"Magnus Carlsen can be compared to young Lajos Portisch, but hardly anything more"
The young Portisch that was far from top ten until his 30s can be compared to the player that is #1 with a margin of 60 Elo today, aged 24, right...
What would be the rating of a top chess player in the late 1800s today
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Mar 17, 2015
0
#643
My point: overall decrease (computers produce laziness and diminish imagination).
Today avg top5 level equals the 1970's #30, hence Carlsen equals Portisch. Carlsen, Aronian and Anand would be rated 2550 - 2650 in 80's in the same league as Ljubojevic, Timman or Miles, quite beyond Karpov and Kasparov.
Polar_Bear wrote:
My point: overall decrease (computers produce laziness and diminish imagination).
Today avg top5 level equals the 1970's #30, hence Carlsen equals Portisch. Carlsen, Aronian and Anand would be rated 2550 - 2650 in 80's in the same league as Ljubojevic, Timman or Miles, quite beyond Karpov and Kasparov.
Modern players might be generally worse in endgames, because of the timecontrols, and because we dont take a break anymore after move 40. The quality of endgames of course falls, when those moves are so heavily timerestricted.
Magnus is ok in endgames.
Anand became Gm in 1989, so he must have been just above 2500 back then.
If you take away 130 points inflation from Magnus, he would have been ca 2730. Karpov peaked at 2780 in 1994. Maybe Magnus is like a younger Karpov?
Could be, but I think Karpov's peak rating had some inflation too.
In the 1800s there wasn't much theory besides Fred Flinstones guide to avoiding stalemate traps.
In the 2010s, there wasn't much theory apart from the Simpsons's 101 ways to checkmate.
Mar 17, 2015
0
#648
Have you seen the endgames these guys play? Even without adjournments, endgame technique has improved since the 1970s! These guys are really amazing. Yeah, there have been some notable fails, but I'm constantly amazed by the wonderful technique on display. Take a look at the endgame of Carlsen-Naiditsch (0-1) or Carlsen-Solak (1-0), both from the Olympiad lat year in Tromso, Carlsen-Aronian (Sinquefield 2014), or even Goganov-Jakovenko (Russian Cup, 2014) for just a few of the great endgames that were played last year. Oh, and check out Wojtaszek-Ding Liren (0-1) from this year's Wijk Aan Zee tournament too!
Every tournament has fantastic endgames that are played at the very highest level even in fast time controls. These would make endgame specialists such as Smyslov, Fischer, Karpov, Speelman, Andersson proud.
Today's GMs take for granted endgame knowledge that wasn't even known in the pre-computer era.
"Anand would be rated 2550 - 2650 in 80's"
Anand was 2550+ already in the late 1980s, when he still was far from top 50, and 220 points behind #1. I guess he didn't gain much playing strength by becoming #1 and World Champion later in his career.
Smyslovfan, sorry about my endgameinaccurasies. It was my chessteacher that told me what I said, that endgames were worse now than before, but he probably must have been thinking about players around his own level, and that level is 1900.
Mar 17, 2015
0
#652
Well, if you read curmudgeons like Korchnoi, you would think that nobody can play chess as well as Korchnoi played. But Korchnoi is famous for berating everyone not named Korchnoi. Of course Korchnoi will say that chess is poorer because he's not playing anymore. He has publicly berated the skills of every world champion since Fischer.
I detest the endgame. A well-played game should be practically decided in the middlegame. - David Janowski 
Kids on the way up tends to be underated. Magnus, Fabiano and Anish are very young, with full speed ahead. That underrating compensates some of the inflation.
Thread of the year candidate.
Mar 17, 2015
0
#656
Just because there's rating inflation doesn't mean current players would be crushed by older players. Computers sure do help, but there is no evidence that taking away computers would render the current top players weaker.
ok let's take the computers away and see!
millionairesdaugher wrote:
ok let's take the computers away and see!
Migikstone wrote:
"burn all your capablanca books"
batgirl respond:
And cause a raging inferno?
That would be a problem for modern GMs, all the books of Capablanca and past masters, especially Bobby Fischers should be burned, so a lost in chess knowledge. That is Migikstone fault, he advocated those books burned. (:
i wonder why batgirl likes chess history so much...
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.
It wont help you much as long as you are still losing to 1300s .