SECOND and more important, I believe that we can rationally compare chess players from different eras by using objective computer analysis of their middlegames and endgames (not openings). We can “ask” the computers how accurately the players are playing. As far as I know, nearly every computer study using various programs has always placed Capablanca at number one or two in terms of accuracy. Computers “love” Capablanca’s play.
We have to take this question in the context of the limits of the human anatomy and physiology. A concrete example would be the one-hundred-meter dash. The human body is designed such that the limit it can run is about 9 seconds.
In order for a human being to run faster, we would have to redesign the human anatomy into that of say a cheetah. One can rev up the human anatomy and physiology, say with steroids, but this regimen would hit an eventual stonewall too; the same way that we could rev up human proficiency to learn openings with computer assistance.
Since the nervous system has physiological limits (example of a limit- neuronal action potential speed doesn’t go up much more than 100 m/s) and so limits the human chess playing ability, increasing the number human chess players, thus expanding the normal curve of players, simply creates more possibilities of players playing like a Fischer in his prime, but will not create a mental superman who plays chess at computer levels. This explains why human and computer analysis indicate that Lasker was playing on a qualitatively similar level as more recent WCs.
“Worse” in chess, any computer assistance ends once the opening is over. After a computer-assisted opening prep, every grandmaster today has to play the game the way Lasker did more than a hundred years ago, relying on himself alone, with the same fundamental chess rules and chess clock.
An encyclopedic opening repertoire is not a necessity to be a top player. In fact, there are World Champions who did not do deep opening prep; they just played quiet but sound openings that got them into playable middlegames and then beat their opponents in the middlegame or endgame. Just look at Capablanca, Karpov, and Carlsen.
Because of subconscious adherence to the narcissistic generation syndrome, the belief that everything that is the best can only exist here and now, many kibitzers would not agree to the above theses.
While it is true that there have been more active chess professionals and consequently larger cohorts of top chess masters on a yearly basis since WW2 thanks to Soviet state funding and present corporate funding, the very top chess masters since Lasker’s time have always played at a similar level- within the limits imposed by the human brain.
There is no physical law that bars a pre-WW2 chess master from playing chess as well as today’s generation. The human brain has not changed in any fundamental manner in the past tens of thousands of years. (To be continued)/PN
