it wasn't a defeat, it was a great game, and proved I could play high-level classical chess, even as impacient as I am. This was not a loss for him either, he both won, and played a great game, the truest of victories.
And a player like Nahil Sarin pulling victories from lost positions is not the same, he doesn't win because his opponent hangs a backrank in 3 or a queen in 1.
It can be argued that the blunder happened because of the pressure that was put on by the opponent so if you're saying that the blunder was beneath the player you're taking merit away from the opponent that did something to put you in a position where you blundered, whether he outprepped you, put you under time pressure (yes, it happens in classical as well), or made you think and calculate so many lines in previous moves that you got exhausted and overlook a simple move.
And sorry but it was a defeat, you might've been able to extract positive things out of it, which is great and as it should be. It might've been a great game and you can say you both won something out of the game, but the actual game you lost. Absolutely no shame in that, though.
That being said, this discussion makes no sense. You're comparing different sports. Almost like comparing singles tennis to doubles tennis. Or volleyball to beach volleyball. They're similar, but they're different. Classical is different from blitz, which is different from bullet and it's a matter of personal taste. I, for one, like all of them. Although I find it very hard to play longer time formats online.