The strongest players in chess history
FIRST, it’s possible to compare chess players from different eras by “using” players with long careers whose active playing spanned across at least three or four decades. Some historical examples involving World Champions and almost World Champions are Lasker, Alekhine, Keres, Botvinnik, and Korchnoi. Specifically, Lasker as an old man in the 1920s was beating the hypermoderns.
An “old” Alekhine meted out crushing defeats to young Flohr (who played excellent chess even after WW2) and Keres (who I deem to be in his prime during 1936 to 1943) in the 1930s and 40s, and was clearly better than them. Alekhine had also played strong masters with fine post WW2 results such as Euwe, who had excellent results in several post WW2 tournaments although he was clearly over his peak, five time Candidate Reshevsky, Levenfish (two-time Soviet Champion, tied Botvinnik in a match, and slayed whole packs of Soviet players in the regional USSR championships post WW2), two time Candidate and 11 times Swedish Champion Stahlberg, seven time Czechoslovakian champion Pachman, Lilienthal (one time Soviet Champion), Barcza and had winning records against all of them.
In addition, Keres played terrific chess until the 1970s, was thrice Soviet Champion, finished second four times in five Candidates tournaments from 1950 to 1962, beating a whole slew of younger players. This included Korchnoi, another smoking gun proof of the mettle of older players. Korchnoi himself until the 2000s gave good beatings to teen and twenties Grandmasters of the turn of the century.
Keres is another smoking gun, bomb proof evidence of the fallacy of Watson’s speculation that “the best players of old were weaker and more dogmatic than the best players today”, and Larsen’s assertion that he would crush everyone in the 1920s. The glaring fact is that Keres is a pre-WW2 master who began his career in the late 1920s, and played competitively up to the 1970s, and he did learn (and contributed) to the newer opening variations (the most famous of which is the Keres attack which he invented in 1943). The ideal way for Watson and Larsen to prove their statements is to beat a top pre WW2 master such as Keres. They failed miserably. Tellingly enough an aging Keres beat both a rising Watson one time, and a peak Larsen two times with four draws when they happened play each other. Larsen even had a losing record (0-1) against Andre Lilienthal, the other pre WW2 master he met over the board.
Alekhine has always struck me as an anomaly. He was the last Russian Empire Champion and the first Soviet Champion. At times he played quite poorly. Most of the time he played excellently. Once in his life, he played better than the post-peak Capablanca in the WC match of 1927 , who in my opinion was already suffering badly from hypertension; but still this Alekhine was good enough to beat most, maybe all, Titleholders in history. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
