I won my section again for the sixth or seventh time in a row. My new rating is 1828. My method clearly works, but I am finding out that most chess players don't care about improvement, they just want to play chess for fun.
Well done :D I hope some day you'll reach GM using your method. Prove all of us wrong.
I say Morphy would be in the 2550-2650 range today, but Steinitz and Anderssen would probably only be in the 2200-2300 range.
I think Anderssen would be 2100ish. Morphy 2400-2500 with Steinitz being about the same, but a tad better.
Lasker - 2600
Capa - 2600 or better. He was a machine in his prime. He actually had a 2900 IPR during that time.
Maye Morphy would be 2500 in a comebacktournament if he rose from the grave, possesing all his power, but let him play six more tournaments, and he will adapt and climb up to the top ten level.Those superstars are eating strenght from every opponent they meet.
Agreed. Lasker and Capa relied on talent and didn't study much. AAA was able to beat Capa by combining his unique crazy brilliance with hard work and a deep study of Capa's games.
SilentKnighte5 wrote:
All world champs from Lasker on would be GMs today if they stepped into a time vortex and found themselves at a FIDE event.
Alekhine (the non drunk version) is probably the first of the early champs that could be super GM material. The ones before him didn't take preparation as seriously as he did.
If Morphy should meet Carlsen in a WC-match, he could hire Naiditch, MVL, Caruana and Anand to help him with the preparations. The super-GM´s of today are stronger than themselves, because they are teams who hires in great GM´s to help with preparations.
I won my section again for the sixth or seventh time in a row. My new rating is 1828. My method clearly works, but I am finding out that most chess players don't care about improvement, they just want to play chess for fun.
Unless you are talking about some other rating this is a lie. Your USCF rating is 1678 as of March 15, 2015.
This was covered already.
Chesszen.com's engine, if I recall correctly, put Morphy at just under 2500, but with numerous performances higher than Steinitz and Lasker's (2500+). Many other players around Morphy's time are estimated by the site to be 2200ish. I have no clue how any of that could be accurate, but they seem to have a good mode for assessing elo on the basis of a single game and over a collection of games.
Think about it guys. Who was Kasparov's competition back then? Peter Leko? That guys rating is going down. Kasparov would barely make it in the top twenty with today's competition. Both Kasparov and Karpov are the product of their times, the pre computer era.
The very likely thing is that computer preparation has made top GM level actually decrease.
More than just opening knowledge has changed since the 19th century.
Players today now train as professionals, which was never done, not even by Alekhine, before WWII. Players study endgame after endgame, have trainers who have studied the art and science of the sport, and perhaps most importantly of all, play regularly against other top players. They have modern tools, such as chess engines and databases to help them prepare for their opponents. A novelty played by a strong GM this morning will be published with detailed analysis this afternoon.
Of course today's players are miles ahead of the great players of the past. That doesn't make Morphy, Chigorin, and the rest less great. But it does mean that the gap is large and measurable. From the time of Morphy to the present, the best player in the world has improved about 500 elo rating points. This gap has been documented and measured by statisticians.
Chess in the 19th Century was something of an amateur's avocation. Now, it's a professional sport.
@smyslovfan didnt you play in an otb tourney recently after a long layoff ?
Yes, Reb. I lost a complicated, flawed game to a master (we both had our chances), but won the other three all in under 30 moves. Not much to report. I played too aggressively in my first three games, but calmed down and won a nice endgame in my last one. Actually, that last one was a bit like Capa: my opponent traded down to a virtually lost endgame without even realising it.
Dont know how you managed that long a layoff , I could never do it myself . I had a few slow years in which I only played 2 or 3 OTB events and I was miserable those years ... I think I played more chess in 14 years in Portugal than I did in 25 years in the USA ... I was very active after moving across the pond .
Any player below master can learn a lot from Morphy, sometime Morphy's ideas are very modern and I believe one game Fischer borrow heavily from Morphy and in the Sicilian defence: Najdorf variation in the poison pawn; Bobby was behind in development and look like he was going to get crush but he keep making little threats and beat his opponent. If you don't know the past how can you play chess correctly or to understand a position and evaluate it correctly. Carlsen borrow heavily from Capablanca but gives it a modern twist, look at the first match Carlsen and Anand and you can see Carlsen using Capablanca's concept to deadly effect. Here is a game Morphy just outplay his strong opponents and left Barnes completely punch-drunk.
If Morphy is rated 2300 Elo, all the 2300 players I played NEVER play this strong; okay maybe 2400 elo those masters are just unbelieveable strong. Morphy is more in the grandmaster level and he destory his strong opponents like they were amateurs; especially his matches with, Boden ( I consider Boden much stronger than Barnes), Paulsen, Loewenthal and Anderssen.
The rating inflation is the hard fact, nothing to discuss (Kevin Spraggett, Victor Korchnoi). Magnus Carlsen can be compared to young Lajos Portisch, but hardly anything more. Obviously what is sufficient today to become an undisputed world champion, it wasn't enough in 1970.
All the computer science around chess means very little in real otb game.
I think todays topplayers have ca the same strenght as the previous tops, and guess that previous tops will do well in our time after getting used to the modern styles during some tournaments.
Anand was close to Kasparov in strenght, and is close to Carlsen now, which makes me belive that a topplayer in the past could have been top today.
So, maybe Fischer, Carlsen, Kasparov, Capablanca and Morphy was more equal in strenght than we thinks.
That Fantastic Morphygame reminds me of the most fantastic Nakamuragames.
I guess Portisch strenght is more like Aronian than Carlsen, because he was not the real top, but maybe top ten for a long time.
@Polar_Bear, I completely agree, their trainers and engines (computer program) are doing the work for them, without them they would not be rated so high.
I wonder how much difference a computer can make? maybe it can be used to make a novelty-opening that is winning? Maybe computer and GM assistance in the preparations made some difference for Caruana in Sinquerfield and boostet his ratingperformance from 2900 to 3300?
@DjonniDerevnja, Morphy's games teaching you how to attack and opens lines, any player who make an effort to study Morphy's can help go up in rating. My rating shot from 1162 uscf to 2019 uscf in three years, that my testimony ( not some lazy system using computer program to go over my games) when I was seventeen I started chess but I believe is what I study is the reason I was able to improve so quickly.
During those games against players below 1750, I noticed that my training method was working. I got into positions that were more or less what I have encountered here on chess.com After all, the opening is not exactly totally unpredictable. Based on that fact, I have been accustomed to different kinds of positions thanks to chess.com and when confronted with a similar position at my chess club, with more time, I knew how to react more reasonably, because I had gone through those kind of positions with the computer, so I knew off the bat what the computer more or less thought how I should play the position. I trust a computer program over any grandmaster any day, grandmasters are humans, but the tactical prowess of a computer is limitless.
If I go up against an 1800, I will get into the same kind of positions. After all, even 1400's try to play by book, it's not like they are just pushing pawns for no reason. We all develop at the beginning, in a way, we're all grandmasters when it comes to the opening.
I'm pretty sure, that as I continue to become familiar with the kind of debates my openings create, I will beat 1800 rated players.
Yes, I remember Bronstein stating over and over the study of ancient games is a total waste of time...