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| Jun-24-12 | | The Rocket: <"So if Smyslov was the best player in the world in the fifties ( according to Botvinnik )"> So botvinnik concidered Smyslov to be better than himself? I have always thought of them as equal |
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Jun-24-12
 | | HeMateMe: Perhaps one can be the best player, but not world champion, because they cannot beat the incumbent in a long match? I guess that would mean that world champion is defined by two measures, 1) tournament record and rating, 2) best match player. |
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| Jun-24-12 | | RookFile: Only problem is that Reshevsky was better than both of them in the 1950's. |
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| Jun-25-12 | | The Rocket: Reshevsky was a brilliant player! Botvinnik looked very solid, rarely made a fool of himself, but he sometimes appeared to be asleep tactically like in this game: Botvinnik vs Geller, 1969
The threats in the position are fairly easy to spot in my opinion. Similiar to Capablanca he sometimes faulted with the tactics. Capablanca vs Alekhine, 1927
Botvinniks loss procentage during the world-championship eras seemed to be very low, similiar to capa so in that respect I guess you still need to count him on the top lists. |
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| Jun-26-12 | | RookFile: I have no problem with saying that Botvinnik was better than Reshevsky in 1948 and other years. It is a simple fact that he got busy with work at some point in the 1950's, and his strength declined. Not that he couldn't get it together again with enough practice, but you have to say that Reshevsky was stronger at certain periods while this was going on. Smyslov was still getting his seasoning until later in the 1950's. |
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Jun-26-12
 | | Eggman: <<It is a simple fact that (Botvinnik) got busy with work at some point in the 1950's, and his strength declined. Not that he couldn't get it together again with enough practice, but you have to say that Reshevsky was stronger at certain periods while this was going on. >> Meanwhile Reshevsky was holding down a full time job in order to support his family. |
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| Jun-26-12 | | King Death: < RookFile: Only problem is that Reshevsky was better than both of them in the 1950's.> We've heard chapter and verse on your silly claims that Reshevsky was stronger than Botvinnik back then (for those that don't know, it's all because of what happened in the 1955 USSR-USA match. This poster claims that because of that result Reshevsky would have won in a best of 24 the same way). I'm just curious to see what the evidence is to support the claim that Reshevsky was stronger than Smyslov. After their first game in 1939 Reshevsky didn't win another one against Smyslov until 1970. Maybe I should explain that this is what we could call a pretty long gap. You still got excuses, sport? |
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| Jun-26-12 | | King Death: < RookFile: I have no problem with saying that Botvinnik was better than Reshevsky in 1948 and other years...> There's only a ton of evidence to support the belief that Botvinnik was
the strongest players in the 40s and it's real nice of you to own up. <...It is a simple fact that he got busy with work at some point in the 1950's, and his strength declined...> In spite of Botvinnik's understanding he may have lost a little because by the 1950s he was in his 40s. <... Smyslov was still getting his seasoning until later in the 1950's.> Yeah, the fish couldn't play, he was "getting his seasoning" long before that when Botvinnik whaled on him in the 1940s. Smyslov was still "getting his seasoning" in the 50s when he won back to back Candidates tournaments against the best players in the world. Except that "weakie" Botvinnik that he finally beat for the title. Of course that only happened after he "got enough seasoning". |
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| Jun-28-12 | | RookFile: One of Reshevsky's books actually says that he retired from the game at some point in the late 1940's or 50's. Of course, this didn't last long, and he want on to play for another 40 years or so! Some tournament wins included New York 1951, Havana 1952, New York 1956, Dallas 1957 and Haifa/Tel Aviv in 1958. Match wins in the 1950's included two match wins over Najdorf for the "championship of the western world", a match win over Gligoric, a match win over Lombardy, a match win over Donald Byrne, and match win over Bisquier and one over Pal Benko (1960). By way of contrast:
"Though ranking as formal World Champion, Botvinnik had a relatively poor playing record in the early 1950s: he played no formal competitive games after winning the 1948 match tournament until he defended his title, then struggled to draw his 1951 championship match with Bronstein, placed only fifth in the 1951 Soviet Championship, and tied for third in the 1952 Géza Maróczy Memorial tournament in Budapest; and he had also performed poorly in Soviet training contests. Botvinnik did not play in the Soviet team that won the 1952 Chess Olympiad in Helsinki: the players voted for the line-up and placed Botvinnik on second board, with Keres on top board; Botvinnik protested and refused to play." Smyslov also had an excellent record in the 1950's - 2nd at Venice 1950, 3rd at Budapest 1952, 3rd at Zucharest 1953, 1st Hastings 1955, 1st Zabreb 1955, 1 Moscow 1956 - tied 1st 1955 USSR championship - to say nothing of winning the Candidates and a world championship match against Botvinnik himself. |
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| Aug-28-12 | | Everett: <RookFile: Only problem is that Reshevsky was better than both of them in the 1950's.> Maybe, maybe not. But what does it matter if he couldn't get past Bronstein? http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches... |
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Aug-28-12
 | | harrylime: The Commies snuffed Reshevsky's flame out. |
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| Sep-10-12 | | Everett: I think Petrosian also had the capacity to play great chess in his later years, even a year or two before he passed away. The thing that separates Smyslov, Lasker, Korchnoi, Botvinnik etc., from the others is that they were still willing to work, still willing to study and fight. Portisch was also quite good for some time, and this largely had to do with his work. Even Larsen stayed quite strong through the 70's due to a capacity to work. His attention to the accelerated-dragon and Benoni systems paid off well during this time. In contrast, Karpov, for example, has a skill set and a sense of style similar to Smyslov's, yet once he started calculating less accurately, everything blew up... and the reason is because he never worked like the others, never took up the computer as a study tool, which is crazy for a young person in this game nowadays, much less someone who is slowing down in calculation accuracy. Smyslov was creating studies and working on opening systems through the 80's, including his own lines vs the KID. |
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| Nov-27-12 | | drnooo: pretty amazing smyslov lost only four games with the lopez till 1965 while
winning close to 20 you could use it
almost as a graph of his finally starting to fade till 1965 he was
almost unbeatable with it |
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Jan-02-13
 | | andrewjsacks: A pet peeve of mine: The dominance of Botvinnik, Mr. Return Match. Pick a year beginning in 1950, and he was not the world's best player. Maybe tied for first, maybe second or third... |
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Jan-02-13
| | andrewjsacks: Smyslov is the most under-appreciated WC. |
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| Jan-21-13 | | Tigranny: <andrewjsacks> I agree. It's definitely unfair to not put his immortal against Botvinnik and a few other games into a collection of awesome chess games. |
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| Jan-30-13 | | madlydeeply: The Smyslov Screw! ha!
http://www.yes2chess.com/chess_hist... |
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Jan-30-13
 | | waustad: <everett>Karpov has a lot of other fish to fry. It is true that his playing strength slipped more than some others, in part because time became more his enemy than his friend (from what I've read), but he is involved in so many other things that studying chess isn't quite the priority that it once was. Smyslov was still interested in playing for the championship in his 60s, but Karpov is involved in politics and business ventures and mostly plays exhibition chess now. Another player who excelled late, Lasker returned to serious chess because he lost his money when the Weimar Republic inflation destroyed his savings. I don't think it was by choice. |
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Jan-30-13
| | waustad: BTW, don't get me wrong - I love the elegance of Smyslov games. He is a favorite, but Karpov is almost my age and I can see having different priorities now. |
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Feb-15-13
 | | cro777: The Candidates' Tournament Zurich 1953 (the last qualification step for the 1954 world championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik), won by Vassily Smyslov, is still "rightly remembered as one of the magical moments in the history of chess: one of the most illustrious and fertile tournaments ever held. The field comprised the entire elite of the day (except, of course, Botvinnik), and the 15 grandmasters faced each other in a grueling double round robin, spanning two full months in mid and late summer 1953." (Excerpt from «The Zurich Chess Club, 1809 - 2009» by Richard Forster) The Zurich Chess Challenge 2013 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the legendary Candidates' Tournament. The World Champion Viswanathan Anand, his most recent challenger Boris Gelfand, the former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and the young star Fabiano Caruana will be competing in a double round-robin tournament from 23 February to 1 March. The games will be played with a classical time-control. In case of a draw before move 40, an additional exhibition game will be played (result not counting). |
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Feb-18-13
| | HeMateMe: On the website chess cafe, Jeremy Silman sometimes gives ratings/opinions of chess books. He was looking at Smyslov's <Endgame Virtuoso>, and talked about his game against Smyslov at Lone Pine, in the 70s. He said, paraphrasing: "Smyslov just rolled me off the board. He never sat down. He just stood to make his moves, like he was playing a simul." Silman was rated about 2400--2450 at the time, I think. Maybe a little higher. I can see why a world champion would not be much interested, but it was kind of rude to just stand there. That said, Silman went on to give the book a mediocre rating. Not sure if he was influenced or not by VS's OTB behavior. I'm sure Kasparov has been worse, to read the comments from other chessplayers. |
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Feb-18-13
 | | Honza Cervenka: < HeMateMe: On the website chess cafe, Jeremy Silman sometimes gives ratings/opinions of chess books. He was looking at Smyslov's <Endgame Virtuoso>, and talked about his game against Smyslov at Lone Pine, in the 70s. He said, paraphrasing: "Smyslov just rolled me off the board. He never sat down. He just stood to make his moves, like he was playing a simul."> I guess it was this game: Silman vs Smyslov, 1976 |
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Mar-24-13
 | | Richard Taylor: Smyslov was possibly the greatest of the mid-twentieth Century chess players. But he was far more than and endgame virtuoso he played some great combinations and beautiful thematic
and strategical masterpieces. His best games are some of the best ever played. Botvnnik was perhaps more consistent over all, but Smyslov (and Botvinnik for that matter) has been hugely underestimated in the absurd hype and nonsense surrounding Fischer and Tal. |
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| Mar-24-13 | | Everett: <waustad: <everett>Karpov has a lot of other fish to fry. It is true that his playing strength slipped more than some others, in part because time became more his enemy than his friend (from what I've read), but he is involved in so many other things that studying chess isn't quite the priority that it once was. Smyslov was still interested in playing for the championship in his 60s, but Karpov is involved in politics and business ventures and mostly plays exhibition chess now. Another player who excelled late, Lasker returned to serious chess because he lost his money when the Weimar Republic inflation destroyed his savings. I don't think it was by choice.> I agree, of course. Karpov was not willing to work at chess after his natural gift and early work started to wane. You have sited the good reasons why he didn't keep it up as much as Smyslov and others did in their later years. Nothing wrong with this! |
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| Mar-24-13 | | Everett: Lars Bo Hansen had a book about chess styles, creating four main kinds of chess players. He called them strategists (Botvinnik and Kramnik) Activists (Bronstein and Anand), Pragmatists (Fischer and Kasparov) and Reflectors (Capablanca, Smyslov, Karpov, and now Carlsen). Using this as a rough guideline, we can see a straight "family" tree: Capablanca-Smyslov-Karpov-Carlsen (intuitives, natural endgame sangfroid, positional pressure, very confident with defensive skills and grinds, occasional weakness is indifferent study of the openings, also too quick to enter the endgame - in later years) |
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