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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: I'm not slamming Smyslov there, BTW, I'm slamming the absurd rules that cut his reign short before he had the time to make his mark on the chess world. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Howard: First, I know I'm a picky guy at times!
That being said, Petrosianic seems to be subconsciously assuming that if Spassky had lost to Petrosian (again) in 1969, then Spassky would have missed the boat forever as far as becoming WC. But, how do we know that? After all, he would have been seeded into the 1971 Candidates. And, he just MIGHT have eliminated Bobby what's-his-name if the two of them ended up being paired against each other. |
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Sep-12-17
 | | chancho: That Fine fellow just can't catch a break... |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: Maybe because he failed to win even the US Title, and his reputation is largely based on one half of one tournament. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Korchnoi or Spassky, hmm. Good question. I guess I'd have to go with Spassky, only because he did climb the summit. But what's their head-to-head record? |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: What about guys like Polugaevsky and Nezhmetidinov and Stein, etc.? |
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Sep-12-17
| | chancho: Fine had a better international record than Reshevsky. Too bad he did not play in the 1948 world championship tournament. But he felt that the Russians would have thrown games to each other. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: <But he felt that the Russians would have thrown games to each other.> No, he didn't. That's a story Fine made up years later to save face. In fact, he supported the format enthusiastically and without reservation in Chess Life, and dropped out for career reasons, even knowing that no substitutions were allowed and that the US would be losing one of its spots in the tournament by his leaving. <Fine had a better international record than Reshevsky.> Half of AVRO, we know about. What else are you thinking of? Reshevsky and Fine tied at Notthingham 1936. Reshevsky was twice Champion of the Western Hemisphere. That's a silly title, perhaps, but it was an international one. I'd have to say Reshevsky's international record was better, unless you're focusing on a very narrow window of time. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: https://www.quora.com/Who-was-the-b... |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: <Whitehat1963>: <I guess I'd have to go with Spassky, only because he did climb the summit. But what's their head-to-head record?> Yeah, but I mean suppose he hadn't? If Spassky had lost in 1969, then he and Korchnoi would both have lost two World Championship matches. I think Korchnoi would be looked on higher because Spassky would have lost two matches in which he was the favorite, while Korchnoi was a long shot in his (and in one of them he exceeded expectations and got within one game of the title). Lifetime, Korchnoi is +20-16=33 against Spassky, but when Spassky won the title, the score was +1 in his favor. |
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Sep-12-17
| | chancho: <unless you're focusing on a very narrow window of time.> 1936 and 37.
Maybe Fine felt like he had to praise the event, while in actuality he was worried about thrown games and wasting his time there. I guess it all comes down to believing his statement or doubting it. He does have a history for making things up.
Capablanca voiced similar concerns in some tournament to Stalin. Of course it was Capa's wife who mentioned it.
Maybe she was making that up. |
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Sep-12-17
| | chancho: Carlsen apparently thinks very highly of Reuben Fine. <"It strikes me that what he was doing in chess is similar to what I was doing."> |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: <chancho>: <1936 and 37.> Yeah, I might agree with that.
<Maybe Fine felt like he had to praise the event, while in actuality he was worried about thrown games and wasting his time there.> He said his reason for praising it was because title shots had been so few and far between for years, and here was a chance for 6 people to compete for the title. If he had reservations, there was no reason to hold back on them. And if he did have them, he should have dropped out early. The US had two spots in that tournament, and if he didn't want one, Kashdan would have been happy to take it. All the players had agreed that no substitutions would be allowed after the 6 spots were set (which is why Najdorf didn't take Fine's place, as has often been suggested). If Fine was against the format and took it on himself to throw away one of the US spots without consulting anyone, he'd be the Benedict Arnold of chess. But I don't think he was, I think he simply lied later on. That's bad but not as bad as if he'd been telling the truth later. <I guess it all comes down to believing his statement or doubting it.> Not quite possible, because his statements contradict themselves. I believe what he said at the time, and not what he said later. I can see no reason for him to have lied at the time, and plenty of reason to have lied later. <Of course it was Capa's wife who mentioned it.Maybe she was making that up.>
The tournament format in general was (and is) held in low regard for selecting champions for that and other reasons. Frankly, I'm surprised that no such concerns <were> raised, but I've read all the Chess Lives of those years and never seen any. If it had been up to me, there would have been either a direct match between Botvinnik and Euwe, or the top 8 players would have played a series of Candidates Style Matches with the winner getting the title. But the wind wasn't blowing the right way for either of those ideas. The first would mean that only two people would get a title shot, and the second would have meant organizing 7 separate events. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Olavi: <Petrosianic: The US had two spots in that tournament,> This , I am sure, is wrong. I'm not aware of any credible claim that it was anything but a personal right. In any case Kashdan wouldn't have made a good candidate in 1948... I know that he tried to claim the spot, I'm not sure based on what tournament, but hardly anybody took notice. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Lambda: I think for the greatest non-champion, you should look for players who were most clearly dominant over everyone in the world except for a single, very strong champion, and that best describes Tarrasch, Rubinstein and Korchnoi, with Korchnoi probably deserving the nod since his dominance over everyone except Karpov was most clearly demonstrated by beating everyone except Karpov over three full world championship cycles, as well as being against a field containing more great players. I'd also put him slightly above Spassky even without an alternative history, it's quite clear in my mind that Spassky was the one to become champion only because he peaked in the late 60s while Korchnoi peaked in the mid to late 70s. Keres always seems slightly over-emphasised for this question to me, he seems to have spent almost his entire career being third best, to Alekhine and Botvinnik around the war by judgement, then never quite winning a candidates. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Petrosianic: <Olavi>: <This , I am sure, is wrong. I'm not aware of any credible claim that it was anything but a personal right.> It may be wrong but it's what Chess Life said.
Actually, if you have the time, you might want to go through all the Chess Life and Chess Reviews from 1946-1947 and read everything pertaining to the world title. There's a lot of interesting stuff there. There were rumblings in the US about why should Fine and Reshevsky get those two spots? This is a democracy, right, so why don't we hold a qualifier? That didn't come to anything, but just in case it did, Reshevsky was sure to play in the 1946 US Championship, after skipping 1944. During that debate there was talk about the US asking for a 3rd spot to have parity with the Soviets, but it was declined since the US had fewer strong players. In the end, nothing came of the qualifier talk, and Fine and Reshevsky got the spots that had been slated for them personally. But all the players agreed that after a certain cutoff date there should be no substitutions allowed if anyone dropped out. I guess they were afraid of preparing for one person and having a switch at the last minute. But it answers that objection you always hear, about why didn't Najdorf take Fine's place? Apparently the No Substitutions Rule is not very well known. I think Kashdan was past his prime by 1948 too, but he'd be better than nobody at all. Heck, Al Horowitz would have been better than nobody. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Petrosianic: <Lambda>: <I think for the greatest non-champion, you should look for players who were most clearly dominant over everyone in the world except for a single, very strong champion, and that best describes Tarrasch, Rubinstein and Korchnoi,> That seems like a good criterion, and those seem like three really good choices using that criteria. <Keres always seems slightly over-emphasised for this question to me, he seems to have spent almost his entire career being third best,> Yeah, I hate to agree with that, but I sort of do. Being a credible threat to win the title for 25 years, as Keres was, is definitely a form of greatness. But under your criteria (clearly better than all but one player), he's not really a top contender. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Petrosianic: Just for grins, here are the 20 highest rated players on Chessmetrics (based on 1-year highs), who never became World Champion, with the number of months that they spent in the ChessMetrics #1 spot in parentheses). Tarrasch (0 months)
Maroczy (30 months)
Pillsbury (16 months)
Korchnoi (4 months)
Ivanchuk (0 months)
Rubinstein (25 months)
Bronstein (19 months)
Najdorf (0 months)
Zukertort (56 months)
Reshevsky (14 months)
Keres (0 months)
Kamsky (0 months)
Nimzovich (0 months)
Topalov (0 months)*
Janowsky (5 months)
Tchigorin (0 months)
Bogoljubow (2 months)
Geller (0 months)
Morozevich (0 months)
Marshall (0 months)
Topalov has an asterisk because chessmetrics only goes through 2004, and he surely would have reached their #1 spot if it went farther. |
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Sep-13-17
 | | tamar: Maybe assessing the combination of being #1 and #2 would help. Tarrasch was never #1 but was #2 111 times.
Rubinstein #1 25 times, but #2 just 50 or so times. Still a huge amount, but shows his form more variable. Higer highs, but lower lows. Same with Keres I would guess, but haven't checked. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Petrosianic: Keres was #2 52 times, which is a lot, but he occupied the #2 spot as early as 1943 and as late as 1960, which is really a LONG time to be that close to the top. |
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Sep-13-17
| | tamar: Korchnoi the same longevity, but close to 100x being #2. On the other hand in individual games, he had a hard time with Keres. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Howard: Keep in mind that Chessmetrics needs to be taken with a rather large grain of salt. After all, the fact that no rating system existed up until 1971, means that players before that could play without (!) having to worry about their ratings (or their opponents' for that matter). Who knows how Capablanca, Rubinstein, Alekhine, Tartakower, etc would have performed if they had a semi-annual rating list to be concerned about. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Petrosianic: <Keep in mind that Chessmetrics needs to be taken with a rather large grain of salt.> Maybe so, but I'd venture to say that nobody who doesn't make their Top TWENTY is likely to be a serious candidate for the #1 spot. The above list names all the serious candidates, and a few more besides. |
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| Sep-13-17 | | Whitehat1963: I thought about both Maroczy and Zukertort. I also thought about Anderssen. I didn't realize Maroczy and Zukertort had flown so close to the sun! |
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Sep-13-17
 | | Sally Simpson: Hi Howard,
"Who knows how Capablanca, Rubinstein, Alekhine, Tartakower, etc would have performed if they had a semi-annual rating list to be concerned about." I'm not too sure many results would have been all that different. The world championship was still in the hands of the world champion so picking a challenger by a rating was out. Travelling was difficult so there were fewer tournaments back then. I'm going to grab 1924 only because I was looking at New York 1924 earlier today and grab the top three finishers, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine. I think you will agree these three would be right up there on a grading list from that period. New York (1924) was the only tournament Alekhine,Lasker and Capablanca played in that year. So a grading list would not look unlike the final tournament and having two list a year would be silly as nothing changes. To look at keeping the grade high by declining draws v lower rated players. Lasker had 1st place sown up by the last round but still beat Marshall. Today in the same situation a 4 move draw is not unheard of. In the last round Capablanca had 2nd place in his pocket yet he played and beat Bogoljubov. In the last round only Alekhine had to play for a win to secure a sole third place, which he duly got v Tartakower. I don't think a rating system would have worked then. Certainly not as well as it does today (I cannot believe I typed that - I dislike and do not trust the rating system but it's all we have till we finally get ERIC....have I mentioned ERIC before?) ERIC.
The Electronic Rating for International Chess.
Today a FIDE computer gets fed all the results and gives each player a rating. ERIC will look at the games and give each player their rating based on top choice moves. No appeals, ERIC's word is final.
In time you will all hate ERIC. |
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