http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3455
"Garry Kasparov in his set of books My Great Predecessors when commenting Capablanca's games speculates that Capablanca occasionally did not even bother to calculate deep tactical variations. The Cuban simply preferred to play moves that were clear and positionally so strongly justified that calculation of variations was simply not necessary."
You also have to read this article: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3465 where another academic pours scorn on their work. Actually I don't agree with his reasoning, Crafty is perfectly adequate for the task provided you are aware that it's top move isn't neccessarily the best. Where they are looking at blunder rates it's gong to be fine, but it's going to be unfair to players like Tal who specialized in complications that weren't neccessarily sound, but were sufficient to beat a strong human with.
Where their method is problematic is they assess how hard a move is to find by the difference in score between Crafty's top choice and it's second choice move. They give most weight to moves where the difference in score is smallest. The difficulty with this is that this is when Crafty is most likely to have got it wrong, and also these are also likely to be moves where it simply doesn't matter which move you play and there isn't really a best move. So they are making those moves most likely to be affected by noise the most important for their calculations.
What you could do is the same calculation for EGTB positions when you would get correct results, but it would only tell you who was best at the very end of games. In that phase it really wouldn't be that much of a surprise if Capablanca came out top.
Edit: Also they should do the calculation for 10 IM's to see if they get the kinds of results you'd expect.
Originally posted by SquelchbelchI don't think it's safe to say that Morphy was the furthest ahead of his peers at all. My vote would go to the 1972 version of Fischer, just prior to his World Championship match where his performance was actually not as good as it should have been given his retrospective rating. Also, Lasker in the late 1890s was the best player in the world by quite a margin.
Paul Morphy was a fabulous player of his time.
I think it's safe to say he was further ahead of his peers than has been the case since with any other player.
Have a look at the Chess Metrics site - www.chessmetrics.com - it's a very interesting place.
Originally posted by TyrannosauruschexI am not saying Petrosjan was the best there is (I just used one of my favourite players as an example =)), I am just saying it is silly to compare world champions in different time eras. But if you would ask that the worlds best players in that era, they would say he was the best, so what's the discussion? There is really no factor that stands out more than any other when comparing. For example, Karpov was unbeaten for the longest time, probably the best tournament player there was. And Alexhine was the master at calculation.. Capablanca a natural talent etc, but how do you compare them? All you really know is who was the best player in a given time period. So, saying that "these are the candidates" and excluding a handful of world champions is just silly.
I think with petrosian, his moves were harder to understand the logic behind them. Capablancas style was nice and simple but effective, even if you dont see his long term plans you could usually see he had put a piece in a good position.
Originally posted by gambit31990 Kasparov Even though Kasparov's rating was higher in 2000 at a world record 2851?
I will say that Capablanca is the most natural Super Grand Master player ever. The best player ever? The cadidates are 1972 Fischer, 1990 Kasparov, 1946 Botvinnik, 1919 Capablanca, 1894 Lasker, 1931 Alekhine, and 1989 Karpov.
Originally posted by SupermanBased on what I've heard he seems to be the most naturally talented player, but not the best world champion; simply because he did not work hard enough.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3455
"Garry Kasparov in his set of books My Great Predecessors when commenting Capablanca's games speculates that Capablanca occasionally did not even bother to calculate deep tactical variations. The Cuban simply preferred to play moves that were clear and positionally so strongly justified that calculation of variations was simply not necessary."
Originally posted by chesskid001I used the rateing for a year from Chessmetrics. 1990 is given as Kasparov's strongest rateing performance for the time period of a year from January to December.
1990 Kasparov Even though Kasparov's rating was higher in 2000 at a world record 2851?