b2-b4 was stronger when Capa played it on move 13 than it would have been on move 9.

Unsurprisingly, the engine doesn't like 16.b5, but Bogo slipped up in turn with the aggressive 17....f5, allowing Capablanca's fine pawn sacrifice 18.Bxc5 dxc5 (18....bxc5 19.b6) 19.d6! Qxd6 20.Rd1 Qe6?

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21.ef threatening Bd5 was tempting, but stronger was 21.Qxc7. Now if 21....f4 22.g4! Nf6 (22....f3 23.Bxf3 Rxf3 24.Rd8+ Rf8 25.gxh5 Rxd8 26.Qxd8+ Bf8 27.Nd5 with a decisive positional advantage) 23.Rd8 Rxd8+ 24.Qxd8+ Ne8 25.Nd5.

A funny variation is 21....fxe4 22.Nxe4 Qxc4 23.Rd8 Be6 24.N2c3 and Black has no good answer to 25.Bf1.

As the game went, White was still a little better but wound up with a very drafty kingside. But 26....h5

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...was a blunder that could have been answered by the bizarre 27.Kf1!!. For example, 27....hg 28.Rd6 Qh4 (28....Be6 29.Rxe6) 29.Rxg6 Qxh3+ 30.Kg1 Qh7 31.fxg4 Be6 32.Ng3 threatening 33.Nh5 -- if 32....Bf7 33.Nf5 Qxg6 34.Ne7+ +-.

The really striking line is 27....Qh4 28.Kg2 -- White has just lost a tempo compared to the game. But that lost tempo saves the win! With the white rook still on the first rank, the sacrifice that Bogoljubov played to pull out the draw wouldn't have worked: 27....Qh4 28.Kg2 hxg4 29.hxg4 Bxg4 30.Bd5+ Kh7 31.Rh1 +-.

I did note that the move was bizarre, but should have said expressly that there's no way in hell you can expect a human, even Capablanca, to find 27.Kf1. I also should have checked for some less outlandish way to take advantage of 26....h5.

Some will say that Morphy might need to look through opening theory for a month or two, but after doing that he would be just as head and shoulders above the competition today as he was back in his day. Even without all the professional training with top coaches, tournament circuits, resources, studying every day since childhood etc that the modern players have.

Sometimes Fischer is referred when saying that Morphy just as he was would be #1 also a century later, sometimes Bronstein when saying that the top players of the past centuries would have the same position today if they could look through some opening books. There is much romanticization of past greats. GM Smerdon said that Nakamura would lose 0-6 to Fischer if the latter just had a day to catch up on theory, GM Akopian said that Alekhine’s analysis always was right, unlike modern analysis, etc.

I think it's the other way around on this site, though as a proponent of the moderns I'm probably a little biased. There's Nunn's famous argument that Suechting, who finished near the middle of the great Carlsbad 1911 tournament, was probably around a 2100 in modern terms. More generally, he argued that top masters back then often picked bad plans and made a high number of blunders. On the other hand <bridgeburner> did computer analysis suggesting that Lasker - Schlechter World Championship Match (1910) was played at a very high level.

Anyway, compared to chess.com, this is by its nature a history-centric site, so I think people here on average probably have a better grasp on how chess was actually played 100 or 150 years ago.

<GM Akopian said that Alekhine’s analysis always was right>. Amateurs are one thing, but it blows my mind when grandmasters say nonsense like this. Even without computers...back in the 1980s, Andy Soltis wrote a column about going through a bunch of Alekhine's notes and finding error after error (Soltis rightly stressed that Alekhine was a great analyst and you could do that to anyone).

<Even without all the professional training with top coaches, tournament circuits, resources, studying every day since childhood etc that the modern players have.>

Hi K.P.

I agree, the modern master has to be stronger than the old masters, chess is going forward, today's lot are standing on their shoulders which is how it should be.

Seen a comment somewhere on here about endgame blunders being more common today.

They seem to forget back then players adjourned around about move 40 and could look at what was coming in depth and catch a nights sleep (and even then you got blunders)

These days at move 40 (or what ever) you get a few more minutes on your clock and told to get on with it. You do not even get a five minute break.

Also due to the lack of publicity and the media etc a TN could be used time and time again for a few months. (recall Geller winning 3 games with the same trick shot in the 70's) Today one game only. The world has it logged within minutes.

Great players the past masters, we must never forget that and going over their games can bring just as much pleasure as a modern effort (even more so to me - I understand the old games better) but they are the past.

Yes, it really is surprising. Many of them are sure far from as objective as one would think. One of the things Akopian said was:

<in the past chess players played better than they do today. And I mean played, rather than reeling off computer moves with machine-gun speed. Their chess understanding was superior. Alekhine, Capablanca, Spassky, Petrosian, never mind Fischer. In my view you simply can’t arbitrarily say that Alekhine or Fischer was mistaken. It’s just not possible>

Indeed, also Akopian singled out endgames as one of the big differences between the top players of the past and those today. He meant that the modern top players misplay the endgames in ways the old masters never would even consider. And specifically criticised "some young players that nowadays are considered stars". Not difficult to understand who he was referring to, given that he stated that the best players were Anand, Topalov and Aronian during a year when Carlsen was #1 and won lots of super tournaments :-)

Maybe it's just that some don't like the idea of younger players being better than the old heroes. I once looked through some Carlsen endgames in rapid, where he with very little time on the clock played flawlessly. He probably misplayed a fair bunch as well, but given that he in his games has so much less time than Alekhine et al had, I find it surprising that he (and other modern players) get so criticised.

Without any opening prep (from both sides) I would bet on Fischer beating Naka when both were on their primes. Not 0-6, but I think he would have won such a match.

With due respect to Naka's advantage on opening theory, training tools, engines, number of games played (online), the fact that he is "standing on the shoulders" of Fischer and his successors, chess progress and all that:

Fischer simply had much better chess understanding than Naka. And I don't think that chess progressed enough since then, to compensate for that gap.

Yes, it’s more the 6-0 in spite of all Nakamura’s advantages in the hypothetical scenario I find a surprising assessment from a GM. Nakamura has plus scores against Anand and Kramnik, and even if Carlsen is his worst opponent by far, the latter has only won two of the last ten they played.

The reason world champions praise Morphy and Capa is they are a little jealous of their talents, which were spooky. For example, at the great "Grandmaster" tournament in St. Petersburg (1914), Alekhine said that Capa was beating everybody at 5 to 1 odds. Imagine a player doing that to the world champion. Such talent comes along once in a generation or so. The longest Morphy was recorded as taking was 12 minutes for his wonderful queen sacrifice against Paulsen. (Paulsen vs Morphy, 1857) Although they didn't use clocks in Morphy's day, many spectators brought stop watches and recorded the time taken for each move.

Hardly anyone does that. Comparisons between old-time and current masters are unfair, but that doesn’t mean they’re not interesting.

< There should be little doubt that people in the past were every bit as intelligent as people today. How many Socrates or Newton minds are there today? Somewhere near zero, I'd guess.>

That seems unlikely to me, but it’s impossible to tell. If there were a Newton now I wouldn’t understand what he was doing. Anyway, you can only invent the calculus once — twice, tops.

People run faster and jump higher than they did 100 years ago. It would be weird if they couldn’t play chess better, given all the advantages they have and how much deeper the talent pool is than in Morphy or Capablanca’s time.

<The reason world champions praise Morphy and Capa is they are a little jealous of their talents, which were spooky. For example, at the great "Grandmaster" tournament in St. Petersburg (1914), Alekhine said that Capa was beating everybody at 5 to 1 odds.>