What would be the rating of a top chess player in the late 1800s today

If the question is how well the players of the 19th century played compared to those today, I don't think one can play around with hypothetical discussions about them being given the same upbringing as today or access to theory and engines in the same way as everyone today etc.

I like the intent of this question. However the correct answer lies in another question.

If Jordan, Lebron, kobe, etc were at the ymca when basketball was invented where would they end up on the food chain?

The answer to both questions realistically turns out to be nowhere becasue the first people to play a sport or game are not remembered in the least. Only once something acheives significant popularity do figureheads arise that become bigger than the game itself.

The fact is that there are more people today then yesteryear and thus greater specialization and greater natural apptitude is required to be truly great at something. People do apear to overestimate how much more the degree of this is. So you get people saying crazy things like they could beat an old master at chess, or they could have played in the NFL in the 80's or whatever delusion that suits there fancy.

very hard to accurately pinpoint a rating for chess players in the 1800's.

I will say that I personally believe that a capablanca or a fischer would be very near the very top even today.

I don't understand how some can possibly rate Steinitz higher than Morphy. Morphy's games and tactics have been analysed and often his moves matched with those suggested by a 3000 rated engine. Try and do the same with Steinitz and let me know.

Plus: if we agree that chess, apart from science, it can  also be an art, then we must agree that Morphy's games were a Monna Lisa, Steinitz..well...ugly and cramped... like the drawings I made in the primary school

you are nonsense, friendo.

Those people didn't have any theory, any computer help, any teachers. They all learnt it by themselves. The vast majority of combinations and tactics was mentally calculated and imagined. Those pioneers were real dreamers. They had a "vision" that people like me and certainly you never will have. 

I don't care about modern day GM's. I play for fun, I play people in their 1300-1400-1500 (like you, mister genius) , I can learn a shit ton more when I study on a game by Morphy, Anderssen or Max Lange than when I watch a game by a modern GM. The reason is because at our level we often make small mistakes or inaccuracies in every part of the game (opening, middlegame, endgame) and to be creative, to learn how to exploit them through a poisonous combination, is what we need. 

And don't be so sure that a super GM would smash those guys so easily. A super GM plays along certain lines, he is proned to his own theory. I have serious doubts that they would figure out on how to deal with some possible sacrifices and variations that those romantic players would surely made them face.

I guess they would have been top ten, regardless of time and place.Magnus has the habit of walking around in the hall and picking up ideas from all over, I guess that manner also would have worked in the old days.Magnus also reached very high rating before he got good at openings. Actually, at a time he was so terrible in openings that he had to fight really hard in the middlegame to improve his pieces. Today he has both skills, openings and improving pieces.And the endgame too.

Modern GM¨s are theoretically strong, with good pattern recognition. They know combinations.

The old guys , maybe they didnt know much combinations, but they invented them.

A great chessplayer can invent things in the game, and Caruana will have problems with the old masters when they play outside the theory and invents good lines. It isnt necessary to know all the theory if you are good enough to invent it.

Carlsen is innovative too, Carlsen against a fit, sober and clearthinking Michael Tal would been a fantastic match.

I am sure that the great chessplayers from different times were great chessplayers, like super GM´s.

Carlsen has had access to an enormous amount of theory and training that back in the 1800s people wouldn't have even been dreaming of.

Stop glorifying him. In another topic somebody asks if carlsen will reach 2900... Who the fuck cares?!? It's only a number, created by a rating system that is inflactionary, hence designed to increase with the passing of time.

Obviously carlsen would win against any of the old masters, but so what? Give morphy the engines and theories we have now and let's see who is really the strongest. Those comparisons don't make sense, what matters is what we can learn from The chess legends and, at a intermediate level, it's far more entertaining and instructive to study the games of a paul morphy or a Capablanca than some hyper complicated positional maneuvering of Carlsen vs Kramnik

(Capablanca isnt an actual romantic representative, but nonetheless some of his games are played with a creativity and visionary ability that it's just mind blowing, reminds me a lot of Morphy, with some deep positional skills)

All other players today have access to the same theory and are still more than 60 Elo behind him, so he must be doing something right.

But it doesn't say anything about the actual question. Of course one can ask how Tal would have done today if he had access to engines and was healthy and less interested in drugs and women, or how Morphy would have done if he had been born in 1990 and had access to all resources today's players have, and was more interested in chess and less interested in law, etc. But those persons would no longer be Tal or Morphy.

fabelhaft wrote:

PamirLeopard87 wrote:

Carlsen has had access to an enormous amount of theory and training that back in the 1800s people wouldn't have even been dreaming of.

Stop glorifying him.

All other players today have access to the same theory and are still more than 60 Elo behind him, so he must be doing something right.

I am not saying he isn't good. He is the strongest. I am just answering to those that very arrogantly and superficially state the Carlsen would "smash" the old masters.

I don't rate them low.  In fact a 2000 FIDE playing strength in the 1800s was simply incredible.  Vidmar was found to be 2000's FIDE strength according to this article, which used an objective measure of playing strength:

http://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/how-strong-were-fischer-and-morphy

I believe many subjective guesstimates of these player's strength are inflated because because their masterpieces are reviewed and not the entirety of their games. 

We are only judging Morphy at his best in other words instead of Morphy's average.  

""In order to be more specific about Karlsbad, take one player: Hugo Stichting ( 1874-1916). At Karlsbad he scored 11 1/2 / 25 or 'minus 2', as they say these days - a perfectly respectable score. Having played over all his games at Karlsbad I think that I can confidently state that his playing strength was not greater than Elo 2100 (BCF 187) - and that was on a good day and with a following wind."

-John Nunn

So if Staunton has a playing strength of 2000 FIDE then he was lightyears ahead of his time considering that Karlsbad in 1911 had an average strength of 2100 FIDE.  Why question Nunn's judgement?  

Why question Nunns judgement?

I am not strong enough to do that, but 2100 is close to the average in the best class in clubchampionships in Norway, and if you go to an  open International tournament in Norway with maybe 6 GM´s from abroad you will see a lot of players at around 2550.

Those 2100 isnt allowed in th GM-group.

Even I can reach 2100 , maybe in ten years.

Maybe the old  guys wasnt familiar with the modern refined ideas, but give them a couple of tournaments and they will catch up fast. Inernational top players are more talented than decent clubplayers.

Or give Morphy six months to prepare for a big match with GM Peter Heine Nilsen and GM Jon Ludvig Hammer as seconds. He might catch the level of these fine 2600+ GM´s during that time.

You can say that Carlsen , Anand and Caruana are larger than themselves, because they have teams.

Morphy had a much greater memory than does Carlsen or anyone else that ever played chess. I doubt he would reach Anand's level after 6 months, though. Regardless of how good someone's memory is, it's going to take them a long time just to review how ever many hundreds of thousands of games that these modern GMs have analyzed.

I tell you why, it is because the ancient superstars had roughly the same talent as modern good GM´s, and because they too had a lot of experience. They wont start from scratch. They only need to fill in a lot of holes , and catch up on new stuff to get their game tight. And they need some tournaments against good modern GM´s. 

Maybe Morphy quit chess partially because he couldnt find competitors llike Magnus and Vishy. 

That's one of the only sensible things anyone has posted here. However, I think it would take anywhere from 2 to 12 years to fill in those holes.

GM Ben Feingold does disagree with you and GM John Nunn, he estimates the rating of Morphy as "whatever Magnus has +10"

I think Morphys games are more spectacular than the average GM game at Fagernes,

Vishy and Magnus did not play perfect today. First did Magnus fail, and later Vishy. It was a draw. No blistering tactics. No Tal like combinations.

PamirLeopard87 wrote:                

Good point. We have become lazy compared to them. In fact, because they didn't have the tools we have now, they might even learn things much more efficiently than we do now. Have we forgotten how to learn?

Any player who below master can learn more from a Morphy and Anderssen games than any modern grandmaster. Watch your rating go up if you decided to study Morphy's games, it won't happen if study Carlsen's games, because his play is too advance for the average club player and it will be hard to understand Carlsen deep positional play.