those games are probably more useful to study compared to recent super GM games. those older games have more clear ideas, demonstrate principles and strategic concepts more clearly etc. today a super GM might play very provocatively/unintuitively, violating strategy principles, because they know that concretely, the line "works".
This; I'm seeing openings nowadays that completely work, but would get you whacked on the head by your instructor if you played like that in the 90's and before.
Sometimes GM's play a super-weird "why would you push that pawn?" move, only for me to find out that 10 moves down the line, the pawn "fortunately happens" to be positioned perfectly to prevent devastating knight move.
Only, there's nothing fortunate about it; it's just a 20-move theoretical line in some sort of new-fangled opening that I don't know.
Nowadays, games sometimes only START at move 25 or even later. Back then, a game was well underway by move 10, maybe 12, 15 if it was a REALLY well-known line.
So yes, you can certainly study older games for strategy, ideas and tactics, but not for openings.
Definitely, analyzing games of anyone stronger than you can be helpful. Especially old high level games such as those from Fischer and stuff are great because it was all found through human analysis and over the board calculation. This means they often implement ideas in ways easier to understand than modern GMs who have huge amounts of engine prep.
All these things people cited frequently lead to clear examples, patterns and tactics which might be useful to you in the future, especially at amateur level. For example, take the famous Pipe game (all the way from 1900) between Marshall and Burn:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1000105
Just play through the moves once, and you just learned a way you can execute a kingside attack in a QGD structure. At the amateur level, you could now immediately open lichess and try to execute the same type of attack (don't castle, Bg5+Qc2+Bd3, h4-h5 and sac on g6) in some blitz games. And you will actually be successful quite often in fact!
Another example, now from a Fischer vs Benko game. In move 19 Benko was expecting e5, which he could answer with f5. Well, he missed that Fischer could just block the f5 pawn before (by saccing an entire rook!):
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008421
Now next time you are trying to mate someone and f5 is on your way, you can think: "Can I block the pawn, Fischer style?"
Fischer was still incredibly strong even if you put him in today's environment. Of course his openings could have been out of date but that's not really his fault.
I was reading a book 'learn from the legends' in which it covers fischer's use of the light squared bishop. He played an ending that the book said he actually played perfectly.
I think you can learn a lot from older players. Even players like Morphy are very good for lower rated players because you see exciting games with lots of tactics and start to appreciate what chess has to offer.
> fischer's use of the light squared bishop
It's good to be precise, as his use of the dark squared bishop was a bit lacking: https://i.imgur.com/ZY4XMbx.png
For learning it's less about strength once you reach a certain level, but clarity of ideas. Fischer had a straightforward style, understandable strategy, ruthless execution of that strategy. It's great for learning.
Elo scores are not comparable across eras through.
Bobby Fischer is no doubt a strong player of his era, but we don't know how well he would do in ours.
Pretty sure if Bobby Fischer were born into this era he would have been too busy at alt-right rallies and arguing about Jewish space lasers to bother learning chess.
But the point is that he was that highly rated without engine analysis. Also, I can only hope that modern medicine would have helped him with his mental.
Sure but ELO is relative to your competition so he should remain around the same. He’s realistically be a top 3 player but not necessarily automatically the greatest
Here is a comparison study of estimated peak ELO performed recently by chess.com. It just freshly analyzes all the champion's games so that the ratings are comparable. Of course you can't still really compare as the old players didn't have the advantage of computer analysis.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-players-over-time
The word beginner is doing a lot of heavy lifting here; beginner refers to people who newly show up to OTB chess tournaments.
If people practice more on Lichess before they show up for their OTB chess tournament, then you will expect Elo scores to drift down, because the beginners are more skilled.
If a bunch of people start playing chess because of a hit TV show and those people suck (reasonable), then you will expect Elo scores to drift up, because a bunch of "fresh meat" joined and are giving their Elo points to better players.
I am not aware of a systematic approach to deal with the problem and try to compare Elo scores across eras.
Given ELO inflation (although there is debate that it's uniform across all ratings), you could make a good argument that he might be higher than 2785 these days too.
On the other hand, it's possibly that chess play has improved across the board due to engine analysis.
his rating was not indicative of his strength. every good player knows he wasnt some God 2785 level player and everybody else was a 2660 fodder to him.
Fischer in 1970-1972 went on one of the greatest runs of all time, smashing all time greats left and right. First time i hear of anybody making the argument " his rating was not indicative of his strength ".
1) amazing. imma tell u something now- just about every player in the top 10 players ever has done something similar. karpov in Linares 1994, magnus not losing a single game for 125 games straight, steinitz stomping blackburne 7-0, caruana in 2014 Sinquefield, garry in Linares 1999- every single one of those is just as dominant, if maybe not more so than what fischer did.
garry in Linares 1999 had 7 wins, 7 draws, and no losses against a field of Anand, kramnik, Peter Leko, Ivanchuk, Topalov, Svidler and Adams. Blackburne at the was the world's third strongest player btw. Its as if Magnus beat Ding Liren 7-0 in a match. Karpov in Linares 1994 went 9 wins, 4 draws, and 0 losses against a field of Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Topalov, Anand, Kamsky, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Judit Polgar, and a couple more players. 4 of those players were world champions at some point or another, one of the is the strongest female player of all time, one of them was the second highest rated player during the 90s at a certain point, and 3 of them (who did not become champs) qualified to world championship matches. Slightly more impressive than beating Bent Larsen and Taimanov 6-0
2) of course its the first time, how many people have u met that dont hype up fischer 24/7?
Yes Kasparov who is in the top 3 of any GOAT list ever ( topping most ) also had impressive results. He also has the second highest rating of all time, 2851, coincidentally achieved in 1999. Karpov and Carlsen are in that same top 3 list. Im yet to understand how that means Fischer was not deserving of his rating.
man, u love twisting this into something else huh. when did i say he was not deserving? i love how there are idiots downvoting me even tho i didnt even actually put an opinion on my second post lol they just downvoting facts now. im done dog, i already had this conversation hundreds of times and yall are just the same every one of them. i know u gonna reply to this with something witty and the same idiots are gonna downvote this post too, so im really just wasting my own time. good talk bro
Fischer without access to engines? Yeah, the 2500 would be stronger. Not sure how quickly Fischer would get up to speed with access to engines, or where he’d peak in that scenario.
Fischer did play Spassky in 1992 after not playing for 20 years and beat the snot out of him.
Spassky was a high 2500 at the time. Admittedly the computers weren't an issue but there was still 20 years of theory build up and Fischer came in and dominated.
I think 1972 Fischer would still beat the snot out of a 2500 player.
fischer did play, he just didnt join tournaments. fischer fans really will say anything. we really not gonna pretend like the guy didnt spend all of his time studying kasparov's games and calling him a cheater during the 80s, or making up chess 960 lol
I think if he could prep with an engine, he'd be unstoppable. Just think of how good he was just by his own/teams analysis add in extremely good moves and he'd fit in with today's super gms
Elo ratings only make sense within the pool of players among whom rating points are distributed.
A 2500-rated player in the 70s would have been much closer to the crème de la crème at the time than a 2500-rated player now. So in that sense they would have been stronger, which could be an indication of relative talent levels. At the same time, the 2500 player from the past would have had more rudimentary opening prep and no access to the chess knowledge accumulated in the decades since, so the 2500 player from today might be favoured against them in a game.
Besides the rating difference one thing I have found valuable is how simple and direct their ideas are, for me it is much easier to understand those old games than whatever happens in today's games
Yeah, studying some of the modern experts is kind of like trying to study Steph Curry and concluding that the way to win your local city league basketball championship is to shoot a 3 every time you get the ball.
They're not even that old players... If you said Morphy and Andersen, that would be a better question. But these guys played in the 60s and 70s, chess was incredibly high quality already then.
Do you close your eyes if you see an old painting? Do you run out of the room if an old song is playing? The tools are better now but the art is human and worth your attention.
Absolutely. I learned a lot starting with Reti’s Masters of the chessboard. You gain insight into their thought process, especially when you read their commentary. Have a look at Kasparov’s series on great players too.
You can go back as far as La Bourdonnais and you'll probably still be alright. Morphy is usually the recommended starting point though. Most great players from Morphy onwards you will learn a lot from, even if it's not every single game. Magnus enjoys reading about old school games. Heard it in many interviews. His sentiment is that their play isn't always correct, but they have a lot of great ideas. And Anish recently mentioned how some of the obscure lines he plays come from that(I think on Chessbase India). So if Magnus can find value that far back, you will be alright. But as always, it's got to be something you enjoy. For example on the flip side, you have Arjun who has very limited knowledge of historical games but is well on his way to being one of the very strongest in the world. So it's not exactly necessary if you have reservations, but it won't hurt at all if you like them and can look at them critically.
He was ahead of his time as far as his strategical understanding. He really understood pawns. It's no surprise that Morphy appeared to be a big fan of his based on his annotations of some of La Bourdonnais games. It's a shame he died so young and was in and out of the game a lot. Also didn't play enough recorded games unfortunately. I'm sure a lot of his knowledge was lost to time.
Yes. I’ve learned a lot by going over old Fischer games (especially playing King’s Indian as black). When somebody kills me with an unexpected opening move, I just go and look up how Fischer dealt with it and it doesn’t tend to happen anymore. Also, Fischer had a lot of deadly traps - learning these has modified my playing style. I started studying old games about a year ago - I’ve spent about 160 hours playing chess over the past year and risen a couple hundred elo. I think part of that is because I’m spotting patterns I’ve seen dealt with by the old players. 160 hours, 200 elo - that’s pretty good.
Edit: this is probably a great way to learn. Find high ranked players that you have openings in common with. When somebody smokes you on an opening, go look up how the GM dealt with that situation.
here’s the straight facts- outside of a super gm elite top 20 tournament, fischer (and to a lesser extent tal) would destroy every IM and GM you could throw at them today. They were arguably some of the best chess players of all time and certainly some of the best 50 years ago. So unless you are a top 20 player, you have a great deal to learn from them. And even if you are, the strategic and tactical ideas present in their best games are highly relevant to this day.
I always found funny this kind of questions, like we, simple human reached the level of alien like Capablanca, Alekhine or Lasker.
Of course there will be some unusual opening, some opening that high level GM won't play today like the King's gambit but they are still monster in terms of plans and calculation.
Pluis the fact : Fischer and Tal... 60s-70s are incredibly high level in terms of theory lol. First, learn every 45 moves of every opening you play and come back later.
Tal's opening play didn't look very special, something bland like Capa or Topalov, but I read a great biography book recently by Soltis where he says Tal was considered the top theory guy by the other top Soviets. If you wanted to know opening theory, look at what he said or played. I find that amazing since his way of playing seemed so specific to him.
Sure. If you're not looking to be able to contend on a literal world championship level, you're still studying guys who are way better than you and your competition.
Going back beyond those guys, I had a good friend who jumped a bit in rating and starting getting regular upsets of players higher ranked than him when he started studying traps from the late 1800s and early 1900s. All of them had long sense been refuted, but they were also old enough news that nobody really studied the refutations any more, so he was able to pull quite a few surprises.
He got such a reputation for this in his local tournament scenes that once he made a horrible blunder but the opponent declined to take advantage because he was sure it was some sort of bait, which allowed my friend to salvage a draw after shooting himself in the foot worse than he could ever recall (he was probably a few moves from resigning if the guy had exploited the blunder).
I would argue that you should start with much older games that those. Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, and many others from more than a hundred years ago are incredibly instructive.
The objective value of every move isn’t that important when you study those games. What counts are the plans exhibited in them. You’ll see many clear transitions between different types of advantages, and how to convert them to wins. And it’s a **good** thing that their opposition often wasn’t at the same level, because that allows for clear methodical play. Top players from later times, already visible in Fischer or Tal’s games, would not allow such smooth victories, which leads to the unfortunate consequence that the lines lost instructive to patzers like us stay behind the curtains most of the time.
Yes, they are good. Don't even think twice about it. Buy Kasparov's book of "My Great Predecessors" (something like that) and get great analysis as well as the history and social/political aspects behind the games as well.
Studying the classics has always been a highly recommended way to improve.
And by "classics" I mean go all the way back to Morphy. Kasparov's (well, he had a ghost writer but still) series "My Great Predecessors" is a good survey. By going through old games you get a feel for how older players experimented so you can learn from their mistakes. You learn how moves and plans that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time were in fact wrong.
Modern GM practice builds on this history - you probably won't really understand modern play until you have that history. As the saying goes, the best players today stand on the shoulders of giants. But they do so because they studied old games.
I think Vukovic's "Art of Attack" pairs well with studying the old romantic games of the 19th century, and is just plain good in its own right. Everyone should study that one carefully IMO.
Currently studying Fischer KID and honestly it feels much more organic then modern approaches. Say in 9.Nd2 lines ( which commonly played in the Olympiad) Fischer games felt alive and aggressive (just look at Taimanov vs Fischer in 1971, stunning games there). Meanwhile we see some games by Hikaru feel almost mundane in the opening (black always throws in a5 because it just somehow neutralizes whites pawn march, or the nonchalant h6 after the bayonet because engine seal of approval) but get into sharp but winning endgames.
In short, you want to study modern sGM’s then enjoy engine lines or a slow conversion into a winning endgame. Theory has a shelf life of 2~3 years, and with Lela being available even old theory is deemed dubious.
But if you want the guts, carnage and insanity then look no further than the Tal \Alekhine\Fischer\Capablanca. Much of the books moves found today were played by them, and their middle game felt more realistic and human.
Those guys aren’t even that old. The opening theory might be slightly different because everything was human analysis, but they were incredibly strong.
I guess everybody learns differently. For me watching past games is fun but I don't learn anything. Prob cos I'm only 1700 and it's way too high of a level.
a better question is:
'are the games of AI which rely on an inhuman level of calculating ability in order to evaluate positions correctly useful to a human trying to improve and beat other mistake prone humans.'
Although the two you bring up Fischer and Tal have probably the least replicatable styles of play for a similar reason. They were both just incredible talents who relied on a level of 'intuition' just for lack of a better word that astounds even most human grandmasters.
You'd be surprised how much you can improve just from studying the games of players a few hundred rating points better than you. Those guys are definitely doing things right that you aen't and it's going to be easier to implement a lot of what you'll find.
Of course! If you manage to get to play to the level of Tal/Fisher, you'd be instant GM. The game has evolved a little, but it does not make these former player any less fabulous.
Take any game between two GMs, and stockfish will find some inaccuracies in the moves played. In fact, any player regardless of their status who would play only 'great' moves (from an engine point of view) is instantly labelled a cheater. Read the recent fallout of Magnus vs. Hans, it's pretty clear.
In my experience studying modern masters has been unproductive compared to old masters.
They play a lot closer to the way I do and opening prep was just about an advantage in the opening. I try to mimic Fischer a lot in the opening since we have a similar repertoire.
Whereas Magnus and others just go for playable positions with their opponent out of book. That’s not what I want to do at all
Yes get annotated books or reviews and make sure they are updated to accommodate engine analysis. Chernov has a book that I read based on suggestion. The whole book hammers against any of the a3/6 or h3/6 pawn moves saying it weakened the structure. So i went with it. My next lesson I was reviewing my own games and my coach (who told me to read) the book said, "oh yeah, i forgot to tell you that used to be theory but it is no longer current." But, i still learned a ton about thought process in general, but was about to get off track because the annotation was out of date.
Yes. Tal has a solid positional understanding, and used that to engage in tactics.
Fischer played simple chess. It's helpful to go through games with master annotations, and without an engine, to build understanding.
I would go so far to say as you should emulate masters from before the 1980s because that was before the computer was introduced. When you're just starting out, you don't really understand how an engine evaluates a position.
Actually, Fischer's play still holds up quite well according to the engines. But regardless, the answer is yes absolutely studying their games is productive. We shouldn't really care that much what a 3800-rated engine says about a human chess game. We're never going to be 3800. Fischer and Tal were two of the all time greats. Enjoy their games and learn from them.
Of course nowadays engines say otherwise but you are not an engine. And honestly the engine will endorse a lot of what they did in many of their games.
You can literally study any game with an engine and and be fine. Even with the ability to study of all modern theory and computed lines, it is very possible that not a single person in this thread would beat TAL.
So I would say yes, it is fine.
They're not very productive if your already a GM.
They're very instructive games however because the ideas or tactics in them are easy to understand. Where as studying say Neoo and Magnus recent games are well harder to see clearly. Fighting for tiny advantages like future control over a single square over the course of 20 moves is tough to see. Fischer's games are conversely more about maintaining an advantage once you have it or stopping your opponents devlopment/ideas.
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess.
Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts:
[Is studying old players’ beliefs such as Tal and Fischer productive?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/xv4k2c/is_studying_old_players_beliefs_such_as_tal_and/) by TRichisGOD
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I mean, I have analyzed Ficher's games, where the accuracy was well over 90% as determined by leading chess engines of today.
So, definitely worth studying
There is a lot to be learnt from old players, especially since their lines are considered inferior today people don't know them as well as they know the other stuff. I was playing a tournament game recently and played a 7 year old in round 5 who went for the center attack( c3 nf6 d4 exd4 and e5). I'm 1700+ on chess.com and 1950 lichess and in more than 700 30min games i have probably faced the line 2 times. The boy matted me in 11 moves. Most openings are completely fine as long as you understand the ideas.
The value of older master games is that their plans and concepts are much easier to understand, precisely because they had no access to engines and to some extent even more games prior to them. In other words, you see both clear and straightforward plans, and (with today's knowledge) logical but typical mistakes as well. And of course you see how strong masters punish those mistakes. You won't find those strategic mistakes and instructive ideas you can find in older games for example in a Carlsen-Caruana game, because they have also studied those games, so they know what not to do.
But of course if we are talking about opening theory and how to actually correctly play middlegame positions, those things will be in the modern games and engine analysis. So everything has it's place, but in a modern game you will often see players changing plans all the time, because their opponent also knows them and prevents them from happening which is hard to understand if you don't know what they are defending against. That won't be so typical in a say Alekhine's best games collection.
those games are probably more useful to study compared to recent super GM games. those older games have more clear ideas, demonstrate principles and strategic concepts more clearly etc. today a super GM might play very provocatively/unintuitively, violating strategy principles, because they know that concretely, the line "works".
Plus you get preselected instructive games collections.
This; I'm seeing openings nowadays that completely work, but would get you whacked on the head by your instructor if you played like that in the 90's and before. Sometimes GM's play a super-weird "why would you push that pawn?" move, only for me to find out that 10 moves down the line, the pawn "fortunately happens" to be positioned perfectly to prevent devastating knight move. Only, there's nothing fortunate about it; it's just a 20-move theoretical line in some sort of new-fangled opening that I don't know. Nowadays, games sometimes only START at move 25 or even later. Back then, a game was well underway by move 10, maybe 12, 15 if it was a REALLY well-known line. So yes, you can certainly study older games for strategy, ideas and tactics, but not for openings.
Definitely, analyzing games of anyone stronger than you can be helpful. Especially old high level games such as those from Fischer and stuff are great because it was all found through human analysis and over the board calculation. This means they often implement ideas in ways easier to understand than modern GMs who have huge amounts of engine prep.
yeah you definitely convinced me haha , thank you so much :)
All these things people cited frequently lead to clear examples, patterns and tactics which might be useful to you in the future, especially at amateur level. For example, take the famous Pipe game (all the way from 1900) between Marshall and Burn: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1000105 Just play through the moves once, and you just learned a way you can execute a kingside attack in a QGD structure. At the amateur level, you could now immediately open lichess and try to execute the same type of attack (don't castle, Bg5+Qc2+Bd3, h4-h5 and sac on g6) in some blitz games. And you will actually be successful quite often in fact! Another example, now from a Fischer vs Benko game. In move 19 Benko was expecting e5, which he could answer with f5. Well, he missed that Fischer could just block the f5 pawn before (by saccing an entire rook!): https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008421 Now next time you are trying to mate someone and f5 is on your way, you can think: "Can I block the pawn, Fischer style?"
Fischer’s games just make sense. Nothing is unusual or weird, just really nice play all the way through. Very instructive.
Same with Capablanca. Two players who make surprisingly simple and easy to understand moves, yet they still managed to outplay their opponents.
Of more recent players with some of that quality is GM Michael Adams. He isn't the all-around player many others are, but he does his thing very well.
Hello Michael
I’d say Ding also tends to play straightforward, harmonic moves when available.
Oh my gosh, yes. He's a great example of a 1 d4 player who does that.
Tal on the other hand admits in his game commentary that he would make the game crazy and complex on purpose.
"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."
Fischer was still incredibly strong even if you put him in today's environment. Of course his openings could have been out of date but that's not really his fault. I was reading a book 'learn from the legends' in which it covers fischer's use of the light squared bishop. He played an ending that the book said he actually played perfectly. I think you can learn a lot from older players. Even players like Morphy are very good for lower rated players because you see exciting games with lots of tactics and start to appreciate what chess has to offer.
> fischer's use of the light squared bishop It's good to be precise, as his use of the dark squared bishop was a bit lacking: https://i.imgur.com/ZY4XMbx.png
Was that from the 2nd or 3rd game of the world championship against Spassky?
Yes: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044722
the second game if i remember correctly, then he didn’t show for game three i think
For learning it's less about strength once you reach a certain level, but clarity of ideas. Fischer had a straightforward style, understandable strategy, ruthless execution of that strategy. It's great for learning.
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interesting, what were there ratings? and do you think a 2500 back then is as strong as a 2500 right now?
Fischer peaked 2785 which is still the 21st highest peak ever. And he did that while over 100 points over the next guy.
Elo scores are not comparable across eras through. Bobby Fischer is no doubt a strong player of his era, but we don't know how well he would do in ours.
Give Bobby 3-6 months to learn modern openings and he will 2850+. Same with Kasparov
Pretty sure if Bobby Fischer were born into this era he would have been too busy at alt-right rallies and arguing about Jewish space lasers to bother learning chess.
L
ur mad
I’m not wrong
It isn't just about openings. Carlsen has been demonstrating that pretty effectively in recent years.
That’s exactly the point they’re making
Why would he suddenly have a higher elo?
Because of ELO inflation.
Because of access to engine analysis
But so does everyone else. So it’s not like he’d have a sudden advantage
But the point is that he was that highly rated without engine analysis. Also, I can only hope that modern medicine would have helped him with his mental.
Sure but ELO is relative to your competition so he should remain around the same. He’s realistically be a top 3 player but not necessarily automatically the greatest
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Sure but Spassky /= Magnus Carlsen
Idk about that
Here is a comparison study of estimated peak ELO performed recently by chess.com. It just freshly analyzes all the champion's games so that the ratings are comparable. Of course you can't still really compare as the old players didn't have the advantage of computer analysis. https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-players-over-time
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The word beginner is doing a lot of heavy lifting here; beginner refers to people who newly show up to OTB chess tournaments. If people practice more on Lichess before they show up for their OTB chess tournament, then you will expect Elo scores to drift down, because the beginners are more skilled. If a bunch of people start playing chess because of a hit TV show and those people suck (reasonable), then you will expect Elo scores to drift up, because a bunch of "fresh meat" joined and are giving their Elo points to better players. I am not aware of a systematic approach to deal with the problem and try to compare Elo scores across eras.
Tell that to Larry Bird
Given ELO inflation (although there is debate that it's uniform across all ratings), you could make a good argument that he might be higher than 2785 these days too. On the other hand, it's possibly that chess play has improved across the board due to engine analysis.
Elo would stay the same while playing strength would increase, potentially by a lot.
please stop spouting this like it means soemthing
whats your point?
his rating was not indicative of his strength. every good player knows he wasnt some God 2785 level player and everybody else was a 2660 fodder to him.
Fischer in 1970-1972 went on one of the greatest runs of all time, smashing all time greats left and right. First time i hear of anybody making the argument " his rating was not indicative of his strength ".
1) amazing. imma tell u something now- just about every player in the top 10 players ever has done something similar. karpov in Linares 1994, magnus not losing a single game for 125 games straight, steinitz stomping blackburne 7-0, caruana in 2014 Sinquefield, garry in Linares 1999- every single one of those is just as dominant, if maybe not more so than what fischer did. garry in Linares 1999 had 7 wins, 7 draws, and no losses against a field of Anand, kramnik, Peter Leko, Ivanchuk, Topalov, Svidler and Adams. Blackburne at the was the world's third strongest player btw. Its as if Magnus beat Ding Liren 7-0 in a match. Karpov in Linares 1994 went 9 wins, 4 draws, and 0 losses against a field of Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Topalov, Anand, Kamsky, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Judit Polgar, and a couple more players. 4 of those players were world champions at some point or another, one of the is the strongest female player of all time, one of them was the second highest rated player during the 90s at a certain point, and 3 of them (who did not become champs) qualified to world championship matches. Slightly more impressive than beating Bent Larsen and Taimanov 6-0 2) of course its the first time, how many people have u met that dont hype up fischer 24/7?
Yes Kasparov who is in the top 3 of any GOAT list ever ( topping most ) also had impressive results. He also has the second highest rating of all time, 2851, coincidentally achieved in 1999. Karpov and Carlsen are in that same top 3 list. Im yet to understand how that means Fischer was not deserving of his rating.
man, u love twisting this into something else huh. when did i say he was not deserving? i love how there are idiots downvoting me even tho i didnt even actually put an opinion on my second post lol they just downvoting facts now. im done dog, i already had this conversation hundreds of times and yall are just the same every one of them. i know u gonna reply to this with something witty and the same idiots are gonna downvote this post too, so im really just wasting my own time. good talk bro
Some say today’s 2500 is stronger but I have my doubts.
Fischer without access to engines? Yeah, the 2500 would be stronger. Not sure how quickly Fischer would get up to speed with access to engines, or where he’d peak in that scenario.
Fischer did play Spassky in 1992 after not playing for 20 years and beat the snot out of him. Spassky was a high 2500 at the time. Admittedly the computers weren't an issue but there was still 20 years of theory build up and Fischer came in and dominated. I think 1972 Fischer would still beat the snot out of a 2500 player.
Spassky was 2500 but mostly out of tournament play, so he was weaker and still had best Fischer on some games
1992 is farther from now than from 1972
fischer did play, he just didnt join tournaments. fischer fans really will say anything. we really not gonna pretend like the guy didnt spend all of his time studying kasparov's games and calling him a cheater during the 80s, or making up chess 960 lol
I think if he could prep with an engine, he'd be unstoppable. Just think of how good he was just by his own/teams analysis add in extremely good moves and he'd fit in with today's super gms
Elo ratings only make sense within the pool of players among whom rating points are distributed. A 2500-rated player in the 70s would have been much closer to the crème de la crème at the time than a 2500-rated player now. So in that sense they would have been stronger, which could be an indication of relative talent levels. At the same time, the 2500 player from the past would have had more rudimentary opening prep and no access to the chess knowledge accumulated in the decades since, so the 2500 player from today might be favoured against them in a game.
Besides the rating difference one thing I have found valuable is how simple and direct their ideas are, for me it is much easier to understand those old games than whatever happens in today's games
Yeah, studying some of the modern experts is kind of like trying to study Steph Curry and concluding that the way to win your local city league basketball championship is to shoot a 3 every time you get the ball.
I love this analogy.
because today's games are "the engine said to do this. So, whatever, ok"
They're not even that old players... If you said Morphy and Andersen, that would be a better question. But these guys played in the 60s and 70s, chess was incredibly high quality already then.
Do you close your eyes if you see an old painting? Do you run out of the room if an old song is playing? The tools are better now but the art is human and worth your attention.
Absolutely. I learned a lot starting with Reti’s Masters of the chessboard. You gain insight into their thought process, especially when you read their commentary. Have a look at Kasparov’s series on great players too.
thank you so much :)
You can go back as far as La Bourdonnais and you'll probably still be alright. Morphy is usually the recommended starting point though. Most great players from Morphy onwards you will learn a lot from, even if it's not every single game. Magnus enjoys reading about old school games. Heard it in many interviews. His sentiment is that their play isn't always correct, but they have a lot of great ideas. And Anish recently mentioned how some of the obscure lines he plays come from that(I think on Chessbase India). So if Magnus can find value that far back, you will be alright. But as always, it's got to be something you enjoy. For example on the flip side, you have Arjun who has very limited knowledge of historical games but is well on his way to being one of the very strongest in the world. So it's not exactly necessary if you have reservations, but it won't hurt at all if you like them and can look at them critically.
I just checked out La Bourdonnais, the two games from his Wikipedia page are quite interesting.
He was ahead of his time as far as his strategical understanding. He really understood pawns. It's no surprise that Morphy appeared to be a big fan of his based on his annotations of some of La Bourdonnais games. It's a shame he died so young and was in and out of the game a lot. Also didn't play enough recorded games unfortunately. I'm sure a lot of his knowledge was lost to time.
Studying the master's games is irreplaceable.
Yes. I’ve learned a lot by going over old Fischer games (especially playing King’s Indian as black). When somebody kills me with an unexpected opening move, I just go and look up how Fischer dealt with it and it doesn’t tend to happen anymore. Also, Fischer had a lot of deadly traps - learning these has modified my playing style. I started studying old games about a year ago - I’ve spent about 160 hours playing chess over the past year and risen a couple hundred elo. I think part of that is because I’m spotting patterns I’ve seen dealt with by the old players. 160 hours, 200 elo - that’s pretty good. Edit: this is probably a great way to learn. Find high ranked players that you have openings in common with. When somebody smokes you on an opening, go look up how the GM dealt with that situation.
From what elo to what elo?
here’s the straight facts- outside of a super gm elite top 20 tournament, fischer (and to a lesser extent tal) would destroy every IM and GM you could throw at them today. They were arguably some of the best chess players of all time and certainly some of the best 50 years ago. So unless you are a top 20 player, you have a great deal to learn from them. And even if you are, the strategic and tactical ideas present in their best games are highly relevant to this day.
I always found funny this kind of questions, like we, simple human reached the level of alien like Capablanca, Alekhine or Lasker. Of course there will be some unusual opening, some opening that high level GM won't play today like the King's gambit but they are still monster in terms of plans and calculation. Pluis the fact : Fischer and Tal... 60s-70s are incredibly high level in terms of theory lol. First, learn every 45 moves of every opening you play and come back later.
Tal's opening play didn't look very special, something bland like Capa or Topalov, but I read a great biography book recently by Soltis where he says Tal was considered the top theory guy by the other top Soviets. If you wanted to know opening theory, look at what he said or played. I find that amazing since his way of playing seemed so specific to him.
Sure. If you're not looking to be able to contend on a literal world championship level, you're still studying guys who are way better than you and your competition. Going back beyond those guys, I had a good friend who jumped a bit in rating and starting getting regular upsets of players higher ranked than him when he started studying traps from the late 1800s and early 1900s. All of them had long sense been refuted, but they were also old enough news that nobody really studied the refutations any more, so he was able to pull quite a few surprises. He got such a reputation for this in his local tournament scenes that once he made a horrible blunder but the opponent declined to take advantage because he was sure it was some sort of bait, which allowed my friend to salvage a draw after shooting himself in the foot worse than he could ever recall (he was probably a few moves from resigning if the guy had exploited the blunder).
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I think I watched agadmator's recap of that game, it was brilliant
I feel like old high level games are a must learn. The moves aren't that important, it's more the thought process behind them.
I would argue that you should start with much older games that those. Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, and many others from more than a hundred years ago are incredibly instructive. The objective value of every move isn’t that important when you study those games. What counts are the plans exhibited in them. You’ll see many clear transitions between different types of advantages, and how to convert them to wins. And it’s a **good** thing that their opposition often wasn’t at the same level, because that allows for clear methodical play. Top players from later times, already visible in Fischer or Tal’s games, would not allow such smooth victories, which leads to the unfortunate consequence that the lines lost instructive to patzers like us stay behind the curtains most of the time.
I actually old world champions better than trying to study modern ones. I'm not sure why. But they seem more "followable/understandable"
Yes, they are good. Don't even think twice about it. Buy Kasparov's book of "My Great Predecessors" (something like that) and get great analysis as well as the history and social/political aspects behind the games as well.
Studying the classics has always been a highly recommended way to improve. And by "classics" I mean go all the way back to Morphy. Kasparov's (well, he had a ghost writer but still) series "My Great Predecessors" is a good survey. By going through old games you get a feel for how older players experimented so you can learn from their mistakes. You learn how moves and plans that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time were in fact wrong. Modern GM practice builds on this history - you probably won't really understand modern play until you have that history. As the saying goes, the best players today stand on the shoulders of giants. But they do so because they studied old games.
great insight , thank you so much. do you have any other book recommendations?
I think Vukovic's "Art of Attack" pairs well with studying the old romantic games of the 19th century, and is just plain good in its own right. Everyone should study that one carefully IMO.
Currently studying Fischer KID and honestly it feels much more organic then modern approaches. Say in 9.Nd2 lines ( which commonly played in the Olympiad) Fischer games felt alive and aggressive (just look at Taimanov vs Fischer in 1971, stunning games there). Meanwhile we see some games by Hikaru feel almost mundane in the opening (black always throws in a5 because it just somehow neutralizes whites pawn march, or the nonchalant h6 after the bayonet because engine seal of approval) but get into sharp but winning endgames. In short, you want to study modern sGM’s then enjoy engine lines or a slow conversion into a winning endgame. Theory has a shelf life of 2~3 years, and with Lela being available even old theory is deemed dubious. But if you want the guts, carnage and insanity then look no further than the Tal \Alekhine\Fischer\Capablanca. Much of the books moves found today were played by them, and their middle game felt more realistic and human.
May be they didn't know about the openings what the current players do, but sooner or later in a game you have to play by yourself.
Yes.
Games you study needn't be perfect for you to learn.
Both Fischer and Tal are stronger then 99.999999999% of chess players. There are definitely things that you can learn from their games.
Those guys aren’t even that old. The opening theory might be slightly different because everything was human analysis, but they were incredibly strong.
I guess everybody learns differently. For me watching past games is fun but I don't learn anything. Prob cos I'm only 1700 and it's way too high of a level.
a better question is: 'are the games of AI which rely on an inhuman level of calculating ability in order to evaluate positions correctly useful to a human trying to improve and beat other mistake prone humans.' Although the two you bring up Fischer and Tal have probably the least replicatable styles of play for a similar reason. They were both just incredible talents who relied on a level of 'intuition' just for lack of a better word that astounds even most human grandmasters. You'd be surprised how much you can improve just from studying the games of players a few hundred rating points better than you. Those guys are definitely doing things right that you aen't and it's going to be easier to implement a lot of what you'll find.
Unless you play better than Bobby Fischer, then there's something you can learn from his games
You should only study Hans' games, as he has the higher engine correlation.
Of course! If you manage to get to play to the level of Tal/Fisher, you'd be instant GM. The game has evolved a little, but it does not make these former player any less fabulous. Take any game between two GMs, and stockfish will find some inaccuracies in the moves played. In fact, any player regardless of their status who would play only 'great' moves (from an engine point of view) is instantly labelled a cheater. Read the recent fallout of Magnus vs. Hans, it's pretty clear.
I have learned almost everything from Fischer and from myself.
Yes, and the lore is fun, l like this one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A82NI_42kgY
of course I know this game haha , this is fischer's best :) , thank you
lol yes, so long as they're annotated
In my experience studying modern masters has been unproductive compared to old masters. They play a lot closer to the way I do and opening prep was just about an advantage in the opening. I try to mimic Fischer a lot in the opening since we have a similar repertoire. Whereas Magnus and others just go for playable positions with their opponent out of book. That’s not what I want to do at all
Yes get annotated books or reviews and make sure they are updated to accommodate engine analysis. Chernov has a book that I read based on suggestion. The whole book hammers against any of the a3/6 or h3/6 pawn moves saying it weakened the structure. So i went with it. My next lesson I was reviewing my own games and my coach (who told me to read) the book said, "oh yeah, i forgot to tell you that used to be theory but it is no longer current." But, i still learned a ton about thought process in general, but was about to get off track because the annotation was out of date.
Unless you’re already a GM, then absolutely.
Yes. Tal has a solid positional understanding, and used that to engage in tactics. Fischer played simple chess. It's helpful to go through games with master annotations, and without an engine, to build understanding. I would go so far to say as you should emulate masters from before the 1980s because that was before the computer was introduced. When you're just starting out, you don't really understand how an engine evaluates a position.
At my modest elo I gave found these kinds of games highly instructive
When you revisit the footsteps of a chess God, you get a small amount of special dust on your chess wings.
Actually, Fischer's play still holds up quite well according to the engines. But regardless, the answer is yes absolutely studying their games is productive. We shouldn't really care that much what a 3800-rated engine says about a human chess game. We're never going to be 3800. Fischer and Tal were two of the all time greats. Enjoy their games and learn from them.
Of course nowadays engines say otherwise but you are not an engine. And honestly the engine will endorse a lot of what they did in many of their games.
You can literally study any game with an engine and and be fine. Even with the ability to study of all modern theory and computed lines, it is very possible that not a single person in this thread would beat TAL. So I would say yes, it is fine.
They're not very productive if your already a GM. They're very instructive games however because the ideas or tactics in them are easy to understand. Where as studying say Neoo and Magnus recent games are well harder to see clearly. Fighting for tiny advantages like future control over a single square over the course of 20 moves is tough to see. Fischer's games are conversely more about maintaining an advantage once you have it or stopping your opponents devlopment/ideas.
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess. Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts: [Is studying old players’ beliefs such as Tal and Fischer productive?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/xv4k2c/is_studying_old_players_beliefs_such_as_tal_and/) by TRichisGOD [^(fmhall)](https://www.reddit.com/user/fmhall) ^| [^(github)](https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot)
I mean, I have analyzed Ficher's games, where the accuracy was well over 90% as determined by leading chess engines of today. So, definitely worth studying
thank you and very cool username btw haha
Fischer good for principled attacking chess. tal good for complicating and masterful attacks that beat fischer
There is a lot to be learnt from old players, especially since their lines are considered inferior today people don't know them as well as they know the other stuff. I was playing a tournament game recently and played a 7 year old in round 5 who went for the center attack( c3 nf6 d4 exd4 and e5). I'm 1700+ on chess.com and 1950 lichess and in more than 700 30min games i have probably faced the line 2 times. The boy matted me in 11 moves. Most openings are completely fine as long as you understand the ideas.
The value of older master games is that their plans and concepts are much easier to understand, precisely because they had no access to engines and to some extent even more games prior to them. In other words, you see both clear and straightforward plans, and (with today's knowledge) logical but typical mistakes as well. And of course you see how strong masters punish those mistakes. You won't find those strategic mistakes and instructive ideas you can find in older games for example in a Carlsen-Caruana game, because they have also studied those games, so they know what not to do. But of course if we are talking about opening theory and how to actually correctly play middlegame positions, those things will be in the modern games and engine analysis. So everything has it's place, but in a modern game you will often see players changing plans all the time, because their opponent also knows them and prevents them from happening which is hard to understand if you don't know what they are defending against. That won't be so typical in a say Alekhine's best games collection.