Steinitz as the best player of all time?

[Keith Arkell]

1) Chessmetrics and any other system of ratings comparrison works well for comparing contemporaries,but fails woefully when it comes to comparing players across generations.

2) Computer testing of moves:
Good idea in principle,but may depend on style,and level of opposition(I think that it is far easier to find an equal best move in a Capablanca game against somebody who isn't offering much resistance than it is to find,say,an equal best move in a dynamic Shirov position against Ivanchuk).So we are left with a kind of circular argument - viz:the weaker the opponent,the easier it is to score well in this kind of testing;or put differently,Ivanchuk would pose more difficult problems to solve than eg Marshal would.I'm going to pull rank a bit here and say that by my judgement the actual quality of chess played was drastically weaker the further back we go.This is natural of course!

3) Length of time at the top,or as World Champion;and dominance over main rivals:
My feeling here is that today there are 1000+players who are extremely strong and dedicated to chess.The world number 200 would be expected to score about 25% against the world number 1.So it is more tightly packed at the top.Because of this it is obviously much more impressive to be number one for a given amount of time today than it was in Steinitz' time.
In other words,to say that steinitz was the greatest on account of the fact that he was so far ahead of his rivals isn't really fair.I don't know the exact stats on this of course,but I find it hard to believe that he had to deal with 1000 dedicated players actively playing tournaments and striving to become as strong as possible,nor that there was in those days a pool of 300 million chess players from which this cream emerged.

My own feeling is that Morphy had an understanding of chess that was so far ahead of his time,in a way not seen before or since,that I make him the greatest by some margin.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Er, surely there are not 300 million chessplayers in the world today?

But I agree on Steinitz. Of course with no world chess federation, and no infrastructure, and with major rivals deriving their income from gambling in London cafes, etc it was possible to argue in those days that one had been the best player for thirty years. Such an achievement must be put into that context.

If - dubiously - one does want to make an argument for "the greatest" in terms of longevity, then Lasker, Botvinnik, Kasparov and even Karpov would have at all least equally good claims (and of course, better claims on various other criteria too).

[Matt Mackenzie]

The evidence is admittedly scanty, but it could be claimed that Philidor was maybe even further ahead of his peers than Morphy was. IIRC Larsen, amongst others, believed so........

[Keith Arkell]

Er, surely there are not 300 million chessplayers in the world today?

I'm only quoting FIDE Jonathan;and for example the internet is full of extracts such as:
''If the London Chess Classic goes well, Mr. Pein hopes to bring the world championship to Britain in 2012, a prospect that would allow a sport played by an estimated 300 million people to move a step closer to fulfilling its vast potential.''
Presumably though the figure includes rather a large number of beginners.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Guys

Re; Number of chess players on the planet.

Lifted this from;

http://answers.google.com/answers/threa ... 00236.html

The number of people worldwide that know how to play chess
An estimated 600 to 700 million people worldwide know how to play chess

Today more than 285 million people play chess with other chess
players from all over the world, via the internet. It is estimated 605
million people worldwide know how to play chess. Of these 7.5 million
are registered players, covering 160 countries worldwide. Making chess
one of the most popular sports around the world.?

Official Worldwide Chess Campaign 2006
http://www.turowski.com/chess/world2005.html

According to Grandmaster Susan Polgar, four-time women?s world chess
champion, there are now over 700 million chess players worldwide,
making chess one of the most popular sports around the world.

Monroi
http://www.monroi.com/products/letterFOR.php

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) estimates that there are 600
million chess players in the world.?
Off the Wall Chess Quiz by Bill Wall (Jan 13, 2005)

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... 8/quiz.txt

[James Coleman]

Regardless of the actual stats - his claim that around 40% or so of the total number of people who actually know the bare rules of chess, play chess online, doesn't really add up I don't think!

[Dr Adrian Harvey]

My contention concerning Steinitz's greatness was essentially based on the fact that during the period when he was supreme there was a fairly good structure for enabling the top players to compete with one another (by contrast in Philidor's day there was nothing really) and Steinitz embraced matches against his chief rivals. Naturally the number of top quality players active today is substantially larger than in Steinitz's time, though I am inclined to think that my contention that the innate abilities of the very top few players was similar, has a certain plausibility. As far as I was concerned Steinitz's greatness depended on his standing relative to these people. Of course, as the very interesting letters this contention has excited, shows this is a very narrow approach. The chess world now is a much bigger place than in Steinitz's day but is it true to say that the number of top ranked players who can be regarded plausibly as major candidates for the World championship has expanded relative to the nineteenth century? Steinitz had a number of plausible rivals, notably Anderssen, Zukertort, Chigorin and Lasker. How do people think that the scene from 1980 to the present day compares?

[Roger de Coverly]

How do people think that the scene from 1980 to the present day compares?

A quick check of the chessmetrics site shows that at his peak rating, Steinitz was 200 points above the second ranked player. It's best to view the chessmetrics numbers as essentially normalised so that the top player in any era is always around 2800 regardless of the quality of their play.

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

Compare that to today, where more than the top 100 are within 200 points of the number one, who is less than 10 above the number 2.

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men

Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov all had a wide margin to the second rated player at various times in their careers, as big as 200 though ?

[Keith Arkell]

I think that's spot on Roger.In fact there are nearly 200 players within 200 points of the World Champion(or let's say 2800)today,hence my assertion that even the number 200 would expect to score 25% against the number 1.

I'm not sure what we are trying to prove here though.I mean,if say Steinitz's top 5 rivals were shown to be close in strength to him,does he then get brownie points or does he not get brownie points? I mean,on the one hand it would show that things were just as tough back then(unlikely) but on the other hand it would show that he wasn't head and shoulders above his contemporaries!
What we would need to prove,to declare Steinitz as undisputed number 1,would be that his rivals were as strong - err ok not as strong obviously,but let's say as talented,having taken into consideration rising standards,as todays challengers,and yet still he was head and shoulders above them,more so than the top dog of any other era.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi James.

I too am not convinced with that 40% bench mark.

If they achieved that figure by looking at all the chess
playing sites and adding up the members then it is obviously false.

I am a member of 4 playing sites so I have been counted 4 times.
I'm sure many others reading this are joint members of playing sites.

Re: Steinitz.
Interesting debate. I see someone went back to Philidor, I'm sure if we
keep going back we will up with the 16th century Spanish Nobleman in the
Spanish court who re-invented the game we now play.
They were without a shadow of doubt the best players of their day.
(they were only people playing it!).

Cannot put Steinitz as the best Chess player of all time but he did
contibute more than anyone else to the theory and evolution of the game.

(Barring of course the Spanish lads. Turning a one square moving Queen
into a Rook and Bishop combined was a pretty radical step).