The genius way to see strategy | Historic chess players would be losers today

Technologies provide us with some privilegies that old days chess players didn't have.
One of them is to simply scroll moves with the mouse wheel fast so that you can see in macro the vectors of attacks, defences, positioning. This trick unbends our vision of narrow tactical searches in favor of the strategy mind set from the bird view.

The things like these are numerous. I am convinced that todays chess players are much more stronger than the ones that are dead. Such legends like Fischer would have not been possible to paint their illustrious masterpieces on the board if they faced today chess grandmasters who can generate 1000 new puzzles everyday any level of difficulty, find some rare chess theory in seconds in the internet and glance through the history of games any time they want. Not talking about the number of chess players all over the world compared to the XX's with 8 times increased concurence caused by the internet allowing anyone to practice chess 24/7

Tell us something new. This also does not only apply to chess. Overall it is called evolution. We can be glad to see humanity also evolving and not only going backwards.

However you can't compare chess back then to chess nowadays and a legend is much more than just defined by playing strength. Being a legend is about doing something extraordinary like for example being the first to beat a russian world champion. Also those legendary masters still played very good chess that often is a lot safer than what we can see today where people choose stockfish moves where the path is very narrow to succeed. All in all back then a lot of chess masters knew ways to swindle and cause perfect positioning and create pressure in ways we don't understand. It is still helpful analysing old games. Without the lack of computer assistance we would never have experienced Tal sacrifices that are mostly unsound, but extremely educative.

We can be glad things evolved exactly this way. Modern chess wouldn't be the same without the idols who lay a foundation for today. Nobody wants to learn only from Alpha Zero and watch it play all the time. We want to watch logical understandable human moves that only go 6 moves deep and not 20. Chess after all is also a sport and entertainment. You can't just focus all on objective strength. So no, chess players of the past would adapt quickly to new opening preparation and outsmart many of the today's chess champions and even if not - they would for sure be no losers, but winners and entertainers. I have the strong feeling you want to provoke with the title, maybe you are fed up by little kids having idols of the past that made inaccuracies, I can understand that, but what you say is just a little too much.

@pls_dont_mate_me You could also see it the other way round: Many grandmasters of today are so dependent of their computer databases and analyses that they would be completely helpless without them. And they would have no chance against the most inventive and resourceful masters from the past before the 1980s. (I mean: before chess computers became strong) I think: Without computer help only the best players from today can compare with the best players from the past.

@weisserpfeffer said in #2:
> Tell us something new. This also does not only apply to chess. Overall it is called evolution. We can be glad to see humanity also evolving and not only going backwards.
>
> However you can't compare chess back then to chess nowadays and a legend is much more than just defined by playing strength. Being a legend is about doing something extraordinary like for example being the first to beat a russian world champion. Also those legendary masters still played very good chess that often is a lot safer than what we can see today where people choose stockfish moves where the path is very narrow to succeed. All in all back then a lot of chess masters knew ways to swindle and cause perfect positioning and create pressure in ways we don't understand. It is still helpful analysing old games. Without the lack of computer assistance we would never have experienced Tal sacrifices that are mostly unsound, but extremely educative.
>
> We can be glad things evolved exactly this way. Modern chess wouldn't be the same without the idols who lay a foundation for today. Nobody wants to learn only from Alpha Zero and watch it play all the time. We want to watch logical understandable human moves that only go 6 moves deep and not 20. Chess after all is also a sport and entertainment. You can't just focus all on objective strength. So no, chess players of the past would adapt quickly to new opening preparation and outsmart many of the today's chess champions and even if not - they would for sure be no losers, but winners and entertainers. I have the strong feeling you want to provoke with the title, maybe you are fed up by little kids having idols of the past that made inaccuracies, I can understand that, but what you say is just a little too much.

I didn't mean old chess players wouldn't adapt. I mean that if you compare 2 chess players for one game using a travel machine, I'm sure 8 out of 10 XXI century players would have won the old ones. You are saying everything as if I said that old chess players are garbage and are not worth learning their games. My message is that modern technologies help us a lot with improving and the fact that people compare ELO ratings of world champions throughout 2 centuries period is a joke. This is the same as to compare olympic 100 m runners throughout 1 century by their gold medals.
XX century players wouldn't stand a chance against Nakamura and Carlsen.
Fischer would have run out of the tournament building after seeing Nakamura's bong cloud opening.
I myself having 2000 rating on Lichess would have won 2 times out of 10 agains Michail Tal IMHO

@philodendron68 said in #3:
> @pls_dont_mate_me You could also see it the other way round: Many grandmasters of today are so dependent of their computer databases and analyses that they would be completely helpless without them. And they would have no chance against the most inventive and resourceful masters from the past before the 1980s. (I mean: before chess computers became strong) I think: Without computer help only the best players from today can compare with the best players from the past.

No, that's your envy says. You want to extol the ones that are dead because you want to diminish accomplishments of modern players. Saying that modern chess players use the help of computers is as stupid as to say that the old ones used the help og books and consultants. You can't bring your computer to the tournament. If you remembered anything from a computer and use it in a game, it means you do it yourself.

Agreed. Those old masters would struggle to win a prize in today's tournaments. Technique has improved dramatically.

@pls_dont_mate_me ... Tal would still be under 90 years old if he was still alive & even if he would rise from the dead to play 10 games with you for 1 day he would SMOKE YOU ALL 10 (He did smoke) . Probably would outrate you by 700 points at least . Something people don't know is Tal had a 100+ non-losing streak near the end of his days

@pls_dont_mate_me said in #4:
> I myself having 2000 rating on Lichess would have won 2 times out of 10 agains Michail Tal IMHO

I'd call this opinion anything but humble.

@pls_dont_mate_me Well, both your and my statements are only suggestions. You simply can't compare the accomplishments of players from different centuries. But one thing is for sure. The old champions have all been pioneers in their time. They didn't need to play more accurately, because there has been much less rivalry in ancient centuries than there is today. And in my opinion the best ancient players were so talented and inventive that if they had grown up in our times with our computer knowledge, they would be among the top players of today too. Their games still fascinate me.
But - nobody can prove that of course. I do not want to diminish the accomplishments of modern top players, but today a GM title is less worth than in the past, because today there are thousands of GMs, compared to only a few seventy years ago.

@pls_dont_mate_me said in #1:
> I am convinced that todays chess players are much more stronger than the ones that are dead.

Yep, agree. They would absolutely lose on time.