Steinitz as the best player of all time?

[Dr Adrian Harvey]

From the post 1840s onwards the international chess community has had a certain capacity for assessing the relative strength of the handful of players at the very top end of the ability range. Although the modern age has provided greater scope for the emergence and cultivation of chess genius, probably reflected in the growth of top quality players, it is my contention that the innate abilities of the top few players of any given era were similar to those from earlier and later periods. This assumption eliminates historical factors stemming from the persistent development of chess knowledge and theory which would inevitably inflate the standing of modern players. In my view greatness depends upon a champion's quality in relation to his contemporaries. Obviously this depends upon an infrastructure which enables true rivals to challenge the champion at reasonable intervals. This would seem to dilute the standing of Botwinnik, who received very favourable conditons, and Alekhine - Capablanca being deprived of a return match. Others, notably Morphy and Fischer, had very brief spells of supremacy and this compromises their standing. In my view Steinitz was the greatest player of all time because for a period of almost thirty years he defeated all his main rivals in matches.

[Roger de Coverly]

In my view Steinitz was the greatest player of all time because for a period of almost thirty years he defeated all his main rivals in matches.

Greatest as in most dominant perhaps, but surely not "best" as in strongest.


I don't know if anyone has tried, but you could try to get a handle on how strong (by modern standards) some of the old players were by using a variation on "Did they use a computer" testing. The idea is that that you analyse old games with a computer engine with a view to trying to score the strength of the players. You would calibrate it by repeating the process against the modern players. So If you got a calibration that Carlsen, Kasparov and Fischer were all at about 2500, but Steinitz came out at 2300, you would assert that Steinitz was the equivalent of a modern 2600 player - so ranked at around 100.

[Ola Winfridsson]

Interesting exercise! Personally, I've always thought Botvinnik underrated, even though he received favourable conditions which guaranteed a return match up to 1963. The restriction on the number of candidates from any one country was introduced too late to have any real benefit for him, and didn't really make much of a difference before the introduction of candidate matches when the draw sometimes ensured the Soviets knocked each other out in the quarters.

The reason I consider Botvinnik underrated was that he worked as an engineer for long periods which meant that he often was out of practice when he played his matches, for instance in his match with Bronstein in 1951. Whenever he worked hard on his chess he produced very good results.

My money would be on Lasker, Rubinstein (whose nervous system was broken by World War I, just like Nimzowitsch) or Capablanca. The 1910s would have been a very interesting decade for chess if the war hadn't come in the way.

[Geoff Chandler]

These threads are always interesting points of view.

The numbers have been run over the top players on a few sites.
ChessMetric appears one of the more in depth ones.

http://db.chessmetrics.com/CM2/Introduc ... 0000010100

Steintiz comes in the top 20 (usually over 2700) when they break
it down into years. 1,2,3,5,10 etc.

But when they take into consideration longevity, 20 years.
Steinitz does show in the top 100. (?).
(was this because he had periods when he did not play for 2-3 years?).

However, if you go another site you get different results.

So let's not allow the numbers to tell us who was the 'Best Player'.
Let their games do the talking.

If you twisted my arm to name my favourite game of chess then
it would have to be Steinitz v von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895.

A wonderful game.

It also has that dramatic 'walk away' moment by von Bardeleben which
research has shown may have been for an entirely different reason
than the 'sore losser' dig often quoted in books.

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extr ... leben.html

So: Steinitz as the best player of all time?

In my opinion. No. But he did play the greatest ever game.

[Dr Adrian Harvey]

Dear Geoff, Ola and Roger, Many thanks for replying. My letter originally appeared in BCM Vol 109 December 1989 552-3 and did not elicit any response. The second component in that letter was the following:

An interesting methodological approach to the question of who was the greatest player of all time was pioneered by David Hooper in Chess of April 1971 (vol 36 250-1). This involved directly comparing facets of games by top players from different eras. He demonstrated that in similar positions Zukertort found winning play which Alekhine later missed and that Larsen lost a drawn ending, a defeat Capablanca never suffered. Were it possible to isolate facets of the game - positional play in the middle game, combinations, endings etc, it may be possible to directly compare the responses which players make to a concrete situation. Naturally allowances must be made for a player's age, form, time limit etc, but this should apply to all statistics. It may also be remarked that although modern players have all the accretions and refinements of an extensive data base, many aspects of the game are so dependent upon a player's genius that they transcend this.

[Ola Winfridsson]

Dear Geoff, Ola and Roger, Many thanks for replying. My letter originally appeared in BCM Vol 109 December 1989 552-3 and did not elicit any response. The second component in that letter was the following:

An interesting methodological approach to the question of who was the greatest player of all time was pioneered by David Hooper in Chess of April 1971 (vol 36 250-1). This involved directly comparing facets of games by top players from different eras. He demonstrated that in similar positions Zukertort found winning play which Alekhine later missed and that Larsen lost a drawn ending, a defeat Capablanca never suffered. Were it possible to isolate facets of the game - positional play in the middle game, combinations, endings etc, it may be possible to directly compare the responses which players make to a concrete situation. Naturally allowances must be made for a player's age, form, time limit etc, but this should apply to all statistics. It may also be remarked that although modern players have all the accretions and refinements of an extensive data base, many aspects of the game are so dependent upon a player's genius that they transcend this.

Apologies for straying slightly off topic, but interestingly enough, David Hooper's original piece may have elicited a response of sorts from Bent Larsen! In the mid to late 1970s Larsen wrote a number of chess booklets in Danish as, I suppose, a way of easing beginners and moderate players into the art of studying chess more systemically. They covered various facets from openings to tactics, calculation of variations, endgames and so on. In one of them, "Praktiske slutspil" ("Practical Endgames") he shows an endgame where he Capablanca made several gross blunders, concluding with a tart observation along the lines of "Contrary to the generally accepted view, Capablanca did not play the endgame flawlessly."! I'll dig the book out next time I visit my parents to check the exact quote.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi

By coincidence this link was posted today on another site I'm a member of.

http://www.angelfire.com/nf/chess/players.html

A list of the worlds top ten chess players with a short explanation
as to why they are there.

Their top ten in order:

1. Capablanca
2. Kasparov
3. Botvinik
4. Steinitz
5. Alekhine
6. Karpov
7. Fischer
8. Larsen
9. Nezhmetdinov
10. Lasker

All the usual suspects bar Nezhmetdinov and Larsen.
They are usually replaced with Morphy, Petrosian, Tal, Bronstein....
The only real change is the order they get placed in.

Nezhmetdinov is a new one (to me anyway) to appear in a list of this nature.

Their reasoning:

" A wildcard in this list. Almost an unknown player but a tactical genius who
had a plus score against non other than Mikhail Tal (possibly the most attack
oriented and exciting world champion of them all).

His games vary from the tactically inspired to the totally incomprehensible.
His victories were frequently incredible but he lacked the support to reach
the summit of the chess world. He deserved to achieve so much more.

Until you have studied his games you cannot really hope to understand quite
how remarkable this man really was."

I first heard of Nezhmetdinov in one of Raymond Keene's better books,
Learn from the Grandmasters (that is possibly because he did not write most of it)

I managed to obtain a Russian copy of Nezhmetdinov's games long before
an English version appeared.
Yes, very good and inspiring, but better than Tal and Petrosian etc....?

Infact Tal appears to get a better write up than Nezhmetdinov in
Nezhmetdinov's reason for being on the list.

[Peter Rhodes]

That's a very interesting post Adrian.

I'm currently reading "...by learning from the champions" by Lars Bo Hansen. When you consider that each chess master was standing on the shoulders of his predecessors you realise that objective comparison must be very difficult, even using sites like dbmetrics.

It would be interesting if you could go a bit further in your definition of "greatness". There are so many different measurements I can think of just from the top of my head. I would be interested to know who else were contenders for this claim, and why in the end you settled on Steinitz.

Thanks,

Peter

[Matt Mackenzie]

Nezh was a glorious player on his day and I understand why so many love him (*that* game against Polu is reason enough) but one of the 10 best ever......???

No way

People always bring up his plus score v Tal, but lots of other Soviet GM's pwned him, and not just the WCs (Averbakh had a huge + score, for instance)

There is also what are euphemistically referred to as his "off board" problems - both self-inflicted (the drinking) and not (official anti Tatar prejudice)

He also lacked the strong nerves neccessary to be truly world class. Krogius in his 1970s chess psychology book gave a horrible example, when needing a point in the last round for a GM norm - with the white pieces against Damjanovic (a vastly inferior player who, however, *did* get the GM title) he completely and utterly went to bits from the opening stages. Truly tragic and heartbreaking

[James Coleman]

Hehe, I love your use of the word pwned in relation to historical chess figures

[Ben Purton]

I think Kramnik should make top 10 as the only person to beaten Kaspy. Kaspy is numero uno....Why I believe this. I think being able to go from non computer era to the computer era with such effect makes him the greatest in what was the biggest change in the history of chess.

Ben

[Dr Adrian Harvey]

Dear Peter, My definition is a bit reductive. So far as I am concerned the player who genuinely confronts all his most plausible challengers in match play for the longest period is the greatest. Naturally I am aware that such a definition is open to a great deal of his dispute but do think that it has a certain plausibility. With the greatest respect for some of the other personalities who have been mentioned I am inclined to contend that Steinitz basically was supreme for a much longer period of time, while they, like Morphy and Fischer, barely registered on the clock of chess history.

[Rob Thompson]

SO on that it seems as if it should be between Steinitz and Kasparov. No-one can say he didn't last a while

[Ola Winfridsson]

I think Kramnik should make top 10 as the only person to beaten Kaspy. Kaspy is numero uno....Why I believe this. I think being able to go from non computer era to the computer era with such effect makes him the greatest in what was the biggest change in the history of chess.

Ben

Kasparov is definitely one of the greatest, but I'm not sure it should be on the basis of having spanned the computer era. The way the Soviets worked at chess wasn't that much different from working with a chess database and analysis engine, and that facilitated the transition considerably. Furthermore, he was still a young man and in his prime as a player when the PC started to permeat everyday life, so getting used to working with a computer was probably quite easy for him (as opposed to Karpov who was 12 years his senior and already on a downward slope from the early 90s), just as it was for the next generation of Anand, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Kamsky and Kramnik.

For me Kasparov's real greatness lay in his meticulous preparations (both before and after the advent of the computer era), extremely professional attitude and his astonishing ability to steer the game into dynamic waters. However, his weaknesses - immense stubbornness (not always good in chess!) and impatience in static positions - were ruthlessly exposed in his match versus Kramnik.

[Anthony Taglione]

The Wiki has an interesting piece on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparing_ ... ut_history