Edward Winter on "The Greatest"

I have enjoyed the recent (Relatively) Strongest Player poll and analysis of the players (and here are my older posts on the "The Greatest" and Top Ten players). Below is a stimulating view from a slightly different perspective by the great chess historian Edward Winter of Chess Notes fame:

Chess: The Greatest

The first paragraphs:

In discussions of that hoary question ‘Who is the greatest player of all time?’ assumptions tend to be made about the historical progression of playing strength which are by no means favourable to the old-timers. The view that chess is forever moving forward forces the conclusion that Morphy would have plenty to learn from the moderns, and one thus reads condescending speculation about how the American would fare today if he was generously granted six months or a year to ‘absorb all the new chess knowledge’ that has come into being since his time. His inferiority is further demonstrated by those deceptive ‘historical ratings’ and other mathematical sideshows. They have much to answer for, since it is only in the small print that we learn that if an Elo rating of, say, 2500 is a) earned by a modern player and b) dumped on a dead master that does not mean that the two are of comparable strength. The late Professor Arpad Elo confirmed this in a letter to us dated 18 November 1988.

With recourse to reason and logic, can a case be constructed for actually believing that some of the oldsters would be capable of unhorsing today’s leading exponents without any additional schooling? Objectivity is certainly needed here too, for the glamour attached to such names as Anderssen and Spielmann may misdirect a commentator who is by temperament a laudator temporis acti. In many respects the overall level of chess play, in terms of quantity and quality, has progressed immeasurably in recent decades, but it is noticeable that however large the mass of ordinary club players and ordinary masters the number of outstanding exponents at any one time remains relatively small. It is with that élite that we are concerned here. It can be argued that almost every chess title, including that of world champion, has been cheapened in recent years. ‘Grandmasters’ are so plentiful that it is quaint to recall how, even in 1953, their proliferation was being criticized. In that year’s May issue of Chess Review (page 129) a correspondent, W.N. Wilson, complained about the ‘loose use of the term’, and the magazine agreed that ‘there is something in Mr Wilson’s contention that there ought to be a distinctive title for those who tower head and shoulders above all others in their generation. With a couple of dozen grandmasters around now, we ought to have a grade designated between the bulk of these and the world champion’.

Take a few minutes to read the whole thing then come on back...

Winter wrote this in 1997, before the advent of really close "cooperation" between the top players and computers. I believe that in the intervening 15 years that grandmasters have indeed benefited from using computers for study, practice and especially to expand the range of chess ideas. Computers' ability to snatch material and weather the attack to victory and to find moves that are "ugly" but good have produced real advances, in my view. See for more of my opinions see this post, especially item 6.

Winter didn't minimze the progress in chess "strength" at the very top but as he concludes:

Do even today’s masters believe in their own superiority? Interviews indicate a mixture of views, but very few masters venture to claim that the ten strongest players of all time are all alive today. Personal ‘top ten’ lists almost invariably include a profuse sprinkling of old names, such as Capablanca. One can understand why he appears on almost everybody’s list: innumerable games were played by him in perfect style as far as anyone has been able to judge either then or now.

I don't think that has changed, if it is accurate. Maybe some of us should look into that claim, as a close examination of Capablanca's games could only make our own play stronger.

Chess Amateurs, Chess Pros, When and If the Twain Shall Meet

Mark Weeks of Chess for All Ages kindly posts a thoughtful and extended answer, Do You Care About Today's GMs? to my previous post on this question.  In the comments to Mark's post Michael Goeller, the most excellent Kenilworthian recalls his take on the question, Chess Amateurism, from a couple of years ago.

Mark also makes a point in his post about the openings being "exhausted" at some point in the next 10-20 years. He is becoming more and more interested in chess960 as a result.  I figure that even when chess (not just the opening) is "solved" in the way checkers is now solved, there will still be plenty of space for fallible humans to enjoy playing each other.  Whether there will still be a demand for grandmasters to get paid to play each other at that time is another matter.

I really appreciated the many cogent comments to that post, but especially this one:

Hardly knowing anything of chess, I hardly know of any of today's GMs, much less their games.
 

I am, as in most things, interested in the antiquated.

That's Aaron DeWeese, and you may want to take a look at his his fascinating Nether Letter Log.  I'm with Aaron, love me some antiquated chess; probably, I'll still be saying that when they download my whole brain content into a hard drive and send it on a trip to the stars in a self-replicating space exploration machine.  Of course, the Really Big Database will be available for review, and it'll be something like the Star Trek TNG Holodeck.  I'll spend part of the time playing a match with the Ghost (in the machine) of Tarrasch.  Neither of us will have computer assistance.

Remember, the purpose of philosophy is to screw the inscrutable (or, alternatively, to eff the ineffable).

For a change today, let's NOT ROCK, let's be COOL:

Do You Care About Today's Grandmaster Games and Tournaments?

Over at IM Mark Ginsburg's blog I was moved to comment on his post The New Chess, "When young grandmasters whip out crazy theory backed by millions of pre-game CPU cycles."

Just as a personal impression and certainly not from some scientific poll, I think this kind of chess has led to some loss of interest by today's amateurs in current grandmaster games.  I commented in part:

My impression reading the chess proletariat’s blogs and talking to U-1800s at tournaments and clubs is that a lot of them just don’t care that much about GM chess these days. Sure, they look at the Corus results and sometimes follow on ICC but but games like the above, how does this help me whip Jones for the club class B championship? There are still beautiful tactics and interesting chess involved here, to be sure, but the masses increasingly don’t care about innovations at move 17 or 25, even compared to 20 years ago in the Kasparov era. We can study Tarrasch or Zurich 1953 or even 60 Memorable Games and get more out of it, in a purely practical sense.

I’m sure ambitious 10-year-olds are also studying this game, but my purely unscientific sample says that the over-teenage, under-2200 crowd spends a lot less time at the club discussing the latest GM games than when I started going to clubs around 1980.

So, for any reader who has been around serious chess long enough to have seen the beginning of the computer era, what say you?  Do you look at yesterday's Wijk aan Zee games with annotations by the excellent Dennis Monokroussos, or was it on your radar at all?  If you were around for both, were you more likely to look at the games from Karpov-Kasparov 1985 than Anand-Kramnik 2008?

While you think about it, LET US ROCK!

All Your Questions Answered!

A few days ago we ran a photo post with the title "Guess Who?" and thanks to our correspondent and awesome chess player, blogger and personality Elizabeth Vicary the mystery was solved (see the comments at the link).

Where's Wang? He elaborates here.

Who finished last in the 1944 U.S. Championship? John Hillery informs us on these and other interesting, if obscure, matters.

Would you like 100 chess book reviews; honest, no bullshit reviews in amusing full color video? Of course you would! Blue Devil Knight presents Part I of, well, many.

Did anyone ever really argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Not exactly, but Thomas Aquinas did conclude that angels, like chess pieces, cannot occupy the same square at the same time.

The most beautiful move never played? You be the judge!

A Respected Opponent

Back when I posted this game from Round 4 of the 2007 Western States Open I had no idea that my opponent, Gordon Barrett (now of Las Vegas) was known as "Mr. Chess" for many years in Southern California and is a member of the California Chess Hall of Fame. Of course, had I known I still would have done everything in my power to defeat him, but it gives some context to the game that I enjoy.

I also had no idea that he was 86 years old. I would have guessed him between 70 and 75. If anyone who reads this knows him, tell him I said that!

Controversy Corner

I'll be gone on another trip through Monday, not sure if I'll have a chance to blog any, so here's something that I hope will spur some controversy and commentary over the weekend; I had recently linked back to an old post on The Greatest, wherein I identified my choices for the greatest chess players ever, in certain categories.

Now, for your edification and especially your criticism, my ordered list of The Top 10 Chess Players of All Time, using the following criteria: 1) Their accomplishments as players, that is, results in tournaments and matches; 2) Relative dominance over their contemporaries for at least a few years; 3) Longevity at the top; 4) Advancement of the art of chess through the example of their play. That these criteria are based partly on subjective judgment makes it all the more fun to debate, of course. How to compare different eras? Subjective!

Other notes--I considered leaving off players who are still active, but a couple deserve to be on here just for what they've done so far, so they might move up over the coming years. I also considered a brief paragraph of justification for the inclusion of and order of the players, but it's more fun if you have to speculate about my reasons and provide your own when telling me how full of it I am. So, here is the bare list:

1. Kasparov
2. Capablanca
3. Karpov
4. Fischer
5. Alekhine
6. Botvinnik
7. Lasker
8. Tal
9. Kramnik
10. Anand

Please share your differences in the comments!

(ADDENDUM: I understand Fischer has passed away, the news is all over the MSM and chess blogosphere; I'm saddened that he's dead, of course, and also that much of his titanic talent and intellect seemingly went to waste over the last three decades).

Suzyq Where Are You?

Someone who signed themselves "suzyq" (looks like a brand new Blogger account) commented yesterday on my post of last March looking for information on Ron Thacker, my one-time roommate who played Bobby Fischer in the 1957 U.S. Junior Ch. (see the whole fascinating saga here).

I read your article and was amazed. Ron has been a friend of mine since around 84. I believe I have his address and phone number, (he was still in Vegas)if he is still living. He has a serious heart condition which has put him on a disability. Yes, he was a very smart guy. I didn't realize it for a long time. I often didn't believe things he told me until years passed and they were proven to be true. I think I actually met you years ago in Reno, also. Very interesting. I doubt he copied any moves from anyone. He is truly an original.

Thanks very much, suzyq, for the info--if you read this, can you send me the contact info that you mention? It would make a very satisfactory conclusion to my search if I could either track him down, or even close the loop by verifying that he's passed on.

A Fair Question

Drunknknite was kind enough to follow the link in my last post back to my Feb. 2006 thoughts on The Greatest. He asks:

In your greatest post where is Botvinnik??

For some reason he is overlooked, even though he is the one who propelled technique and the form of scientific analysis we apply to this game to the forefront of theory. He was also 'dominant' from 1946 until 1957 (probably even later than this). In spite of the fact that Bronstein and Smyslov were right on his heels, he still showed his superiority to the great masters of his time.

As great a player as Botvinnik was, I must respectfully disagree with part of this comment. If I were to have included a list of the "Top Ten" chess players of all time, M. Botvinnik would probably have merited a place on it; but in the particular categories of my rather idiosyncratic list I couldn't justify including him. He truly was dominant in the 1948 World Championship Tournament, but then didn't play any public chess for three years, and his record in the World Ch. matches he played in 1951-63 was basically 50-50. If you will refer to his tournament and match record here you'll see that he played fairly sparingly as World Champion, had a number of very good results and a few mediocre ones in strong tournaments, but never had the kind of almost unbeatable of 4-7 years that was noted in my original post for Alekhine, Tal, Fischer et al.

It certainly hurt Botvinnik that four or five of what might have been his dominant years were 1941-45 when the Soviet Union was locked in a death struggle with Germany and international chess life was disrupted. If he had gotten a chance to play in a World Championship match and a few strong international events during those years his reputation as a great player might be even greater.

For these reasons, Botvinnik didn't make any of the lists in my original post but I'm happy to agree with drunknknite that he deserves recognition as one of the all-time greats.

Interregnum

An interregnum is a period of discontinuity, an interruption which incorporates an ineluctable emphasis on a relationship to what comes before and to what comes after in a sequence. This contrasts with a near synonym like "gap" which may be random, encompassing neither connotation of interjacency, sequence, continuity, etc. nor formal inter-relation.

Umm, actually I am just going on vacation and may not post until the middle of next week...but I really like the word "interregnum" a lot.

Here's something from the back of the vault to substitute, until then, for actual original thought :

From back in February 2006, my opinions on The Greatest.

See you soon!

"Secrets of a Grandpatzer" (Part 1)

Secrets of a Grandpatzer is a very interesting book that was published back in 1979, interesting both for the subject matter and for the author, Kenneth Mark Colby, a Professor of both Psychiatry and Computer Science at UCLA. Dr. Colby had a lot of valuable things to say about chess and chess players, and since the book is now out of print and very difficult to find (only one copy at $35.00 on Amazon) I thought it would be of value to readers to share some of his thoughts, since I'm fortunate enough to own the book. Even though he passed away in 2001 at age 81 the book is still under copyright and I don't want to steal someone's intellectual property, but I believe it's fair use to describe the contents and quote a few passages.

The sharp-eyed may notice that over on the sidebar there's an (excellent) blog named Secrets of Grandpatzer Chess, but curiously, when I commented on one of the posts there asking if that was from the book, Grandpatzer replied "wahrheit: no, I had to google in order to find the book you were referring to. I was playing off the title of one of Nunn's recent books, although Soltis' "Grandmaster Secrets: Endings" was also floating around in my head." I just wanted to clarify that for the record.

Enough of the prelims--to the book! The subtitle is "How to beat most people and computers at chess," and the author's stated aim is to raise the "duffer, fish, woodpusher or rabbit Class E, D, C or weak B" to the exalted status of "grandpatzer" (1700-2200). The "beating computers" part needs some historical context; at the time there was, of course, no Fritz or Rybka and Dr. Colby is talking about the Chess Challenger and others (here is a nice page with examples) which played in the 1200-1600 range on their higher settings. Interestingly, he believed one way to get better at chess was to emulate the computer ("the greatest grandpatzer of them all").

Here is a quote from the first page that should touch any discerning reader:

Why should a patzer seek to become a grandpatzer? Because of the aristos (Greek: Aristos = best). Life is more than ham sandwiches and beer. Humans strive, not just to survive, but to enhance the quality, the excellence, of survival. Striving for excellence in any endeavor, developing yourself to become your best at what you do, is rewarding and fulfilling to aspirations higher than happiness. Merely happy people, without artistic goals, vegetate in incomplete, hobbled and impoverished lives...A grandpatzer is a strong chessplayer, a threat to anyone (including himself) in a given game.

And one more indicative quote from the Introduction:

As Dr. G will show you, becoming a grandpatzer involves understanding the ego-game in addition to knowing lots of patterns, themes and tricks.

There are a great many other valuable and enjoyable quotes and tips in this book, and I'll share some of them with you in future posts.

The Strength of Players Past and Present

dk at the always fascinating Chess Improvement has a post that quotes extensively from this John Watson review where Watson quotes extensively from John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book to the effect that, well, the Old Masters (as in Nunn's analysis of Karlsbad 1911) were pretty weak players.

Did you follow that?

Okay, here is a key quote so that you don't have to:

"In order to be more specific about Karlsbad, take one player: Hugo Süchting (1874-1916). At Karlsbad he scored 11.5/13.5 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. Here are a couple of examples of his play:"...

[Watson: You have to get the book to see these examples of Süchting's horrendous mistakes and misunderstandings. Nunn also has talks about more positions, and then includes a section of 30 Karlsbad "puzzles", representing all of the players. The positional mistakes by the top players are particularly telling.]

"How, then, did Süchting manage to score 11.5 points in such company? Well, he did have a couple of slices of luck - Duz- Khotimirsky overstepped the time limit while two pawns up in a completely winning rook ending and Alapin agreed a draw in a position where he could win a piece straight away. However, there were some games where Süchting might have hoped for more; he certainly had Levenfish on the ropes (see puzzle 184), and he agreed a draw in the following position against E. Cohn:" [Diagram follows] "It is hard to understand this decision, as with a clear extra pawn Black certainly has very good winning chances and could proceed without the slightest element of risk."...

"Returning then to the question as to how Süchting scored 11.5 points, the answer is simply that the other players were not much better. If we assume Süchting as 2100, then his score implies an average rating for the tournament of 2129 - it would not even be assigned a category today. Based on the above, readers will not be surprised when I say that my general impression of the play at Karlsbad was quite poor, but the main flaws did not show up in the areas I expected..."

And here is my comment over at Chess Improvement:

A CONTRARY POINT OF VIEW

(Watson, asked for it, but you're getting it dk!)

Of course the players are a lot better today; it would be ridiculous to think that they shouldn't be. Are the football players of today better than those of 1927--no doubt, they're bigger, faster and more skilled, because they've built upon the experience of players and coaches and trainers, year after year, every year, for 80 years!

Chess has gone through the same process, as how could it not? Botvinnk and Fine studied Lasker deeply, took what they could use and improved on it; Fischer studied them, and Kasparov studied him, and so on...this is the nature of any human endeavor, math or science, running a mile, etc. Isaac Newton referred to it as having "stood on the shoulders of giants." Computers have accelerated this improvement process, as well.

One more point, it is not a matter of "ratings," which only measure results. Alekhine was indeed a 2700+ player, whatever his score might be against Kramnik if you transported him through time.

To sum up, let me put it this way--instead of silly statements about brushing up on openings, I say that if you took 5-year-old Morphy or Capablanca, time traveled them to today and gave them a computer and a trainer they would be GMs at 13-14 and fighting Kramnik or Anand for the championship at 21-25.

Anyone disagree?

I usually don't turn comments into separate posts but in this case the subject really interests me, and it really chaps me a bit when guys get down on chess in the old days by comparing it to current standards. Jim Thorpe wouldn't last a game in today's NFL but so frickin' what? He kicked ass, and will be remembered as a Great, forever, just as will Rubinstein and Lasker.