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 human standards.
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, became 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 in prestige, 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 or stronger than 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. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
