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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: <Kinan> I share your point to an extent. "Best in history" and greatest of all time, can be looked at from various angles in Fischer's case, as there are the "Immortal Game/Game of the Century" vs Byrne, the unprecedented 11/11 100% score at a US Championship, and the again unprecedented, speed and amount of force with which Fischer moved up and over the Soviet/E. European block... It was unique, a World Event, a media frenzy erupted, and after an unprecedented run in the candidates semi- and final, Fischer went on to beat the World Champion, setting a record Elo rating in the process. Opposite to that one must acknowledge that Greatest of All Time based on a IMO maximum 6 years of dominance, of which two and a half years of never before seen margin with the nearest rivals, may objectively not be sufficient in order to claim that ultimate distinction. Let's not speculate on what "might have happened" if Fischer had played on and face Karpov. And after that continued to play. Speaking for myself IMO Kasparov is the greatest Chess player to ever live, and I have trouble finding the correct spot (if there is one) for Bobby Fischer. Capablanca, Karpov, Tal, they all bring something unique to the table, and since I never was a fan of "lists" - especially "top 10s", I will leave it upto others to spend their ink on. |
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Aug-25-12
 | | alexmagnus: <the "Immortal Game/Game of the Century" vs Byrne> Nothing against Fischer, but it is IMO one of the most overhyped games in history. If the game were played today, it would be a mere footnote. Also, if it were played back then but Fischer were not a 13-year-old kid he was back then. |
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Aug-25-12
 | | HeMateMe: It's BECAUSE he was a 13-year-old kid--thats the point. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | Kinan: <achieve>
I agree, it's nearly impossible to decide who is the best player in history. If players lived through the entire history then it's another thing but they didn't. Every era has its own players, conditions, styles etc.. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: <alexmagnus: <the "Immortal Game/Game of the Century" vs Byrne>
Nothing against Fischer, but it is IMO one of the most overhyped games in history.> And that, dear AM, might be a slight exaggeration; Ok - scratch that game off the list of "Fischer's outstanding/unique accomplishments", I'd still be interested in your opinion on Fischer fans' claim that he is the GoaT. To which side do you see the coin drop? |
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Aug-25-12
 | | perfidious: < alexmagnus: <the "Immortal Game/Game of the Century" vs Byrne>
Nothing against Fischer, but it is IMO one of the most overhyped games in history. If the game were played today, it would be a mere footnote....> You're in good company: in the early 1970s, David Levy wrote on the game in his book How Fischer Plays Chess in even more negative terms. There were numerous such acerbic remarks in that work, which have always rather smacked of jealousy to me. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: <Kinan: <achieve>
I agree, it's nearly impossible to decide who is the best player in history. [...] Every era has its own players, conditions, styles etc..> I take the exact same position, although the best I have seen "in my lifetime", was, or rather is, Kasparov, with Karpov in close second... I've seen Live post game conferences, free-style, and what Kasparov was doing bordered to magic: he had every suggestion covered, citing lines instantly, refuting instantly, it was unreal at times. The energy. That said, I can't compare different era's, which many agree on. |
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Aug-25-12
| | perfidious: <achieve> Small wonder indeed that Miles once likened Kasparov to a monster with a hundred (or possibly a thousand) eyes. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: <Perfidious> Yes, that's indeed the famous quote I too had in mind, but didn't remember whether it was Short or Miles who said it. ;) Speaks volumes about my memory as wel...
Kasparov's simuls against (sometimes Grand-)Master opposition, were outer-worldly, just as he took on indeed the assembled press which ion Holland contains just about only GMs (Ligterink, Ree, Sosonko, vd Wiel --- he'd take them all on at once and devoured the lot, sort of. |
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Aug-25-12
| | perfidious: <achieve> That quote came after GK beat Miles +5 =1 in a match at Basel 1986. Wish I'd seen the post-mortems at the New York Grand Prix in 1994 after Kasparov's matches, first in the semifinal with Nikolic, then following the loss to Kramnik in the final. That Dutch team of journalists could have given a fair account of themselves in a match at one time. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: Sure, and eg Sosonko was a world class player himself, and most were retired GMs, IM Lex Jongsma was entertaing, but were hired as "explicateurs" to offer their assessment to the spectators, and exchange ideas, answer question, small gifts for good answers ;) in the commentary room, that was, and still is, the tradition. My personal favourite is Hans Ree, not spewing lines, but rather telling the back stories, anecdotes, general assessments. They were all very interesting. Sosonko always very sharp. Even Korchnoi and Spassky joined the team a few years ago in Wijk aan Zee, and Ljubo or Seirawan are also part of the "Dutch chess scene"... But Kasparov in the early 90s was so far ahead of them, he ate the 2550 GM commentator for lunch. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | Everett: <It was unique, a World Event, a media frenzy erupted, and after an unprecedented run in the candidates semi- and final, Fischer went on to beat the World Champion, setting a record Elo rating in the process.> We must all understand, of course, that whoever did go on a run starting in '70 was going to set a record ELO. |
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Aug-25-12
| | alexmagnus: <We must all understand, of course, that whoever did go on a run starting in '70 was going to set a record ELO.> Hehe. But the record would not necessarily hold for 19 years (Fischer was #1 on the first official Elo list in 1971 and was Elo record holder till Kasparov's 2800 on the January 1990 list). Btw, Kasparov's "longevity" as Elo record holder is even bigger. The reason being of course the fact that Kasparov played longer after setting his first record and could improve the record in the following 9.5 years. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | Everett: <alexmagnus> I'm glad you got my joke! Of course, Fischer was incredible. |
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| Aug-25-12 | | achieve: Does any of you two know how Fischer's rating was calculated? 2720 in 1970, record 2785 in '72.
The gap is enormous, over 100 points to his nearest challenger, but not crazy compared to his 2720 in 1970; so what's ticking here most loudly, the relative performances in 1969 or the first "ELO calculations" in 1971 ? The major gap with the opposition at the time, <where> did it primarily originate? Partly in 1969? Mostly thereafter? Was this researched in detail? Incredible. Yes, yes. Fischer was. |
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Aug-25-12
| | alexmagnus: The big jump (2720-2760-2785) is partly due to the big time distance between the lists. I mean, were the lists updated oftener, he would be calculated with his newer rating and therefore gain less...
Of course, gaining 40 points in a year is something which can happen today too, but rarely to a #1 - with ratings being updated monthly, one has to get an even more monstrous run than Fischer's 1971. On the other hand, the gaps today are smaller, so that one can gain more points per game... |
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Aug-26-12
| | perfidious: As to Fischer's rating in pre-FIDE days, all we seem to be left with is what Chessmetrics provides. After opening the year 1968 on 2801, which he maintained through March despite inactivity, Fischer then played at Netanya in July and Vinkovci in September, the latter of which boosted his rating from 2790 to 2798. The one game he played vs Saidy was presumably rated in February '69, after which another decline due to inactivity ensued through early 1970. http://chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/Sing... |
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Aug-26-12
| | alexmagnus: <Fischer then played at Netanya in July and Vinkovci in September, the latter of which boosted his rating from 2790 to 2798.> One cannot tell it this way, as CM rating trends, unlike Elo, don't perfectly correlate with recent performances. You can gain rating with a bad (as in worse than expected) performance or lose it with a good one. The reason being performances of the last 4 years, weighting and calibrating, which make the rating movement based on the next performance quite unpredictable. |
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| Aug-26-12 | | achieve: Correct, it does seem confusing at times, the Sonas weighted and padded performance rating, but without paying too much attention to it, it still is a most useful guideline, although there are a couple of anomalies imo, one being the sudden leap from #5 to #1, by Fischer, on the CM "October 1966 list", based on an Olympiad in which Fischer was narrowly outperformed at first board for the top spot, by Petrosian. |
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Aug-26-12
| | perfidious: That makes some sense, then-on the face of it, one would have concluded that, in 1968, Fischer performed more or less to expectation. <achieve> Mayhap that leap was accomplished by the simple expedient of Fischer's relatively poor performance at Varna 1962 no longer counting against his four-year numbers, being replaced by Havana. |
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| Aug-26-12 | | Everett: I know the drop in chessmetrics rating through inactivity upsets some, but it does make sense if we think of rating a combination of <absolute strength + current form>. Absolute strength wouldn't move so much over the years, while acute form does, depending on mood, personal issues, a bad lunch or even... inactivity. So it doesn't really upset me that Lasker drops down quite a bit from his long stretches of inactivity. We know that he did come back a bit rusty in the first few games, indicating that he temporarily did lose something during the time off. Just because he finished crushing everyone soon afterwards does not nullify this. |
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Aug-26-12
 | | Eggman: Some time in the mid to late sixties Tal made a remark to the effect that Fischer could beat the Russians on a given day, but that they could also beat him. I suspect that Fischer knew this (how could he not), and didn't like it, and sought to eliminate certain weaknesses in his play, and the result was that suddenly in the early '70s he was not only a chess player without superiors, but a player without peers. |
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| Aug-26-12 | | achieve: <perfidious> Good point, but it still makes me feel awkward, in the sense that I am purely looking for performance display, not predictive value and reliability, when comparing eg Spassky and Fischer over a random '60s year. You can't eat your cake from both ends at the same time, but Sonas seems to have flirted with that. But he is honest about it, laudible are his immense efforts. But to be honest Alexmagnus and frogbert & Co are so much more informed than I am. Just trying to catch up and assess Fischer's potential, to be more precise _actual_, relative dominance as #1. During the second half of the 1960's. |
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| Aug-26-12 | | achieve: <Everett: I know the drop in chessmetrics rating through inactivity upsets some> Not me - I'm surprised that Fischer's 18 month sabbatical during 1969 didn't have him drop significantly on the chessmetrics site. It baffles me.
As I said, I'm from a later year, don't remember that time, but looking back some things are more than odd. I am just trying to get a feel and useful data from that decade. |
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| Aug-26-12 | | achieve: <the result was that suddenly in the early '70s he was not only a chess player without superiors, but a player without peers.> Yes! As Fischer showed emphatically from 1970 onwards. 100+ point rating gap to show for it, though, in Sonas' reasoning, he wouldn't have been able to maintain that gap to that extent. |
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