Would a 2000 ELO player beat Kasparov if he had a piece advantage?

Having approximately the same rating as Kaufmann, I can safely declare that winning ONE game out of ten with knight odds against a 2000 FIDE rated player would be a great achievement, actually I would be proud of it.

Kasparov could do much better, of course, but still the odds would be heavily against him. A piece is a piece is a piece, and a 2000 FIDE rated player is not a genuine woodpusher.

Speaking as a player who is actually the equivalent of the 1800s in FIDE rating, I could easily see myself gradually making enough mistakes to give my GM opponent a gradually better position, resulting in some sort of position where my opponent may have won a pawn back and created some kind of fortress situation where despite my piece it's so hard to break through without precise play. If I were to predict my result in a piece odds game against GM Kaufman, I would be slightly leaning toward a draw, although a win would be possible; also note, I would even consider losing that game a definite possibility.

Again, I think playing against an engine under such conditions would provide a fuller picture. I know it can be hard to imagine a piece being neutralized against a decent player; but actually testing it myself has made me realize how much room there is for a stronger player to find chances.

I agree with streetfighter. À good player with à piece advantage would win from Kasparov or any engine.

I played a 5 min queen-odds game against DroidFish with me playing white and I won (although I was 45 secs out of time). I guess a 2000+ player would beat an engine in a minor piece odds game.

ia lower gm played a bishop down agasint eqaul rarting and won

I have no idea, but out of curiousity I just played a game against stockfish 2.2.2 64 on my mac with stockfish giving knight odds and playing white. I found it pretty easy to manage a draw. My OTB rating is right around 1500, and stockfish 2.2.2 64-bit is rated up there relatively high. 

For someone 1500 OTB, that's a really great result I think. When I tried beating chess master with piece odds (same initial setup as you) I may have been around that rating, probably a little higher actually. In fact I did get the queens traded off very quickly, and yet still found white gradually getting some initiative, just with its brute force method of finding every threat possible.

But I think I played more naively than you: I played 1...d5 -- I don't play the center counter at all, but figured, since the b1 knight is gone, it should be fine. So I was playing complacently in an opening I didn't have a lot of experience with, and managed to get outplayed in a queenless middlegame. And chessmaster 10 is much weaker than houdini 2 I believe :)

Come on. EVERY player of FM strength and above, can win easily with kinight odds against everyone- including Kaspaov, Carlsen or Houdini.

All he has to do is playing solidly. This suffices.

I used the same philosophy when I was playing against the computer. It simply wasn't sufficient. As always, my mistakes were punished and my position started to get worse. I didn't really drop material aside from maybe a pawn (giving up a pawn for simplification is the typical advice in such situations but it decreases your winning chances; it usually results from a fear of miscalculating in a more sharp position) but I was forced to make positional concessions with inaccurate play. Allowing positional advantages like a rook being on your 2nd rank, allowing yourself to get a knight vs a bishop, and ending up with a pawn structure that is a bit easier to attack, can really add up, and that's exactly the kind of thing that can happen when you play inaccurately.

As far as not allowing such positional advantages, the vague idea of being solid is not sufficient in my opinion. It's important that when you get into an ending with an extra piece, you get it with no strings attached. If you have no positional problems and are still in that ending, at that point you are doing very well, but to do so still requires some quality in thinking.

My FIDE is higher than my USCF .

Granted, I am pretty sure I am underrated USCF, so that might be why.

Granted, an FM is much stronger than someone rated 2000 or 2100 -- I wasn't really addressing FMs. An expert's technique is a definite notch below, even though they tend to be portrayed as not likely to just give material away, and not take their position for granted. Sure, for people 2300 FIDE and above, I do think they have excellent chances to win; when it comes to an expert, though, I don't think the result would be so lopsided.

I would feel pretty nervous playing against houdini with an advantage like that. I've played such positions against it before, and while I sometimes succeed, it can be very tough. And if it was in the opening it might be even tougher because then there are more things that can happen.

I am happy, though, to say that I have beaten an FM in an ICC simul in which he sacrificed a piece (possibly for a pawn or something), but took a few wrong steps and allowed me to exchange pieces. In fact, I think before that he had nearly forced mate but he couldn't finish me off. Anyway, I did manage to win after I won the piece, focusing as hard as I could that I didn't mess up my technique. It felt good, although I'm not sure it really means so much to beat an FM in a simul, where he is at a huge disadvantage. I think I was only in the 1600s at the time too.

What I would actually be proud of is beating an FM straight up

Yes I have great faith in someone rated over 2800 to beat an expert only a piece down. I am rated 2013 USCF. I have beat masters and drawn senior masters but I do not believe I would have any chance against the x world champion with only 1 piece odds.  

I will add that I once beat a master while I was a whole bishop and pawn down with a miserable position on top of it. He was not in time trouble and did not make any obvious blunders. So much for the advantage of a piece. I was just able to set one excellent trap that he fell for and still that only evened the material. He still had position and I had to outplay him from there which I did. So with possibly the greatest player in the history of chess ( debatable)  1 minor piece is not so much. Consider his vast opening knowledge, his tactical genius, his positional understanding and his endgame knowledge. In fact if you just play dead even from the start you can not win with that bishop if that is all you have left.

Yes I am very intimidated by someone with an 800 point rating advantage, who was also world champion for something like 15 years! In regard to Rybka, how much does this program cost. Just because it says 2800 does not make it so.The IBM machine that beat Kasparov cost how much? I have some very old chess computers that claim to play at a level which they do not. I would say inexpensive chess computers still do not match more expensive ones. I may not know much about these engines except they can not all possibly play at the same level and I doubt they can all beat the world champion.

Thanks for doing that, Shadowknight911. It's nice to have some data

The only thing is that, depending on how advanced your computer is, its strength might be a little less than the number claimed by the program. Anyway, I really do think that's very impressive.

My opinion a 2000 rated player FIDE or USCF would win a 10 game match by

about

6-4 against the strongest player in the world.  However the first game or two the intimindation factor would play a role.

In a long time control, I would expect to win.

Let's put it this way: if I could start every single tournament game with an extra knight, I would immediately quit my day jobs and become a chess professional! Because I would get the highest rating ever, become World Champion, and win every supertournament.

Any player with an OTB rating of about 2000 should expect the same.

If that piece was a gun and the player was a Russian policeman, sure.