Warriors of the Mind

[Roger de Coverly]

A well known blog reports as follows

I received news this afternoon of the death on Saturday evening of Professor Nathan Divinsky, the Canadian mathematician and chess lover. Born on 29 October 1925, he was thus in his 87th year.

What does the verdict of time say about his best known chess work, "Warriors of the Mind"? In it, he tried to rank the world's historic best, as seen from a 1989 perspective. I think it had a bias in favour of players with short careers or those that had just started their career.
The top ten was

Garry Kasparov
Anatoly Karpov
Bobby Fischer
Mikhail Botvinnik
José Raúl Capablanca
Emanuel Lasker
Viktor Korchnoi
Boris Spassky
Vasily Smyslov
Tigran Petrosian

Note the exclusion of Alekhine who was somewhere lower down near twentieth. The sixty four players included one or two who didn't make much of an impact after the book. If you say Sokolov, these days you think of the Dutch Bosnian GM, Ivan. In the book it was Andre, whose claim to fame was winning a Candidates' series and then losing a match to Karpov.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Why not just link to the blog in question?

http://stevegiddinschessblog.blogspot.c ... lover.html

PS. Who is the co-author referred to?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Three guesses, Chris

Without ever wishing to speak ill of the dead, I am afraid my own view of said book greatly resembles that of E G Winter Esq.......

Putting Alekhine 19th (?) wasn't even funny - but one thing I vaguely recall reading recently is that the *original* "ratings" had him even lower, and Sokolov (as you say Roger, which one?) fourth or something similar

No further comment.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Three guesses, Chris

Without ever wishing to speak ill of the dead, I am afraid my own view of said book greatly resembles that of E G Winter Esq.......

Putting Alekhine 19th (?) wasn't even funny - but one thing I vaguely recall reading recently is that the *original* "ratings" had him even lower, and Sokolov (as you say Roger, which one?) fourth or something similar

No further comment.

Ah, Raymond Keene.

Does anyone know of a reliable source (i.e. not a blog) confirming Divinsky's death? The Wikipedia article hasn't been updated yet, and something like a newspaper obituary would be best:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Divinsky

I see his ex-wife became prime minister of Canada! I presume Canadian newspapers may be carrying obituaries.

[Ian Kingston]

Why not just link to the blog in question?

http://stevegiddinschessblog.blogspot.c ... lover.html

PS. Who is the co-author referred to?

The co-author was Ray Keene. Not credited on the title page, but responsible for much of the mathematics, was a colleague of Divinsky's, Harry Joe.

The bulk of the text was a typical cut-and-paste effort by Keene. Reviews tended to focus on Alekhine's low ranking. I suspect that most reviewers didn't understand the ideas behind the mathematics, so treated Alekhine's result as proof that the book's ideas were flawed. Some objections could certainly be raised - only 11 games by Morphy were considered, so it is possible that the overall result was sensitive to those. Other aspects of the methodology are also of questionable validity - but questionable does not necessarily mean wrong. Joe's results were published in a peer-reviewed journal (Joe, H. (1990). Extended use of paired comparison models, with application to chess rankings. Applied Statist., 39, 85-93), but I have no idea how they were received in the statistical community.

I met Divinsky on a couple of occasions in the late 1980s, while he was writing the similarly ill-received Batsford Encyclopaedia of Chess - a book that was written in a hurry and rushed to market. He was a tremendously enthusiastic fan of the game and excellent company.

(Mostly written from memory - if I have any details wrong I'm sure I'll be corrected.)

[IanDavis]

Does anyone know of a reliable source (i.e. not a blog) confirming Divinsky's death? The Wikipedia article hasn't been updated yet, and something like a newspaper obituary would be best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Divinsky
.

Yes, it is always good to have actual confirmation, before announcing somebody died. Another dubious source, which not even worksafe, is http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com . If it's true you'd expect it to pop up in the newspapers this week.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Does anyone know of a reliable source (i.e. not a blog) confirming Divinsky's death? The Wikipedia article hasn't been updated yet, and something like a newspaper obituary would be best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Divinsky
.

Yes, it is always good to have actual confirmation, before announcing somebody died. Another dubious source, which not even worksafe, is http://kevinspraggett.blogspot.com . If it's true you'd expect it to pop up in the newspapers this week.

I'm not disputing that the news is true. I was just looking for a more official and permanent record (blogs have a tendency to vanish after a while). I'm sure it will be recorded in various printed chess magazines in due course, and some of the chess 'news' sites would also be sufficient.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Does anyone know of a reliable source (i.e. not a blog) confirming Divinsky's death?

Blogs unreliable? Tsk.

Anyhoo, Ray Keene announced the news on twitter.

Ray's feed very much worth a follow - lots of stuff appears there first.

[John McKenna]

"... seagulls follow the trawler..." (Eric Cantona)

[Kevin Thurlow]

I met Mr Divinsky at a press conference somewhere in London and found him very affable. I do recall being at Hastings (I think) where the book was being announced. Someone asked about Nigel Short's ranking and Ray Keene said that the book considered Nigel the 24th(?) best player in history, and Nigel said fairly loudly, "What number's Keene?", which caused some amusement in the crowd. This was before Nigel's World Championship Match, so I presume if the exercise were repeated for some reason, he might have gone up a bit... The trouble with such projects is that it is all a matter of opinion and you cannot possibly publish the "right" answer.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Where would people place the world's current top players in a list of the top 20 players of all time?

[Roger de Coverly]

Working from the current top 20, I think you would include World Champions, so that brings in Kramnik and Anand and perhaps Topalov. Future world champions could bring in Carlsen and Aronian. For longevity and originality, then Ivanchuk and Morozevich. Outside the current top 20, Judit Polgar.

That's actually 8. Taking the original top 10 from the book and adding back Euwe and Alekhine gives twenty. Trying to do as the original book did and constructing a ranking order by working out ratings on games the contenders played against one another is always going to give suspect results because it ignores the problem of strength fading with time.

The 11th, 12th world champions were rated a long way above their challengers in their years of dominance. The 13th was only tested by the 12th. We are now back to the Botvinnik era, where the world champion was not rated much above his nearest rivals, first among equals, as they said then.

Code: Select all

Rank	Name	             Title	Country Rating Games B-Year
 1	 Carlsen, Magnus	        g	 NOR	 2835	 0	 1990
 2	 Aronian, Levon	         g	 ARM	 2825	 3	 1982
 3	 Kramnik, Vladimir	      g	 RUS	 2801	 0	 1975
 4	 Anand, Viswanathan	     g	 IND	 2791	 4	 1969
 5	 Radjabov, Teimour	      g	 AZE	 2784	 0	 1987
 6	 Karjakin, Sergey	       g	 RUS	 2779	 7	 1990
 7	 Nakamura, Hikaru	       g	 USA	 2775	 5	 1987
 8	 Caruana, Fabiano	       g	 ITA	 2770	 26	 1992
 9	 Morozevich, Alexander	  g	 RUS	 2769	 7	 1977
 10	 Ivanchuk, Vassily	     g	 UKR	 2764	 0	 1969
 11	 Grischuk, Alexander	   g	 RUS	 2761	 0	 1983
 12	 Topalov, Veselin	      g	 BUL	 2752	 0	 1975
 13	 Svidler, Peter	        g	 RUS	 2741	 12	 1976
 14	 Kamsky, Gata	          g	 USA	 2741	 0	 1974
 15	 Tomashevsky, Evgeny	   g	 RUS	 2738	 6	 1987
 16	 Wang, Hao	             g	 CHN	 2738	 6	 1989
 17	 Gashimov, Vugar	       g	 AZE	 2737	 5	 1986
 18	 Jakovenko, Dmitry	     g	 RUS	 2736	 17	 1983
 19	 Adams, Michael	        g	 ENG	 2728	 9	 1971
 20	 Gelfand, Boris	        g	 ISR	 2727	 0	 1968

[John McKenna]

Code: Select all

1. G. Kasparov     2851 (peak)
2. R. Fischer        2785 (peak)
3. A. Karpov        2780 (peak)
4. J. Capablanca  2725 (best 5-yr av.)
5. M. Botvinnik     2720 ( "     av.)
6. E. Lasker            "   ( "     av.)
7. M. Tal             2700 ( "     av.)
8. V. Korchnoi      2695 (peak)
9. A Alekhine       2690 (best  av.)
0. P. Morphy        2690 (peak)
1. V. Smyslov       2690 (best av.)
2. B. Spasski        2680 (  "    av.)
3. T. Petrosian        "    (  "    av.)
4. S. Reshevski       "    (  "     av.)
5. P. Keres           2670 ( "     av.)
6. D. Bronstein        "    (  "     av.)
7. R. Fine             2660 ( "     av.)
8. E Geller            2655 (  "     av.)
9. W. Steinitz       2650 ( "      av.)
0. M. Euwe             "    (  "     av.)                

[John McKenna]

The list in the post above is based on work done by A. Elo on the question of the top 20 players up to 1978. I've taken the liberty of adding Kasparov & Karpov as they are the two oustanding players immediately following Fischer, who was top of the list.
Add Kramnik, Anand, Carlsen, Aronian, Ivanchuk & Topalov to it from Roger's current top 20 and it's difficult to think of any missing player of equivalent strength. Though a name like Beliavski or Yusupov could be included at the expense of Euwe, perhaps.

[John McKenna]

Some long-lived stars, like Rubinstein (2640 best 5-yr. av.), just fail to make it, as do modern meteors like the above-mentioned Andrei Sokolov (peak 2645). Born 1963, he had a good decade - 1981 Moscow Champ, 1982 World U-20 Champ (IM title & 2450 rating), 1984 USSR Champ (GM & 2550), 1985 Candidates tournament 1st= (with Yusupov & Vaganian), matches 1986 - defeated Vaganian 6-2 & Yusupov 7.5-6.5, 1987 lost final 3.5-7.5 to Karpov. 1988 World Cup series +1,-1 with both Ks. 1990 Moscow Op 1st ahead of Tal.