A FRIEND and I did extensive studies on Chess World Championship matches using a computer. To our great surprise the computer revealed that pre-WW2 champions (late 1800s to 1945) and recent ones in the 2000s played at approximately the same level.
I always thought, because of what I now call the narcissistic generation syndrome, that recent World Champions would play better than the old pre–WW 2 champions (Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine).
In fact, according to other computers, Capablanca played without a losing error for eight years, which logically makes him unbeatable in a chess match.
The only way I can explain this is that the human brain has a limit. It was reached in the late 1800s with Lasker. More on this below.
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1. The strongest chess events in different eras of chess history?
Because of the brain’s limitations explained below, the best professional (amateurs don’t matter much in top level chess) chess players of each generation beginning in the Lasker era have always played at a similar level – near the maximum allowed by the human brain.
Now there are larger cohorts of chess professionals post WW2 than pre-WW2, thanks to government state funding in the Soviet era and presently corporate funding. The result is that large pre-WW2 tournaments had numerous ‘bunnies’, relatively weak players.
By the Kasparov era, super-tournaments that featured most of the top ten, and no bunnies, had become more common. However, the top 4 or 5 since Lasker’s time have always been very strong.
Consequently, the smaller the top-player-only tournament, the stronger it gets. For any era. If there was a double round robin tournament in 1914 featuring Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, and Rubinstein, and no other, it would be as strong as any present-day super-tournament.
Now weed out everyone except the two strongest players in the world. What we usually get is the chess World Championship match.
There has been talk of elite tournaments, composed only of the strongest top masters and no weaker bunnies replacing the World Championship match, probably because of the assumption that they would be the strongest chess events possible. False assumption.
The strongest chess events in chess history generally have been World Championship matches. Even the strongest masters in each generation usually do not match the world champion and challenger in chess strength.
In a World Championship match, the contestant has to meet the monster champion or challenger over and over again, with no weaker master in between. Capablanca vs Lasker 1921 was just as strong as a more recent chess event such as the Carlsen vs Anand 2013 WC match, and far stronger than modern super tournaments. (Imagine having to play 14 straight games with a computer-like errorless Capablanca at his peak.) (To be continued)/PN
