"The old dogmas, such as the ossified teaching on the center, the worship of the open game, and in general the whole formalistic conception of the game, who bothers himself today about any of these?"

-- Aaron Nimzowitsch

Here is a 1st link where you can find some more details, scroll down 3/4 to <Saturday, October 06, 2007 The Test of Time: Comparing the Relative Strength of Historic versus Leading Chess GM's of Today>

Personally, I don't think there is any need for chess masters to study the development of chess, any more than it is necessary for astronomers to study Ptolemy or medical students to study Galen. What is useful in old games and books is captured in modern games and (good) books, and what is useless (and there is a lot of stuff in old books that is useless or just plain wrong) is discarded.

Game 1 Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910: is weighted at <0> (no blunders or bad moves by either Schlechter or Lasker).

Game 2 Lasker vs Schlechter, 1910: is weighted at <0>, representing 0 bad move and 0 blunders by Lasker, and 0 bad moves and 0 blunders by Schlechter.

Game 3 Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910: is weighted at <0>, representing no errors, blunders, or dubious moves by either Schlechter or Lasker.

Game 4 Lasker vs Schlechter, 1910: weighting is <5.0>, (no bad moves and 1 blunder by Lasker and 1 bad move and 1 blunder by Schlechter; no dubious moves by either player.

Game 5 Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910: is weighted at <6.5> representing <<1 blunder (2.0) plus 1 dubious move (0.5)>> by Schlechter plus <<2 blunders (2 x 2.0 = 4.0)>> by Lasker.

Game 6 Lasker vs Schlechter, 1910: is weighted at <1.0> representing <<1 dubious move>> (0.5) by Schlechter plus <<1 dubious move>> (0.5) by Lasker.

Game 7 Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910: is weighted at <1>, representing 1 bad move and 0 blunders by Lasker, and 0 bad moves and 0 blunders by Schlechter.

Game 8 Lasker vs Schlechter, 1910: the error weighting for this game is <0>.

In comparisons, here is a summary of the analysis of four games from the Kramnik vs Anand, 2008

Game 1 Kramnik vs Anand, 2008: is weighted <0> at representing 0 blunders, 0 bad moves, and 0 dubious moves by both Anand or Kramnik.

Game 2 Anand vs Kramnik, 2008: is weighted at <3.0>, representing 0 blunders, 1 bad move, and 1 dubious move by Anand, and 0 blunders, 1 bad move and 1 dubious move by Kramnik.

Game 3 Kramnik vs Anand, 2008: weighting is <6.5>, representing <<1 blunder>> by Anand and <<2 blunders>> and <<1 dubious move>> by Kramnik.

Game 5 Kramnik vs Anand, 2008: is weighted at <2.5> representing a <<1 dubious move>> (0.5) plus <<1 blunder>> (2.0) by Kramnik>. Anand made no blunders, or bad or dubious moves as defined in the project method.

If Shredder were alive, he would probably say that Lasker and Schlechter were pretty good chess players.

<Karpova>

Interesting project, but I think there are some serious shortcomings.

<* a <blunder> is defined:

(a) as a losing move, ie: a move that shifts the position evaluation to greater than 1.40 or 1.40 , regardless of the proximate change in evaluation

(b) as a move that costs a win, ie: a move that shifts the position evaluation from greater than 1.40 or 1.40 , to below 1.40 or 1.40 , regardless of the proximate change in evaluation

(c) as a move that causes an engine evaluation shift of greater than 1.20, unless the game is a forced loss and the side with the superior position does not make a blunder that reduces the game position to below 1.40. Similarly, the loser in a position which is a forced loss will not be penalized for suicidal moves.>

This means that a move that changes the evaluation from 1.40 to 1.39 is considered a blunder.

Furthermore, this method fails to take into account the complexity of the position (as more recent studies such as that by Guid and Bratko, and here by <nimh>).

<* a <bad move> or an <error> is defined as a move that causes an engine evaluation shift of between 0.80 and 1.20 with the same caveat that applies to a <blunder>.

* each bad move adds 1 to a game's weighting.

* successive moves or short sequences of moves that accumulate an evaluation shift equivalent to a bad move may be deemed a <bad move> or an <error> if they are considered instrumental in causing a game loss, or could reasonably be expected to result in game loss.>

<This means that a move that changes the evaluation from 1.40 to 1.39 is considered a blunder.>

Please see all the discussions in Bridgeburner chessforum for details. It already amounts to several pages, and might take some reading.

There has to be a rigidly defined criterion for blunders, errors, and dubious moves, that is applicable to all the games.

;)

I was bitten by the hypermodernism bug early and apparently (after 40+ years) there is no cure. But I have been convinced for many of those years if I had studied Tarrasch's 300 Chess Games as much as I studied Chess Praxis I would have made master level instead of expert level.

I know that, but from my own experience, some such measure has to be incorporated. Game quality alone is not enough, for the simple reason that it is easier to avoid blunders against a weaker opponent.

<There has to be a rigidly defined criterion for blunders, errors, and dubious moves, that is applicable to all the games.>

On the contrary, in my experience, when I was active a long time ago, I played riskier when faced with a weaker opponent and tended to make more errors, taking liberties in order to maximize my winning chances. It was 'easier' to make errors against them. On the other hand, I tried to play very solidly against opponents who were strong, and probably committed less errors then. I have heard the same of many other competitive chess players.

Whatever criteria that has to be applied has to be applied uniformly for all the games, and be as objective as possible. <Difficulty> is very subjective. It's even more subjective than pain; and I know very well how subjective pain can be, as I do Neuro examinations everyday, which requires pain stimulation in stuporous and comatose people. Making <difficulty> into a criterion makes a study inaccurate, and worse, biased. But you know all of my opinions by now.

<Naturally. I just don't think those are very good ones.>

What would you suggest then? If a study is to be a valid scientific study, it has to be a replicable experiment, and the only way to do that is to create rigidly defined criteria for blunders, errors, and dubious moves.

In my own games I often have the impression that some positions have various options, of which one's no doubt the Rybka move, but others improve the position and many others don't throw away the advantage. Take, for example, an endgame in which my advantage rests on a supported passed pawn. It may be that I have a dozen moves, none of which changes the eval by very much, because if I make the fifth best move I've still got that pawn. But in sharper positions, maybe my opponent's on the attack, or I've sacrificed for my attack, and if I don't find the exact move I'm shot. It may be for this reason that you'll find less blunders - moves shooting down your eval - by Capablanca than by Alekhine, for instance. How many blunders? may depend on type of chess played, as well as skill. The obvious test of this is to see whether people made more "blunders" when facing Alekhine than they did against Capablanca: I suspect we'll find they did.

I understand your opinion. Yet my answer is I do not think so. The rules of chess are the same. Take any random chess position deep in the middlegame or anywhere in the endgame from any era, and you would not even know from which era it came from.

The experiment above of comparing the very top masters in a World Championship match between different eras was designed intentionally to clear such matters. The analysis with Shredder is not an opinion, but a replicable experiment.

You may not fully realize what I am talking about until you yourself go through all the detailed analysis of all the first 8 games above of the Lasker vs Schlechter 1910 World Championship match. Then you will see, they were setting each other problems as devilishly hard as any that Shirov could today devise.

Regarding interesting World Championship games, I am a fan of both Anand and Kramnik, yet I will be the first to say that Lasker and Schlechter played at least as interestingly in the 1910 match as Anand and Kramnik in their 2008 match.

In particular take a close look at game 7 Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910

This game beats any that the 2008 match produced in terms of excitement and difficulty IMO.

Or think through the analysis in game 5:

Schlechter vs Lasker, 1910

Lasker set up very difficult problems for Schlechter in the middlegame. In turn Schlechter set up even more difficult problems for Lasker; which the latter was not able to solve. There is absolutely no doubt they were psyching out each other, throwing every problem reasonably possible at each other.

<Take, for example, an endgame in which my advantage rests on a supported passed pawn.>

I was just kibitzing on such an endgame in the Karjakin vs Anand, 2010 game page. Anand made a decision not to play out the endgame, and I believe it was a wise decision.

Yet Capablanca, way back in 1915, did play out such an endgame, and shows how to maximize chances of winning it by throwing all sorts of problems on his opponent.

J Bernstein vs Capablanca, 1915

In fact, there virtually is no tactic that is used in today's games that were not used before by the top masters. For example, there are lots of praises for this game by Kasparov as the quintessence of the exchange sacrifice.

Kasparov vs Shirov, 1994

It is indeed a brilliant game. Then I noticed that some kibitzers ignorant of pre-WW1 top master games started saying that this game represents something novel, raising chess to a level never seen before. So I pointed out that Janowski was making such exchange sacs regularly even before WW1. In particular, this game arose in a similar opening set-up, but with Janowski playing Black.

Dide vs Janowski, 1901

(Please see <Karpova's> excellent game collection Game Collection: David Janowsky's exchange sacrifices

You could give me any example of any 'modern' game in the past 3 decades if you wish. I will try to give you back a pre-WW2 game played with similar themes.