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Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:48 pm
by 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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:57 pm
by 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?
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:09 pm
by 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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:24 pm
by Christopher Kreuzer
Matt Mackenzie wrote: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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:40 pm
by Ian Kingston
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.)
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:22 pm
by IanDavis
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:38 pm
by Christopher Kreuzer
IanDavis wrote:Christopher Kreuzer wrote: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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:27 pm
by Jonathan Bryant
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:40 pm
by John McKenna
"... seagulls follow the trawler..." (Eric Cantona)
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 12:27 pm
by 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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:40 am
by Christopher Kreuzer
Where would people place the world's current top players in a list of the top 20 players of all time?
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:11 pm
by 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
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:13 pm
by 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.)
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:15 pm
by 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.
Re: Warriors of the Mind
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:55 pm
by 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.